Tahlequah’s Red Fern Festival a coon hunter’s delight

By Liz McMahan
Phoenix Staff Writer

April 28, 2007 11:34 pm

— TAHLEQUAH — Music from the 1950s drifted across the town square and the Red Fern Festival here Saturday morning.
People milled about, looking at the cars, checking out the food booths and looking at novelties.
What brought people here was the novel and movie, “Where the Red Fern Grows,” which was published in 1961 about the bond between Billy Colman, a fictional 10-year-old boy growing up in the Ozark Hills and two redbone hounds he bought for coon hunting — the treeing and tracking of raccoons.
The story is what brought Clyde Box and his wife Dorothy Box here from Tulsa. He said he had watched the movie and used to be a coon hunter. She even went with him on one hunt when they were dating.
But it was music of a different sort that played down the hill by the stream running through Sequoyah Park. The sounds coming from there would have been music to Billy Colman, the central character in the Wilson Rawls’ book.
The sounds in the park were from about a dozen coon dogs. The dogs were mostly silent until a raccoon in a wire cage was hoisted up a tree. Once the dogs spotted the animal, there was a cacophony of deep-throated baying sounds from the dogs as they lunged and pulled on their leashes, trying to get to the tree where the raccoon seemed to be ignoring them.
The dogs seemed anxious to get their turn in the trailing and treeing contests of the afternoon.
Cousins Cody Todd, 14, of Tahlequah and Dusty Todd, 13, of Porter were among the dog owners. Cody Todd’s Walker hound Dolly won the raccoon hunting competition Friday night and was back Saturday for the treeing competition.
Dusty Todd brought Elvis, an English hound whose coppery coat shone in the noonday sun.
There were more than a dozen other dogs there too, but few of them were the redbone breed like the dogs Colman ordered from a mail-order house in the book.
Redbones aren’t really very popular around here, explained Joe Miller, a coon hunter from Stilwell. Area hunters seem to prefer Walkers, English or bluetick hounds.
And while $25 was practically a lifetime of savings for Colman in the story, it wouldn’t begin to be even a down payment on a dog today, Cody Todd said.
“I want a redbone really bad,” he said. “They’ve got kennels in Kentucky that have them. A pup that’s bred good is about $300.”
Coon hunting is one of the most expensive sports in the United States, said Jimmy Phillips, executive field representative for the American Kennel Club, which sanctioned this weekend’s hunting events.
Miller said a good dog that’s just starting is worth $1,000 to $1,500. Getting a good one that’s already trained costs $4,000 to $7,000.
Then you’ve got to have a pickup and dog box, a $300 light and a $500 tracking system. Electric collars are about $300, and a good pair of boots is $100.
The little whistle-looking device that 4-year-old Wyatt Thurber wore on a cord around his neck is about $30. Called a squaler, they are used to get the attention of a raccoon that has been tracked to a tree, Miller said.
Coon hunting is a generational sport, Phillips said.
“If you hunt, your father probably hunted and his father hunted before him,” he said.
He estimated there are 400,000 coon dogs in the United States today. The earliest ancestors of today’s coon dogs in the U.S. were foxhounds that shipped to the United States from England for George Washington.
It was after the Civil War before coon hunting became popular, he said. It is believed that soldiers who were bored with sitting around after the war developed the sport.
The meet here this weekend was the first AKC-sanctioned meet in Oklahoma, Phillips said. He expects it to become a major national event in coon hunting circles because of the area’s connection to “Where the Red Fern Grows.”
Rawls’ Red Fern story has become a classroom classic because it tells the story of the bond between a boy and his dogs. But it also has made dozens of coon hunters and their children and friends want to hit the woods on a coon hunt, Phillips said.
Miller said that is especially true in the Tahlequah area, where both the first and second versions of the movie based on Rawls’ book were filmed.
“Every kid around has watched it,” he said. “We’ve got the new version and the old version. My kids have watched it many times.”
While the sport is expensive, it’s a good sport for youths, Miller said. It’s how his family spends the money another family might spend on vacations or other activities.
“There isn’t anything better for a kid to keep them out of trouble,” Miller said. “There’s so much they can get into anymore. My wife and I figure it’s better to spend the money to keep them out of trouble than to spend it to get them out of trouble.”
The Todd cousins also participate in showing pigs at livestock shows, but it’s the coon hunting and the coon dogs they live and breathe.
Both qualified last year to take their dogs to the national Professional Kennel Club competition in Kentucky.
They talk about the problems they run into at meets — the times their dogs had circle trees or when they split trees.
It’s all a part of the language of coon hunters and the love between boys and their dogs.
Reach Liz McMahan at 918-684-2926 orClick Here to Send Email

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