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.