Jack Russell Terrier Raccoon Hunting story, Jack Russell terriers hunting raccoons - Conquest Terriers, Buffalo, New York USA

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I only had one bitch that I could take out hunting, Dax is still in heat and Daisy is too skinny and not back in shape from her recent litter of puppies. Kallie looked ok from her recent litter and of course she is always wanting to hunt.

We went to a place where they have worked coon before.

Kallie has never seen a coon but has worked back in Ohio and has a certificate to Ground Hog.

The first 20-30 holes she came to, she turned up her nose. I was starting to think that Kallie didn't know what was up. That her lack of experience with Coon was making her ignore good holes. Garth was brought in to double check the holes, he didn't think anybody was home either.

Kallie entered a hole that looked unlikely to me and stayed in for a few minutes then we heard baying. It was very hard to locate her, she was running all over the place underground for about 20 minutes. Paul & Debbie were sure it was a fox by the way it was moving around. Every now and then, we would hear more insistent baying so we knew that something was going on.

We got a reading on the collar at 6 feet, but we knew that there was some concrete chunks and the reading was false. We dug down only 3 feet to the tunnel, but she had moved on by then to a different branch.

She finally became stationary again and the baying became consistent. The locator said about 5 feet down and it was only about 6 feet along the side of a bank from what looked like an exit hole. We were hoping that she would bolt the quarry out that other hole.

Paul and Doug starting digging into the side of the bank while I listened at the mouth of the tunnel to hear her work. That is when we realized that it wouldn't be an easy dig. The embankment had been built to withstand erosion by dumping tons of concrete chunks and then covering it up with dirt. Kallie ended up only being 3-4 feet down but it took nearly an hour to get to her because several very large blocks of concrete were interlocked like a puzzle. The biggest one was about 8 inches thick and 3 feet long and 2 feet wide. They were too thick to break into chunks. I helped do some of the digging, but Paul and Doug are digging machines and seem to be in much better shape than I. Mike helped dig too and also made several trips back to the truck for extra tools, breaker bars, crow bars, snares, etc.

About half way down to Kallie, there was horrendous growling and Paul & Debbie declared that the quarry had to be a coon.

We got Kallie out but the concrete had shifted and trapped the coon in a little hole. We could see it's eyes looking up at us. We didn't want to leave the coon where he couldn't get out, so we spent another 45 minutes digging and removing extra chunks of concrete to rescue the coon.

Paul grabbed his tail and threw him out of the hole into the bushes. Paul said that he was a pretty big coon and weighed about 30 lbs. As we were all watching him running away very happy to be rid of us and the little white dogs, a second coon nearly knocked us down leaving the same hole. It was even bigger than the first.

My little 12 lb. Kallie worked 60+ lbs worth of coons.

Her nose is gonna be pretty sore for a couple of weeks. One good bite and lots of abrasions. I think that the abrasions were mostly from trying to get to the coon past concrete with aggregate in it and that she scraped up her nose in the excitement of digging to the quarry.

It is so amazing to see the years of working terrier instinct come out in these little white dogs. Kallie is not that experienced of a hunter, but you sure wouldn't have known by the way she worked those coons.

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