by TalkHunting Member Jan "Yledaf" Fadely

I could barely hear Dick Stull, over the noise of the old ratting school bus, as he asked for the third or fourth time, “Come on let me go with you to the old barn.”  “I’m just going to check the traps under the corner of the floor where the foundation is broken and then walk on home from there,” I told him.  “I know,” he answered, “but I’ve never seen a live coon up that close before and I’m sure you probably caught him last night.”  “Well, that was my plan anyway, when I set the traps there.  He’s a big one too.  Lucky I saw him going into that hole on the way home from squirrel hunting a couple of days ago,” I replied, adding “the hide should be worth ten to twelve dollars now that it has gotten colder.  Come along then if you want to go.  “Charlie,” I hollered over the noise, “let us off at the old net drying field please.”  Charlie replied, “You know I’m not supposed to do that.  You’re supposed to stay on the bus until we get to the transfer place at the old school.”  “Yeah, but you’ll do it for one of your favorite students, right” I asked.  “Just don’t make a habit of it and I hope you get that big old coon.  Save a lot of little pheasants and rabbits if you do,” he answered somewhat gruffly, trying to sound stern and proper. 

Charlie was the custodian and bus driver for the old Catawba Island, Ohio, 1st thru 8th grade school that Dick and I had attended up until that year.  It was 1947, my freshman year in high school, in Port Clinton, Ohio, and that, now required us to ride back and forth every school day.  It was a ride of about 10 miles one way and it took a lot of after school time away from us, but living on Catawba was well worth that slight inconvenience.  We were privy to loads of outdoor activities right out our back doors, hunting, fishing, trapping and just the ability to enjoy nature that the kids in town didn’t have at their fingertips.

I had spotted that old coon sneaking into the hole under the corner of the old barn, long abandoned by some forgotten farmer, two days earlier while heading home from squirrel hunting in Beaver’s woods, about a half mile north of that barn.  I had noticed tracks of a really humongous coon in the woods several times that fall.  I figured he’d go at least twenty pounds and his hide should be about prime, as it was early October and we had experienced some cold weather for a few weeks.  I was looking forward to showing his hide off to the traveling fur buyer when he came around later that winter to buy my stretched and dried hides.  I had started trapping in earnest two years earlier the first winter after my parents purchased a twenty acre peach orchard on Catawba Island, in the summer of 1945.

Our neighbor who owned the orchard across the road from ours was Ira Sexton, a white haired, blue eyed, tough old man in his seventies that really resembled Santa Claus.  He was born on Catawba, was a farmer, former market hunter, shooting 100’s of ducks per year then salting them down and shipping them in wooden barrels to the New York City markets, and was my mentor and tutor.  He taught me how to set my traps after giving me about fifty of his since old ones he no longer used them.  He showed me how to make dry land sets for coon, fox, and mink using homemade stink baits to attract their attention and how to make open water and under the ice sets for muskrats, our main source of hides. 

In his trapping and hunting hay day, they also use fox terriers or other small dogs to sniff out muskrats in their den holes within the banks of the shoreline, creeks, etc.  The dogs would dig into the holes and normally, the muskrats had an escape hole allowing them to enter directly into the water rather than coming out onto dry land.  When the muskrats would swim out from the den the men would spear them using a spear made out of a long six foot quarter inch steel rod, with a three or four foot wood handle, that was sharpened to a fine point.  They did this also through the ice until it became too thick to penetrate.  The first muskrats I ever saw were swimming under about one inch of clear ice the first freeze up in 1945, on a small pond in our orchard that we used for spray water.  I ran down the road to Ira’s house to ask him what they were and thus began my education and long time association with this fine gentleman.

World War II had just ended when I started trapping and the fur prices were very high for three or four years after.  In 1945, I was receiving $5.00 for a prime muskrat pelt and $1.50 for a small one we called kits.  This price held up until my junior year in high school and I never trapped again after the prices dropped down to about $1.00 for a prime muskrat.  It was great while it lasted.  My father was working as an industrial engineer along with having the orchard during those years and during the 1947-48 trapping season I made almost as much money trapping as he did working all year as an engineer.

After getting off the bus, Dick and I trooped through the weed field, jumping a couple of cock pheasants and some meadow larks on our walk to the barn.  The cackle of a rising cock bird always startled me as they rose into the air and that sound still rings in my ears today.  Their speed always amazed me causing me to miss many times over.  Those birds are history now as their habitat has been taken over by marinas along the shorelines, condos, trailer parks and sub divisions taking away other areas where they once thrived. 

Finally arriving at the hole, we were excited to see the old piece of firewood that I had nailed the chains on the traps to, as a drag, pulled right down tight across the opening.  “Man, you’ve got him,” yelled Dick.  “Well you don’t have to wake the dead over in the cemetery,” I answered.  “I can see for myself, you know.  Let me see if I can pull him out slowly and not get him too excited or mad.  Right over there under that apple tree is the old maple rocker arm I use to club them with.  I hid it there when I set the traps.  It is smooth and doesn’t damage the hide.  Get it for me,” I directed him.  “Be right back,” he answered.  “Dick, you pull the log and traps out of the hole slowly and I’ll club him as soon as his head is clear,” I said.  “No way,” he responded, “I’m not going to get bit by that thing.” “Thanks much,” I replied, as I took the club from him while slowly easing the log back from the hole.  “Looks like he’s got two feet in one trap and two in the other,” Dick mused.

“Hey,” he muttered, somewhat startled and apprehensive, “when did coons come in black and white?”  “Oh heck,” I responded.  “It’s a skunk not that coon!”  By this time, I was holding the log at arms length, chest high and the skunk was tangling down with his head very close to some things that were very precious to me.  “Oh well,” I went on, “they can’t spray you when their feet are off the ground someone told me.”

With that brilliant comment the skunk, with a definite and forceful message, let me know that my astuteness and wisdom was flawed.  As a foggy spray filled the air, our nostrils, eyes, and saturated our clothes and shoes with a perfume that only a skunk could love, I knew that I was really in the doghouse this time.  I had on my new letter sweater, new corduroy pants, and ankle high boots, all now smelling like a road killed skunk that has filled you car with fumes so strong that it makes your eyes and nose run uncontrollably.
Dick was jumping around like a wounded rabbit screaming and hollering, “I’m dead, I’m dead.  My dad is going to kill me.  I’ve got on the only pair of leather good shoes I own.  Fadely, this is you fault,” he added, with his lower lip quivering and jutted out so far I almost couldn’t see his nose.  “Well, you begged me to come along,” I responded through my coughing and wheezing.  “But I thought you were going to catch a coon, not a skunk,” he whined.  “So did I, but I’m going to kill him and skin him out anyway.  Get at least five dollars for him.  Here hold the log while I club him over the head,” I instructed. 

Well – that didn’t work out too well either.  At the whap of the club the old skunk let go another barrage and now we were really floating in skunk oil.  “Nuts to you Fadely, I’m out of here,” said Dick, as he dropped the log, skunk, traps and all and took off running for home.  I continued to club the skunk until I was thought it was dead, threw it into a old gunny sack I had hidden along with the club and started walking on home.  By now I could smell absolutely nothing and I thought to myself, “Gee that skunk spray doesn’t last too long.  Guess it’s going to be okay after all.” 

Was I surprised at the sound coming out of my fathers red face when I walked into the kitchen at our farmhouse carrying the skunk in the bag,  “What the "censored Word" have you got in that bag?” roared my dad.  Being a somewhat typical smart aleck 14 year old, I answered, “A wood "censored Word" and it shot me!”  “A what?” my dad asked again.  Just then the skunk decided to let dad know firsthand and sprayed inside the bag.  “Take that darn thing out and get rid of it!” dad screamed at me.  I ran out the door to the middle of the back yard and started to dump out the skunk.  “Way out!” dad hollered.  “Take it down to the grape vineyard.”  Needless to say, supper that night was eaten in the dining room, not the kitchen and even that was not too pleasant with the odor still lingering in the house.

Well, my guess about being in the doghouse was correct.  I slept in the barn for the next three nights on an old army cot set up in the empty haymow, until most of the smell wore off.  Dick’s mom washed his only pair of leather shoes in tomato juice and buried them in the backyard for two days trying to get rid of the smell.  He wasn’t allowed to attend any assemblies at school for the rest of the semester as every time his feet got hot and sweaty, out would come the skunk odor.  As for me, I had remembered too late the wisdom imparted to me by old Ira, about skunks, some time before.  He had said, “Son, if you ever get a live skunk in a trap, don’t hit him over the head.  It’ll just make him mad and he’ll cut loose.  Hit him hard over the middle of the back breaking his spine.  That way he’ll not be able to spray you.”  Well – those words of wisdom momentarily forgotten had certainly led to another doghouse day.  Not for the first time and definitely not the last.  But more about that will have to wait for another time.