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Are you crazy? Dogs can’t read!

I’ve never had any encounters with PETA or any other organized anti-hunting group, but I have had my fair share of run-ins with misinformed people and some plain idiots (yes, we all know they are out there) while hunting.  Especially coon hunting with hounds, something I was passionate about for many years.

One of the funniest (although at the time I didn’t think it to be) incidents I had was with a man who tied up mine and my brother’s dogs with a logchain to a tree in his back yard.  The dogs had barely six inches of chain to allow them to move and were unable to come to us when we called them.  It was apparent by the sound of their barks that they were stationary and something was wrong, it wasn’t the type of bark you hear when they are treed on a coon.

As we followed their barks, we came to the property line of the land we had gained permission to hunt.  We put our rifles down and crossed onto the private property, just wanting to collect our dogs and get back to hunting where we were suppose to be.  We continued through a wooded area and finally came out into someone’s backyard.  Shining our lights, we found our dogs tied to a tree just as I described earlier.  We then realized it was no wonder they weren’t coming back when we called them, which was highly unusual.

Fuming mad, we started to the tree to unchain the dogs when a man spoke up.  He was sitting in the dark on a trampoline, holding a gun.  We bit our tongues and apologized for the dogs crossing onto his property, all the while still trying to unchain them so we could leave this man to his peace and quite.  Well, that didn’t seem to be good enough for him.

He said a few choice words and called us a few names that didn’t sit too well with me, especially considering how he had treated the dogs.  After another apology and him continuing to spew words, I had finally had enough.  I told him that if he had just left the dogs alone, they would have been able to come when we called them. That would have got them off his property and we wouldn’t have had to come onto it to retrieve them.

He then pointed out the fact that there were posted signs on his property, and most property around the area and wanted to know why we were even there hunting.  When we told him we had gotten permission to hunt on the property adjacent to him from the landowner, he said that his property was still posted and that the dogs should have seen the signs. 

I had to stop for a moment and try to grasp what he had just said.  Did he think that dogs could actually notice and read a posted sign?  I had to believe that wasn’t the case, but when I asked him to repeat what he just said and he did, I realized that was the case.

After pointing out the finer details of how most dogs I had ever met couldn’t read, we started to head out with the dogs which my brother had finally gotten untied from the logchain and tree.  The man hollered that he was going to call the cops on us and we let him know we had no problem with it, that we even in fact encouraged it.  We had every right to cross onto his property to retrieve our dogs because dogs couldn’t read posted signs.

Instead of backtracking through the thick woods nearly a quarter mile to where we had crossed the fence, we followed the road out to make for easier walking since we were leading the dogs.  We had nearly reached the area where we needed to cross back onto the property where we had permission to hunt when we saw a set of headlights coming down the road.  As it drew closer the lights on top were flipped on, it was the county sheriff.

He asked us if we were the hunters trespassing on people’s property and we proceeded to fill him in on what had taken place.  After hearing the story, he wasn’t to impressed with the guy at the house and told us we had nothing to worry about, we had done nothing wrong.  As long as we left our weapons on the property we were suppose to be on and was only going to retrieve the dogs, we had the law on our side. He wished us luck and left to go have a discussion with the guy about what had taken place and was said.

Later on we had to laugh about the whole thing, even though it was an intense and infuriating situation at the time.  It’s amazing that there are people out there who actually think that a dog who is breed to hunt and chase a ringtailed bandit hard and deep is able to stop because they just read a posted sign that they happen to come upon.  It seemed that even though our dogs couldn’t read, they were a lot more intelligent than that particular guy.

And sorry to all the readers out there that this turned into such a long post.  Hopefully it gave you a good laugh.


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