Jan Corbin waits in the woods with Tess, one of the two dogs she and her husband, Don, took on a coon hunt with them Friday night. msn View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

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In Dogged Pursuit

Culpeper woman finds enjoyment in what is usually a man's sport

By DONNIE JOHNSTON

Date published: 3/8/2004

JANICE CORBIN LEANS back against an oak tree on a cold winter night and listens for the sound of hounds baying far off in the distance.

"They're way on the other side of the river," she says. "I hear Tess, but I don't hear Joe."

Jan's husband, Don Corbin, also listens intently for a few moments.

"Tess is bringing that coon back this way," Don assures his wife. "Joe will come to her."

Suddenly, the distant baying stops and the woods are silent again.

"This is a beautiful night," Jan says quietly as the moments pass. "Just look at those stars."

There are not many women who would appreciate looking up at the stars in the middle of unfamiliar woods on a 32-degree February night, but Jan Corbin does. The deputy clerk of the Culpeper County Circuit Court has been a coon hunter for about five years.

"Don's uncle moved back here from Michigan and got him started hunting again, so [my husband] asked me if I'd like to go along," Jan says. "I wasn't sure, but I went one night and I liked it."

The quiet is broken as the dogs again pick up a hot scent somewhere up behind Charlie Settle's old farm. The two Walker hounds are now so far away that their voices are barely audible.

But they are back on the trail, and a quiet excitement begins to build because the hunting party knows that somewhere out front is a feisty old raccoon.

As the dogs settle into a steady chase, the hunters engage in quiet conversation. Politics, family and, of course, hunting are topics to be explored under the watchful eye of a brilliant moon easing gently into its second quarter.

"You know, I am about ready to climb that cliff again," Jan says as the chill of the still night begins to affect her.

The cliff was part of the first chase of the evening, when the two hounds struck a hot scent down on a Hazel River sandbar and took off in hot pursuit on the Rappahannock County side of the 60-foot-wide stream.

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Date published: 3/8/2004