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In Dogged Pursuit

March 8, 2004 1:08 am

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.

Tess eventually came back, but Joe was retrieved only after Don sloshed across the calf-deep stream and found him. No one is sure what happened to the coon, but the general consensus is that the hounds ran it to ground.

The hunters decided to moved on. With the dogs lunging on their leashes, we grunted and sweated our way up a steep cliff and on to another section of river in hopes that the two Walkers would hit the trail of a more accommodating coon.

Now they have hit trail, all right, but the second coon is no more accommodating than the first. He, too, has crossed the river and is now toying with the dogs on some distant hillside.

"I like the night air," Jan says. "Out here, I can listen to God's creatures under the stars. It sure beats sitting home watching TV."

Coon hunting also allows the Corbins to spend time together.

"Don and I have always liked doing things together," she says. "This is something that he really enjoys, so I decided to join him. I love to be with him as much as I can."

Don, who builds telephone communications towers in Virginia and West Virginia, often hunts once during the week and once on the weekend. His wife seldom makes the weeknight hunts, but is almost always in the woods by her husband's side on weekends.

In the middle of a lengthy conversation, we hear the coon turn and cross back to our side of the river. Less than 100 yards behind come the dogs, baying excitedly as they sniff the hot scent.

About two minutes later, everyone notices a change in the sound of the hounds' voices.

"I think they've got him treed," Jan says.

We wait, however, because crafty old coons will sometimes climb one tree and then jump to another. Several trees later, the old boy will be on the ground again with the dogs in hot pursuit.

Not this time. For several minutes, the baying continues near the top of the next ridge. Don finally gives the word to move.

"Let's go get him," the veteran coon hunter says.

We scramble down one hill, fighting new-growth switches in a cut-over area all the way. We slosh through a swamp near a spring, then work our way up a ridge through a thick growth of mountain laurel as we head to where the dogs are howling.

Occasionally we pause to make sure we are still headed in the right direction, listening for the sound of the dogs above crackling leaves and swishing branches.

Jan, who says she loves the exercise, has no trouble keeping up, conquering the brush and the unstable rocks as easily as the men.

"Sometimes, it's a little strange at a [competitive] coon trials because I'm the only woman there," she says. "The men hunters don't mind and never treat me any differently."

Jan, 41, admits, however, that traipsing through the woods in the middle of the night does have its drawbacks.

"I've fallen in creeks and over fences, but I hang right in there with [the men]," she says.

In the middle of a laurel thicket, we find the dogs baying at the foot of a twisted poplar tree. Immediately, lights shine up into its bare limbs as we look for eyes. We see none.

We throw flashlight beams into the heights of adjacent trees, thinking maybe the coon has jumped.

Nothing.

Tess, still reeking from a recent encounter with a polecat, howls at the base of the tree, her front paws above her head in a hopeless attempt to climb the poplar. There is little doubt the coon went up this tree.

In a cooperative effort, Joe circles the immediate area just to make sure the quarry hasn't slipped down and taken off again. He finds no fresh scent.

What happened to the coon?

That question is answered in the next few moments as a flashlight beam encounters a hole in the tree about 15 feet up.

"Den tree!" Don says as several lights now shine on the area and a second hole is found.

There will be no coon taken tonight.

Had the masked critter been located in the treetops, he would have been shaken out in some fashion and would have had to take his chances with the hounds.

Tess, who is 5 years old, and Joe, about 10, would have engaged the coon in paw-to-paw combat unless the critter was quick enough to get away, which sometimes happens.

"I love to watch them fight," Jan says. "It's the dogs' reward."

Sometimes that reward comes with rips, bites and cuts. Such is the way of nature.

It is now past 10 p.m. and the Corbins are getting tired.

"Five-thirty came early this morning," Jan says.

The hounds don't want to leave the tree, and as we walk away they occasionally lunge back to make one last check. Somehow, however, they sense that their quarry is up there in his cozy den, content in the fact that he has outsmarted the dogs.

Within an hour, the old coon will likely be back down on the river, fishing the sandbars and springs for freshwater clams.

Back at the truck, Jan takes off the coon-hunter's light that was part of an outfit given to her as a Christmas present several years ago.

"Some women might have complained, but it thrilled me to death," she says of the gift.

And what do women think of her unusual hobby?

"They laugh at me," she says. "They can't believe I do it."

The dogs are loaded--smell and all--and the evening comes to an end. There has been no kill, but that is not the point of the hunt.

Everyone has spent a relaxing evening in the cold night air and the camaraderie has been great.

Good friends, good conversation and good exercise on nature's own terms: That's what hunting is all about.

Come Monday, Jan Corbin, her makeup in place, will be assisting the public at the clerk's office. On this Friday night, however, she was a coon-hunting woman.

And that's the way she likes it.

To reach DONNIE JOHNSTON: DJohn40330@aol.com