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Harold Rosenbaum has used dogs to
hunt raccoons, fox and coyotes for more than 50 years.
"My father-in-law, John
Klink, got me started in it," the 78-year-old Rosenbaum
said. "Back then, we hunted mostly fox and coons. Now, it's
mostly coyotes. But hounds have always been the way we hunted
them."
Rosenbaum and his son, Kevin, 51,
invited me out to hunt a piece of property in Hartford that has
been known to hold plenty of coyotes. I was using a rifle, but
the rest of the gang - all from Hartford - were using shotguns
with buckshot.
"It's OK to use a rifle if
you are up on a hill shooting down," Kevin Rosenbaum said.
"But Dad and I prefer shotguns. They're just a safer bet.
The area has grown up with subdivisions all over and the last
thing you need is a coyote to scream across an open field and
you unload on him with a rifle."
The plan was to have
"sitters" out on fence lines around the edge of the
property. Other guys were posted in the interior of the property
in likely escape routes.
"Frozen creeks are always
good spots to watch because the coyotes will run to them when
chased," Kevin said. "It helps, too, to pay attention
to the wind. It's sort of like a deer drive."
It didn't take long before I
heard the barking. Mixed in was some yelping that Harold likes
to use to let his dogs know where he his.
"You want the dogs to know
where you are," Harold said "A good dog will check in
with you until he's on a coyote, and then they are off."
The first things I saw were
several deer bolting. The dogs weren't on them, but surely had
spooked them.
"It can be five or six years
sometimes to get a hound really trained," Harold said.
"A young one will chase a deer and you have to break him of
it. Today, you can use electric collars, or, I have a deer leg
at home I use for teaching them to not go after that scent. I'm
really gentle with my dogs, but in the old days, guys would put
a deerskin in a barrel. Then, they'd put their dog in the barrel
with it and roll it down a hill. The dog would get so sick it
would never go near that smell again. I would never do that to
my dogs."
After a few minutes, the barking
got closer, and then dogs began to materialize. It was really
cool seeing them work, but you could tell they weren't hot on
anything, but instead just looking for scent. All the guys carry
radios, and it was becoming apparent there weren't many tracks
to be had.
"We're pulling out,"
Harold said, "and we are going to try a different property.
But first we have to find one of our dogs."
It's common to "lose" a
dog for a while, but unlike years ago when all that could clue
people in to the location was a bark, the Rosenbaums and their
Hartford gang have gone high tech.
"My son likes the
gadgets," Harold said. "We have the dogs on GPS
collars. We can see where each one is just by looking at our
receiver. It makes it a lot easier. I remember one time we had a
dog get on a coyote just north of Hartford and it went all the
way to the Horicon Marsh. That's a good 15 miles as a crow
flies."
On a farm a short drive away,
they got two coyotes.
"Back then my dad and
grandpa still did it for sport," he said. "But they
also sold the skins for cash. They lived on a farm, so it was
milking and chores all day and coon hunting at night. Heck, it
was about the only thing a farmer could hunt because during
daylight there was other things to do."
While getting on private land to
hunt for coyotes is far easier than getting on private land for
deer, Harold said things aren't like they used to be.
"You could just go and
go," he said. "There were groups of people who hunted
and you gave everyone their space. Nowadays, you really have to
worry about trespassing. Landowner relations are really
important in this style of hunting. You don't want your dogs
ending up in someone's subdivision."
(Dan Durbin writes a weekly
outdoors column for The Freeman. Call Durbin at 644-7940, or
e-mail him at ddurbin@bastdurbin.com
if you have a story idea.)
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