Southern coon hunting with Porter Smith and Drew Bumpious
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
By Ford Walpole
Coon hunting is an ancient pastime firmly entrenched in the rich culture of the Southern outdoors. In years past, raccoons were hunted both for their pelts and meat, which is described as dark and greasy, though tasty. In John Lawson’s colonial classic, A New Voyage to Carolina, he points out that the raccoon is an industrious critter that enjoys wild fruits and corn, with those along the coast feasting on oysters, blue crabs and fiddlers. “The fur makes good hats and linings. The skin dressed makes fine women’s shoes,” the explorer and naturalist noted.
Nowadays, the prolific and personable mammal has become quite a nuisance due to its relentless predation of the precious eggs of the wild turkey and bobwhite quail. A decline in the popularity of the sport has further contributed to a boom in the raccoon population.
Securing the necessary acreage to hunt is an increasing challenge for coon hunters. Because they hunt the nocturnal animal at night, and because of the raccoon’s mischievousness, coon hunters have traditionally enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with landowners who assign more value to other game species. However, the growing popularity of still-hunting for deer has altered the philosophy of some landowners, who are unnecessarily concerned that coon hunting is somehow disruptive to the white-tailed deer on their property.
As a boy growing up in Allendale, Porter Smith always had family dogs, and in the outdoors, he hunted deer, ducks and doves. However, he never went coon hunting until he was 13. On this inaugural hunt, he was invited by Jerry Gosnell of Hampton. At the time, Gosnell worked a Walker hound and a black and tan coonhound. “I really enjoyed it!” Smith declares of that first hunt.
“After hunting a few more times with Jerry, he ended up giving me Joe, his black and tan,” Porter recalls. “With a flashlight and a pair of boots, I hunted Joe along a creek bottom on my family property. I hunted with him for about three months without any luck, and then he finally treed a coon!” Smith says of his first successful solo hunt.
During high school, Porter began hunting with his friend Tyler Donahue and his father, Rodney, who frequently hunted in competitions. Porter then acquired a pair of bluetick coonhounds from Ralph Robinson of Clearwater, near North Augusta. “I hunted alone a great deal with those dogs — Jake and Jenny — and they treed a lot of coons,” he says.
While a freshman at Presbyterian College, Porter got his own puppy, a treeing Walker, which he trained himself. Train, whose registered name was Insane Freight Train, was so christened on account of his especially loud bay. So that he could work with the hound frequently, Smith boarded Train with a friend in Columbia and later another in Great Falls. During this time, Train won a cast at the United Kennel Club (UKC) Winter Classic in Batesville, Mississippi.
Upon graduating from college and returning home to Allendale, Porter began entering Train in competition hunts. UKC hunts offer tradition and prestige while Professional Kennel Club (PKC) hunts afford hunters more opportunities to earn monetary prizes, which are collected from entry fees. Porter primarily participates in PKC hunts in Walterboro, Norway, Manning and Georgetown. Besides these South Carolina contests, he has also won in Claxton, Georgia. In a coon hunting event, a cast of four dogs and their hunters compete against one another to tree a raccoon.
These days, Porter goes hunting two or three nights a week during the winter. Between November and April, he attends five or six competitive hunts. In South Carolina, raccoons may be harvested from mid-September through mid-March. Since a coon hunt is more about working the dogs than killing the masked mammal, many hunters continue to hunt before and after the season without dispatching any raccoons. As he is not particularly an admirer of slithering reptiles, Porter conducts the majority of his coon hunts during the winter months.
Though Smith has trained a number of hounds, these days he now prefers to purchase adult dogs that already know what to do; this approach allows him to focus more on the actual hunt. Porter has owned dogs from Ohio, Arkansas, Oklahoma and North Carolina. Last year, he and his friend Drew Bumpious traveled to Tennessee to get Rascal, a treeing Walker that was three years old at the time.
Bumpious recalls coon hunting during his boyhood with his grandfather in Calhoun County, Alabama. The hounds were predominantly Walkers, but the dogs were primarily pets and merely occasional, amateur hunters. Drew recalls them treeing possums with far more regularity than their intended quarry.
Upon graduating from Auburn, Drew moved to Charleston and began a career. “I thought coon hunting would be a good hobby to keep me out of trouble,” he says. While taking a very young dog on a “woods-walk,” a training expedition in the Francis Marion National Forest, Drew met Chris Stockman and Wade Windham. “From there, we developed a friendship, and they taught me everything I know about coon hunting today,” he says. “We pleasure-hunted and trained dogs during the week. On weekends, we would individually compete against each other in small, open-entry competitions.” Some years ago, Bumpious made PKC Champion, and when his treeing Walker named Stylish Powder was but a year old, he became a UKC Nite Champion.
Porter and Drew eventually became acquainted through mutual coon-hunting buddy Francis Kelly. “Porter and I pleasure-hunted together and hunted against each other at competition hunts. Through the fellowship we enjoyed, we formed a strong friendship that evolved into us becoming partners with Rascal,” Drew says.
Men seem somewhat naturally inclined to be competitive among their friends. And hunting and fishing buddies are known to elevate this competitive banter to a relentless level. Thus, Drew is quick to call attention to the fact that Porter has yet to best him in a competition. And because of their partnership with Rascal, Bumpious’s streak is safe, at least until Smith gets another dog.
PKC competitions include various lifetime ranks for dogs that compete in open events during the competition season, which runs from October to September: Champion dogs earn $500, Silver is awarded to those compiling $4,000 of earnings, and Gold consists of $10,000. Finally, Platinum status is given to dogs that earn $20,000.
Last year, Rascal, already a Silver Champion, earned 18th place in the state of S.C. — despite only competing in a limited number of hunts. In the past, Porter reached Silver with Flint, a hound now worked by a friend. Porter and Drew are committed to making Rascal a Gold Champion, as well as achieving a rank among the top 16 dogs in S.C. — since the top 16 hounds compete for the state championship the following year.
In Where the Red Fern Grows, a classic novel about coon hunting, Wilson Rawls considers the bond between a hunter and his dog: “People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don’t. I may be wrong, but I call it love — the deepest kind of love.”
Likewise, the human’s love of his dog further enhances the reward of the hunt. I have had the good fortune of accompanying Porter and Drew on a nighttime coon hunt and experiencing the adrenaline rush when Rascal trees. Drew reflects on the appeal of the sport: “Coon hunting is the most thrilling thing a man can do!” he declares. “There is nothing that makes your heart beat more than when you turn out four coon hounds that are competing against each other, especially when these dogs are the best of the best at what they do!” he says.
“I just love any type of hunting in which a dog is involved,” Porter adds. For example, “watching a pointer locate a small quail in thick briars and stop and hold a point is something that has always amazed me,” he says. “When you are coon hunting, you get to go with your dog at night into the deepest, darkest and wettest places in the woods,” he says. “And to have that dog locate and tree another animal — it just makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time!”
Ford Walpole lives and writes on John’s Island and is the author of many articles on the outdoors. He teaches English at James Island Charter High School and the College of Charleston and may be reached at fordwalpole@gmail.com.
