BARNBURNER PATTERDALES

There are a few things you must have before entering the feild to hunt with your Terrier.

When hunting barns and abandoned houses for coon it is quite different from hunting your Terriers in the ground.  Then again it is similar in a lot of ways as well.  When you hunt in barns, you hunt in the day light hours while the raccoons are bedded down.  You should first go in the barn or house and check to see if it is safe to hunt, and at the same time check for fresh sign of coon.  Raccoon use a latrine, and there will be dung all over these locations.  Just because you find dung doesen't neccesarially mean you will have coon in the barn.  It needs to be fresh, and the way to tell that is it will be soft and yellow in color.  If it is black or grey and hard you most likely wont find coon in that barn. 

Most coon will not take up residency in a building until the temp outside gets cold.  Now thats not to say you won't find them in buildings in mild weather, just you will have a better chance of finding greater numbers in the cold weather.  We have taken as many as 22 coon out of one nest in a barn loft.  Here is an example of such a barn (below)

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All 22 of these coon came out of this barn loft, and were in one nest.

There must be a source of water and food to hold coon in a building.  Your best bet while scouting is to find a farm with square bales of haty in the loft, and livestock near by.  If the hay in the barn has been there for a lot of years , many of them have extensive tunnel systems in them.  Tunnels go straight up and down, and they a lot of times will have multiple floors or levels in them.  This presents a real challenge for a Terrier and hunter as well.  This is the coons home turf, and he knows every square inch of it. 

 We hunted a barn outside of a little town here in Iowa a couple years back, and the hay went all the way to the top of the gabled loft in this barn.  The hay was stacked 30 feet high, and it was riddled with tunnels.  There must have been 6 levels or floors of tunnels, and we had our Rocko dog in there for over five hours, and had to finally cut a hole in the barn loft floor to ger him out.  If you are new to the whole barn hunting thing, try to stay away from barns like these until you get a few under your belt and your terriers as well.

If you dig in the ground or throw hay bales in a barn, you must be in shape because the fate of your dog could depend on how quickly you can dig down to him.  So a little pre season work out wouldn't hurt.

Tools we use in barns......

A good Mag lite is a must in a barnhere is one pictured (below)

Mage lite is the brand name of the flashlight.  We use this lite just because a inferieor lite won't take the abuse, pluss there is a lifetime warranty on this lite.  We use the flashlite to dispatch the coon as well by a blow to the head it is quick and painless for the coon.  You can also use a .22 cal pistol to dispatch the coon as well, but we have found them to be more dangerous both for the dog and hunter as well.  I still carry mine to shoot coon that we can't reach with the Mag Lite or coon that climb a wall or things of that nature.  I have put up a pic of my .22 cal pistol (below)

We also cary Crow bars, wounder bars, shovels, hammer and nails for repairing holes we haft to cut in barns to get out dogs and coon, saws, and a  hook on a telescoping stick to retreive coon we can't reach.  I have put a pic of a few tools we carry on a barn bunt (below)

More to come later.