Recently Greg and I were in a restaurant eating dinner. As we chatted with a friend in the restaurant, the discussion turned to hunting. Yes, I live with a hunter and this friend is also a hunter, so it was a natural course for the discussion given that deer hunting season has just ended. All hunters are officially in mourning.
We asked the man about his daughter, who also loves to hunt. He told us that she is now into raccoon hunting. Ewww, I could definitely NOT be a ‘coon hunter. It requires hunting at the very time I am fast asleep on my Sleep Number mattress. O-dark-thirty. Not me. But, I digress. He said that her boyfriend had given her a black-and-tan hound dog last year and she ‘coon hunts with it.
Then he laughed and told us the following story. He said that over the holidays he and his wife were sitting in the house relaxing when all of a sudden he heard that dog making the worst racket outside. It was howling and barking at something and he went outside to see what all the ruckus was about. He got to the front door only to see his daughter with a dead raccoon tied to a rope. She had slung the rope, with ‘coon attached, over a large tree limb so the ‘coon hung in the air just above the dog’s head. Hidden behind the tree, she would pull on the rope making the ‘coon rise up in the air. Then, she would loosen her grip on the rope so the ‘coon fell down closer to the dog. All this made it appear to the dog as if the ‘coon was alive and moving.
Well, ‘coon dogs naturally howl and bark when they have a ‘coon treed. (I know, I know…..knowing all this makes me a true redneck).
So the dog, thinking it had treed a live ‘coon, was doing what it does best. Alerting the hunter that it was time to unload the gun directly into said ‘coon for a kill.
PAUSE: DO not email me or leave a comment about animal cruelty. While I personally do not do it, ‘coon hunting has gone on in this area for hundreds of years. It’s part of mountain life for some people. Get over it.
Back to my story. The Lord spoke very clearly to me as I listened to the story. How often does Satan tie some temptation on a rope and dangle it in front of us, making it look like it is good and right, when in fact, it leads to nothing but trouble? He makes things that are designed to trip us up in our walk with the Lord look mighty good so that we just bark away at it and do everything we can to get to it. Just as this dog thought the ‘coon was alive and ripe for the hunting, so we are deceived by Satan’s tricks to get us to fall into sin. And Satan….well, he just stands back and laughs at us.
Don’t be fooled by that stinkin’ dead ‘coon that Satan is dangling in front of you, friends.
