The Coon Hunt

Notice the scarecrow man climbing the tree.  This is my grandfather, Roscoe Holdaway.  He must have been at least seventy years old at the time.  The only thing that would have induced him to climb that sapling would have been the dead raccoon he’d just shot  hanging on the branch high above his head.  Note the rapt attention that coon is getting from the portly man on the ground and the hunting dog.  Both intend to get their share when that coon is baked up later that night with sweet potatoes.  At the time this picture was made in the late 1940’s the piney woods of Northeast Texas had been pretty much stripped bare of game, so a raccoon or squirrel for supper was a rare treat.  The man on the ground was his son, John Arthur Holdaway, and the dog, Ol’ Penny.