COON HUNTERS CONVERGE ON DELTA FOR CONTEST

DELTA -- Seventy-two dogs and handlers from as far away as North Carolina and Pennsylvania spent Thursday night and Friday night here coon hunting for $25,000 in prize money.

Only the six finalists were in the woods Saturday night competing to determine the winner, whose owner will pocket $12,500. Second place is worth $5,000 and third place $3,750.

Headquarters for the hunt has been the Delta Community Center. Each owner paid $350 to enter the contest sponsored by a Louisiana-based organization called Dog Sports International.

In a night hunt, the handler and dog are members of a four-dog "cast." A judge accompanies the cast into the woods and awards points to the dog that strikes first -- barks at a coon -- and trees a coon first. The judge may also take points away from a dog for a multitude of offenses.

The handlers enter the woods equipped with powerful flashlights and electronic devices that track their dogs. The rules are complex, but once the handlers turn their dogs loose it's up to the dogs to perform without much help.

The dogs' goal in the contest is to spot raccoons and tree them. Coons are never shot in competition. In fact, it is against the rules for anyone involved in a competition to have a weapon.

Coon hunting is a well-organized sport covered by its own magazines, including the American Cooner and Prohound. There are a number of local coon hunting clubs, including the SEMO Coon Hunters at Kinder and the Daisy Coon Hunters.

Steve and Randy Yant of Sikeston own Flatrock Thrasher, a coon hound that finished fourth last year in the Professional Kennel Club competition.

Ronnie Bone of Mayfield, Ky., makes his living handling dogs for owners and traveling the country for competitions almost every weekend. He won the 1993 World Hunt, which was worth $20,000. But neither Bone nor his friend Jack Coomer accumulated enough points to get into Saturday night's finals.

Dogs really can't be trained to hunt coons, Bone says. "It's bred in them. The good ones do it on their own."

Many competitive coon hounds are owned by people who don't go to the hunts. "They hire us to do it for them," said Coomer, a letter carrier in Chaffee. "They don't know what they're missing."

Coons can be wily prey. Hunting at the Diversion Channel near Advance, Coomer watched one coon escape by jumping into the water and letting the current ferry it to safety. Bone is in the sport for the money but also says, "I like to hear the dogs bark."

Coon dogs with prize-winning pedigrees can bring big stud fees, and blood lines are carefully traced. Bobby "J.T." Carter, who lives near East Prairie, set up a pen at the hunt headquarters hoping to sell some of his 16 treeing walker pups. They were available for $350 apiece.

He has had as many as 90 puppies at a time and is proud of his bloodlines, which include Night Rich Score, Spring Creek Rock, Bozo, and Rat Attack. Those are household names among coon hunters, he says.

He has produced some second-place finishers in the World Hunt, he says, dogs out of Spring Creek Rock, Flatrock Coma and Bozo.

Carter, who operates a concrete plant, calls coon hunting "a Southern gentleman's sport," though he allows some of the best coon hounds come from that Northern state, Kentucky.