One night we treed three coons in a big hollow oak.  They started to cut down the trees an’ put me at the butt with a fire bran’.  When the tree fell the coons’d come out an’ I was supposed to drive ’em back with the fire, jest lettin’ out one at a time so’s the dogs could kill ’em.  I was about half scared uv ’em and when one big feller come out I backed up an’ he got by me.  I throwed the fire at him an’ it lit on his back an’ burnt’ him.  I never seen a coon run so fast.  But the dogs soon treed him again an’ we got him.  Then we come back an’ the dogs picked up the trail uv another one an’ we catched him.  I never seed a bigger one.  He was as long as this umbrella (3-1/2 ft.) The other one got away.  Coon huntin’ was a great sport with the boys an’ men in those days.

I catched the only grey eagle that was ever seen ’round here.  They was a bunch of us boys out rabbit huntin’ one day one fall.  The dogs got after a rabbit an’ chased it across a holler out o’ range.  I had the only gun in the crowd an’ was right after that rabbit.  The dogs run over the track an’ could see ’em over on the hillside jess settin’ still.  All at once I seen a big bird—­I taken it to be a hawk, fold its wings like a man’d fold his arms ’round his body, and drop straight down on the rabbit.  But the rabbit saw it too for when the eagle got there he was ten feet up the hillside.  The bird hit, “boom”, jest like that.  But the rabbit was goin’ over the hill an’ the eagle musta saw him for he riz an’ flew in that direction.

’You boys stay back, I’ll kill that hawk.  That’s the biggest hawk I ever seen,’ I told them.  When I got to the top of the ridge I seen him settin’ in the top uv a big tree.  The boys stayed where I told them and I slipped along till I got pritty close enough to shoot him.  He was either watchin’ the rabbit or didn’t think I was watchin’ him for I got pritty close before he started to fly.  Jess as he opened his wings I let him have it with my old muzzle loader shotgun.  Down he come makin’ as much noise as a whole flock o’ hawks oughta made.  He was alive when I got to him an’ made right at me, strikin’ with his claws an’ bill.  The dogs come when they heard the shot an’ he whipped ’em off.  Every time he struck one of ’em he (the dog) would holler like he’d been speared.  The other boys wanted to kill it but I gotta a long pole an’ got it on him so’s it held him down.  We’d found out by this time that one wing was broke by my shot.  So we jess hold of the tips of his wings an’ led him to the house.  His wing spread was ’bout six or eight feet.  When I got him to the house I told ’em I had the biggest hawk they ever seen.  A ole man by the same of William said, “Hell that ain’t no hawk, that’s a grey eagle.”  A ole colored fiddler, named Fred Roberts, sent word he’d buy it from me.  He even got so fraid he wouldn’t get it that he come for it.

‘What’ll you take for him’, he asked me, and before I could say anything he says, ‘I’ll give a dollar for him’.