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Tuesday, December 12, 1978
University Daily Kansan
2 photography exhibits show changes in style
Photography buffs have two viewing options in campus galleries this month: photographic exhibits in both the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art and the Student Union Activities gallery in the Kansas Union.
An exhibit of "Early Topographic and Documentary Photography" opened last week in the South Balcony Gallery of Spencer Museum. The photographs have been collected from University and area sources by Thomas Southall, curator of history, and instructor of history, and by graduate senior students.
Southern said recently that the Spencer exhibit illustrated a wide variety of ways in which photography was used as a recording device between 1850 and 1910.
The Spencer exhibit includes several new additions to the Museum photography collection, such as 1867 photographs by Theodore Gardner, a Civil War photographer.
ACCORDING TO SOUTLAIN, viewers can see a progression in technique and visual styles from the earlier series, featuring the American Indian, also shows a change in attitude toward women.
The Spencer exhibit will remain on display until Feb. 4.
The SUA exhibit features photographs by Walker Evans that were taken when he was a member of the staff of Fortune and the southeast desulfurized Evans as a maverick.
Southall said the most recent photographs in the exhibit showed a shift from simple graphic recording to an active crusading effort by photographers for social change. He said the SUA was a fundamental part of what was a logical extension of this effort.
Evans is most famous for his work in the book, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," by James Agree. The book discusses the effects of the Depression in the rural poor.
The Evans exhibit will close on Dec. 20.
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Good dogs help raccoon hunters
Two men tramped slowly through dense woods at night.
By JAKE THOMPSON
Staff Reporter
They wore headlamps, similar to those of coal miners, and many layers of metal.
Suddenly, about 50 yards away, a dog peled.
Next to the man another dog, wearing a cowbell, joined in the barking and ran for a few yards.
"Sage has got a strike." Bruce Bertwell,
of the one men, said. "That's a coon he's
The two men hurried toward the barking dog. A raccoon hunt was on.
Then, the barking from the first dog changed, sounding as if it were far away.
"sage is in a hole," Bertwell said, "that no
sage is in a den hot or we never'll get that"
sage.
The other man, Jim Hale, said, "Maybe we got luck, and baptized him down the river."
Hale and Bertwell are Kansas State game protectors.
They were raccoon hunting on a night off. They, like many raccoon hunters, spend much of their free time wandering in the woods for night, ignoring the cold and the brambles.
THE BRAMBLES WERE plentiful that night and as the men hurried on, a third dog, Buck, began to howl. Rivers, the dog with a scarcely visible back and仁 into what in his path.
The two men and two dogs stopped on a ridge by a pond. Sage was about four feet underground, growing occasionally between his incassent barking.
"Hey, Iey a coon a coin," Hale said. "Hear
that, come on. Bruce, old Saga has got a
horn."
The two men listened intently, while shining their headdips down a hole, to Sage and the raconte's growl. Rivers and Buck stued above ground and howled.
"get him, Sage," Bertwell said. "Bring him out of there, he's looking right at you."
For the next 15 minutes, Bertwell, Hale and the three dogs tried to coax the raccoon from his underground retreat. The note level rose as the two men yelled, the dogs barked, the bell clanged and the raccoon rrowled.
The combination filled the night with an eerie noise.
Hale and Bertwell repeatedly yelled encouragement to Sage when it sounded as if he were fighting with the raccoon. Rivers went underground twice, but Bertwell called him out, saying the dog was adding to the confusion.
THE HEADLAMP lights, called wheat lights, flashed back and forth as the two
"We might as well give up because that coon's backed into a hole and his business is forward," Bertwell said, meaning the raccoon's sharp teeth and claws.
Finally, after constant clatter, Bertwell called Sage out and put him on a leash.
All five walked further into the woods, searching for more raccoons.
men tried to look down into the few small holes. Betrew looked heed, 32 uniform rife.
Bertwell and Hale spent about five hours that night, Nov. 21, wandering in woods in Shawnee County, hoping their dogs would pick up a scent and chase a raccoon into a tree. Once the raccoon is treed, the men decide whether it large enough to snatch.
But the dogs found only one other scent. They charged off howling, yet their efforts stirred only leaves and the chilly night air—not a raccoon.
Racoon hunters use "coon bounds" to track raccoons. Herbert said the sport is dangerous.
The "kill season" for raccoon, the only raccoon who raccoons can be killed, benign, but deadly.
"Cooch hunting depends entirely on your dogs," Bertwell said. "If your dogs are worthless you can be out there all night and get nothing but cold."
Bertwell and Hale call themselves "walking hunters," which means they follow the dogs or to lead them in a reaction where they think raccoons might be.
"Cooch hunting is the most novel form of hunting I know, because of the way you have to move around it. You can do mostly at night," Bertwell said. "You see things differently at night than you do on a sunny day."
Raccoons usually stay in dense woods, near water and their near den树 or tree丹 hortt. Bertwell said. Den trees and holes are low space spaces where raccoons hide and live.
SOME HUNTERS let their dogs out and sit in their automobiles until the dogs have a
But walking behind the dogs is not the only way to hunt raccoons.
Others ride mules through the forest and keep closer to the dogs than walking hunters
Still others let the dogs out on one side of a forest, drive to the other side and wait for the telling cry of a treeing dog, Bertwell said.
After training a dog for several years, "you really appreciate them when they go straight after a coon and tree him," Bert-well said.
At all times the relationship between the hunter and his dog is close, he said.
Bertwell said raccoon hunters went hunting primarily at night because wests
are nocturnal mammals and sleep during the day. He said they are tracked by two different types of dogs: "hot-nosed" or "cold-nosed" dogs.
HOT-NOSED DOGS, like Bertelw's Sage, follow warm scents better and move quickly with their heads up. Because they have their noses down, they almost lose the scent and have to backtrack.
Cold-nosed dog tracks better on old scents and move with two paws on either side of the trail, their noses to the ground. Betwalt says that reason, was the most accurate tracker.
"Take old Sage, when the track gets hot and he's close to that coon he barks with every breath and his 'he burnin' up the turf," he said. "He's going to try to catch that coon on the ground. But Rivers, he just plods along and gets the job done right."
The dogs often suffer bruises from their battles with raccoons, Bertwell said, and occasionally a raccoon will kill a dog. A raccoon can be a man if he is trying to grab them, he said.
"A raccoon can be a vicious fighter, especially in water," Bertwell said. "But if you give one half a chance he'll趴你 too, you won't. But if you give him one he'll climb his own bicep to bite your hand."
Much of the enjoyment of "coon hunt" is in the training and quality of the dogs, he said. Prices range from $75 for a pup to $1,500 for a fully trained "finished dog."
HOWEVER, BERTWELL said, killing a raccoon is not the important part of raccoon
Training schools are used by some hunters, Bertwell said, but most dogs are trained by older, more experienced dogs during the hunt.
Young dogs gain experience during another season, the running season, when it is illegal to kill raccoons. There are 12 weeks from Feb. 7 to March 15, and July 15 to October 20.
Hunters train dogs during the running season to chase only raccoons and not other game. Other game, such as deer, opossum, fox or heaver, are called trash, Bert-well said.
"You don't want a dog who chases trash or 'else he'll tree every animal he smells and chase deer for miles,' he said. "If he chases you, it won't see him for a couple of days."
"WHEN I TOOK an interest in coon hounds about five years ago, I read everything I could get my hands on about them. And I wonder what they do with coons just amazes me.
"When a hound leans down to pick up a scent, his face forms a disc, which in effect forms a funnel for scent, much as a radar gathers sound waves. I truly believe that."
Bertwell said there were six breeds of
dogs used for raccoon hunting that are registered with the United Kennel Club. They are: treeing walkers, black tans and turtles. These dogs also hunt birds, hounds and redbone coon hounds.
Each breed and every dog has its own personality, and the hunter quickly learns the dogs particular bark and what it means, Bertwell said.
Besides enjoying the hunt, raccoon hunts can make money.
Bertwell and many others around Lawrence take their raccoon furs to Clarence Wales, who manages Wales Raw Furs. 923 Department Store.
Trends in the fur coat business determine the value of fur, he said.
Wales checks the fur for size and for quality, based on color, condition and age of the racoon. He pays the hunter between $3 and $36 for a racoon fur. Wales said racoon furs that were about 28 inches and dark-colored brought the highest prices.
Wales skins all the furred animals brought to him, then sends them to New York City or Winnipeg, Canada, to a stock sale.
"RIGHT NOW lighter furs are in the biggest demand because they make lightweight coats," he said. "The big style is for short, lightweight coats and those movie stars out there in Hollywood are buying just loads of them."
He said he usually gets about 2,000 raccoon
raises and sells them on the internet.
"There are more than 200 grades of coon in international trading and between 38 and 50 states."
Wales said he experienced a Christmas rush of furs about eight to 12 days before Christmas. Many of the hunters freeze their furs and sell them at that time so they will have extra money for Christmas presents, Wales said.
"During that rush, the floor is covered two or three feet deep, and you can hardly get up."
Bertwell said much of the money was put back into raccoon hunting.
He said hunters were constantly trying to teach their dogs to track and tree better. Sometimes that means buying and extinguishing or paying for hours of additional training.
HAIL SAID HE was always looking for a better dog than the ones he had, but not hotter. "He's a little bit more."
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Glover said the legislators sent out more than 70 invitations to groups and indies.
Douglas County's representatives to the Legislature will hold a public meeting. 20 to 10 give organizations that normally do not lobbyist a chance to discuss their needs.
The legislators are State Rep. John Vogel, 43rd District; State Rep. Mike Glover, 44th District; State Rep. John Solbach, 45th District; and State Rep. Arnold Berman.
Lobbying needs to be discussed at local meeting
The meeting will be from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Dec. 20 in the auditorium of the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vermont St.
State representatives from the 43rd, 44th and 45th Legislative Districts and the area's state senator will be at the meeting, which will be filled as a legislative platform hearing.
were trying to give organizations without an organized lobbyist a chance to tell their ideas to the legislators before the 1979 session starts on Jan. 8." Glover said.
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