Where the Red Fern Grows

Billy’s next challenge is to get a raccoon hide so he can start training the hounds how to hunt. He spends weeks trying to trap one, to no avail. Finally, he asks his grandfather for help.

Grandpa gives Billy a surefire strategy to catch a raccoon. He advises Billy to drill a hole in a log, put some shiny pieces of tin at the bottom, then put nails in the hole’s opening, angled slightly inward. The raccoon will curiously reach into the hole (they love shiny objects), and when it closes its paw around the tin, it won’t be able to remove its paw due to the nails.

When he was a boy, Grandpa had a pet raccoon that always got its paw stuck in his mother’s butter churn in this way. He’d reach in for a handful of butter and be unable to escape, unwilling to open his paw.

The next day, Billy puts it into practice (after getting another switching from his mother for using her scissors on a tin can). He sets up 14 traps along the river. Days pass, and no raccoons fall for the bit. Billy grows discouraged. Finally, one morning there’s a raccoon in a trap.