Quite a few years ago I was hunting coons with my brother and a friend Louie. We were hunting with my brother's dog, who was a cross between a lab and Springer Spaniel named Buddy. Buddy would go track a coon to a tree, then come get us and sit under the tree looking up. ONe time he treed a gray fox in an apple tree. He never barked. So we were standing under the tree, but couldn't see the coon good, and Louie and I decided to climb up the tree. Louie had some .22 revolver that was older than the hills. We got around ten feet below the coon and Louie started shooting. The cylinder was wobbly, so lead was splaying and hitting me in the face. After a few shots Louie hit the coon, then the coon hit him on the way to the ground.
Another time we were hunting coon and had shot quite a few and hung them in trees. We planned on getting them on the way out. All of a sudden Buddy ran back between us snarling, with the hair standing up on his neck. Buddy wasn't usually scared of anything. Then there was a loud snarl in the woods above us. In those days we didn't have much for lights, and the one we had was almost dead. And we were carrying an old single shot .22 rifle. Whatever that was it stayed a little ways away from us a good way off the hill. I think it might have snarled once or twice more. We pretty much backed off the hill and forgot about the coons hanging in the trees. We always thought it was a mountain lion, even though there aren't supposed to be any around here according to my friends at the DEC. But I don't think a bobcat would have ever done that.