cooning

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The hunting of raccoons.

   Cooning was the valley's favorite winter pastime, and the hounds were kept for nothing else.

   Their cooning trips usually started after midnight, when the dogs could pick up a fresh trail.

   Note

   A night pursuit with hounds, and something people go out to do: in William A. Owens's Texas Folk Songs, Davy Crockett is "a-going out a-cooning," and John Burroughs's Winter Sunshine sends a "cooning party" rushing uphill after the dogs. It belongs to a family of hunting words named for the quarry, beside foxing, possuming and wolfing. As a mass noun it takes no article: men go cooning.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of coon.

   The climbers were cooning along the narrow ledge on their hands and knees.

   Grandpa and his hounds were cooning in the river bottoms until almost dawn.

   Note

   The -ing form is a participle (cooning along the ledge) and, as a gerund, overlaps the noun for raccoon hunting. Its verb varies by region: in the Southern US it means hunting raccoons, crawling astride something over a creek, or, dated, stealing; in Georgia, noodling fish by hand. African American usage gives it a different sense, acting out the old stereotype of the Black fool, so context decides.

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