Coonpaws Kennels

History of the breed: AKC The American English Coonhound is American by birth, English by ancestry. They’re one of six AKC coonhound breeds that frontiersmen devised to specialize on trailing and treeing North America’s perfect source of food, fat, and fur: the raccoon. It’s said that the American English Coonhound are descended from English Foxhounds brought to America in the early 1800s. Foxhunting had been a popular pastime in Great Britain’s southern colonies in America since the late 1600s. George Washington maintained an avid interest in English-style horse-and-hound foxhunts even as he commanded the army that would deprive England of its American colonies. Importations of English Foxhounds during America’s formative years refreshed the gene pool used by Colonial breeders to create America’s coonhound breeds. Backwoods breeders crossed foxhounds with other breeds to create the American English, once known as the English Fox and Coonhound, as it could hunt foxes by day and raccoons by night. As the breed came to specialize on nocturnal raccoon hunts, it acquired its current name. (The breed was also known for a time as the Redtick Coonhound and, simply, the English Coonhound.) Since Colonial times, the American English has been immensely popular among the tight fraternity of coon hunters. “If I couldn’t have an English hound,” a veteran cooner tells says, “I’d give up hunting.” Today’s American English is considered by some experts as the fastest of the coonhound breeds.

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