What do you think?
Rate this book
Hound Dog Man
Twelve-year-old Cotton Kinney has everything a boy could want—except a dog. For Christmas, Cotton bought his dad a studded dog collar and his mom an enameled cake-mixing pan just the right size for feeding a dog. It didn't do any good. When Christmas comes, Cotton still doesn't get his dog. But Blackie Scantling, best coon hunter in the country, and his two coonhounds, Rock and Drum, come by for dinner one night. Blackie takes Cotton and his best friend Spud, and Spud's little feist-dog Snuffy, on a series of adventures that include a show-down with a bull, a wrestling match with a turkey gobbler, and the search for a dog Cotton can call his own.
247 pages, Hard Cover
First published January 1, 1947
21 people are currently reading
272 people want to read
About the author
Fred Gipson
33 books608 followersAlso known as Frederick Benjamin Gipson. He is best known for writing the 1956 novel Old Yeller, which became a popular 1957 Walt Disney film.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
December 12, 2022
Fred Gipson gave us one of the classic dog books, Old Yeller. Hound-Dog Man was published 10 years before Old Yeller. Wikipedia says ‘Hound-Dog Man, published in 1947, established Gipson's reputation when it became a Doubleday Book-of-the-Month Club selection and sold over 250,000 copies in its first year of publication. It was made into a film in 1959’.
Old Yeller is a much better book but I still enjoyed this one. The book kind of meandered around a bit or maybe the topic wasn’t as dramatic, so I would put this book much lower in priority on your reading list of classic old books. I didn’t rush to finish it quite so quickly but the end picked up quite a bit.
The 12-year-old boy Cotton wants a hunting dog of his own and to go coon hunting in the woods along the river with a friend of his father’s named Blackie Scantling. The book is about that hunting trip and some adventures that come of that. There is also some hillbilly romance for Blackie.
Blackie has two coon hounds. Cotton’s friend Spud comes along and brings his feist named Snuffy. I had to look up what that is: ‘A Feist is a type of small hunting dog, developed via crossbreeding of various other hunting breeds in the rural southern United States.’ Later a black dog comes around too, so there are enough dogs in the book to make it a good dog book.
The title and cover of the book made me want to read the book. The style is similar to Old Yeller with a dialect that sounds hillbilly to me.
When Blackie is asked about getting married and settling down he says:
“Well, plague take it, Aaron,” he said to Papa, “you can’t find a woman that’ll put up with what a hound will. You take a dog like one of them yonder. You can starve them half to death. You can run him till his feet’s wore off to the bloody bones. You can git on a high lonesome drunk and kick him all over the place. But he’s still your dog. Ready to lick your hand or warm your feet on a cold night. Now, show me a woman that’ll do the same.”
When Cotton’s papa is trying to talk Cotton’s mama to let him go on the hunt the conversation went like this:
“You want our boy to grow up to be nothing but a no-account fiddle-footed rake, Aaron Kinney?” she said. “With never a thought in his head but to run wild in the woods with a passel of pesky hound-dogs?”
“No, Cora,” Papa said. “But a coon hunt now and then ain’t going to ruin him. I was on a few myself and got over it.”
“Yes, Mama pointed out, “but that was because I laid the law down about dogs. Hadn’t been for that, you’d still be fooling away your time in the woods, same as always. And we wouldn’t own a rag to cover our backs."
One part I really liked was when they met up with a friend in the woods who is sympathetic with Cotton going out hunting with the dogs:
Fiddling Tom stood up. He reached down his fiddle case and said solemnly: “There’s a time when a boy can lay his belly on the ground and feel the heartbeats of the earth coming up to him through the grass roots. That’s his time to prowl. That’s his time to smell the par-fume of the wild flowers, to hear the wind singing wild in his ears, to hurt with the want of knowing what’s on the yonder side of the next ridge. The Almighty, he never meant for a boy to miss them things when that time comes!”
I also liked the description of when Fiddling Tom goes out and is inspired by the morning and then writes some music which he plays for them. Cotton describes it here:
I’d heard fiddle music, but I’d never known it could stab you like a thorn and make you like the sting of it. I’d never heard none that made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Or made you see the sun coming up out of a big pool of water, while the frogs hollered from the wild onions growing along the banks and the speckled bass popped their tails in the shoal water and the mockingbirds sat in the tops of the cedars and sang like they do at daybreak.
As far as racism goes in the book, there are some references to the ‘N’ word to mean the color black, but not used toward a person of color. There also is a character Mexico Jesus mentioned but he is defended by Fiddling Tom because what counts is his character:
“A man’s a man,” Fiddling Tom said emphatically, “irregardless of his skin color. It’s what’s in his heart that counts. And you can tell what’s in Mexico Jesus heart by his music.”
I liked the book because it plays to that desire of freedom and being out in the great outdoors hanging out with dogs. I am not big on the hunting and killing of animals but I understand it, especially for the times. No Kleenex is needed for the dogs in the book. Overall I would recommend the book but caution people not to expect it to be as grand as Old Yeller.
Old Yeller is a much better book but I still enjoyed this one. The book kind of meandered around a bit or maybe the topic wasn’t as dramatic, so I would put this book much lower in priority on your reading list of classic old books. I didn’t rush to finish it quite so quickly but the end picked up quite a bit.
The 12-year-old boy Cotton wants a hunting dog of his own and to go coon hunting in the woods along the river with a friend of his father’s named Blackie Scantling. The book is about that hunting trip and some adventures that come of that. There is also some hillbilly romance for Blackie.
Blackie has two coon hounds. Cotton’s friend Spud comes along and brings his feist named Snuffy. I had to look up what that is: ‘A Feist is a type of small hunting dog, developed via crossbreeding of various other hunting breeds in the rural southern United States.’ Later a black dog comes around too, so there are enough dogs in the book to make it a good dog book.
The title and cover of the book made me want to read the book. The style is similar to Old Yeller with a dialect that sounds hillbilly to me.
When Blackie is asked about getting married and settling down he says:
“Well, plague take it, Aaron,” he said to Papa, “you can’t find a woman that’ll put up with what a hound will. You take a dog like one of them yonder. You can starve them half to death. You can run him till his feet’s wore off to the bloody bones. You can git on a high lonesome drunk and kick him all over the place. But he’s still your dog. Ready to lick your hand or warm your feet on a cold night. Now, show me a woman that’ll do the same.”
When Cotton’s papa is trying to talk Cotton’s mama to let him go on the hunt the conversation went like this:
“You want our boy to grow up to be nothing but a no-account fiddle-footed rake, Aaron Kinney?” she said. “With never a thought in his head but to run wild in the woods with a passel of pesky hound-dogs?”
“No, Cora,” Papa said. “But a coon hunt now and then ain’t going to ruin him. I was on a few myself and got over it.”
“Yes, Mama pointed out, “but that was because I laid the law down about dogs. Hadn’t been for that, you’d still be fooling away your time in the woods, same as always. And we wouldn’t own a rag to cover our backs."
One part I really liked was when they met up with a friend in the woods who is sympathetic with Cotton going out hunting with the dogs:
Fiddling Tom stood up. He reached down his fiddle case and said solemnly: “There’s a time when a boy can lay his belly on the ground and feel the heartbeats of the earth coming up to him through the grass roots. That’s his time to prowl. That’s his time to smell the par-fume of the wild flowers, to hear the wind singing wild in his ears, to hurt with the want of knowing what’s on the yonder side of the next ridge. The Almighty, he never meant for a boy to miss them things when that time comes!”
I also liked the description of when Fiddling Tom goes out and is inspired by the morning and then writes some music which he plays for them. Cotton describes it here:
I’d heard fiddle music, but I’d never known it could stab you like a thorn and make you like the sting of it. I’d never heard none that made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Or made you see the sun coming up out of a big pool of water, while the frogs hollered from the wild onions growing along the banks and the speckled bass popped their tails in the shoal water and the mockingbirds sat in the tops of the cedars and sang like they do at daybreak.
As far as racism goes in the book, there are some references to the ‘N’ word to mean the color black, but not used toward a person of color. There also is a character Mexico Jesus mentioned but he is defended by Fiddling Tom because what counts is his character:
“A man’s a man,” Fiddling Tom said emphatically, “irregardless of his skin color. It’s what’s in his heart that counts. And you can tell what’s in Mexico Jesus heart by his music.”
I liked the book because it plays to that desire of freedom and being out in the great outdoors hanging out with dogs. I am not big on the hunting and killing of animals but I understand it, especially for the times. No Kleenex is needed for the dogs in the book. Overall I would recommend the book but caution people not to expect it to be as grand as Old Yeller.
June 26, 2008
I wasn't aware of this one until browsing for a few other Fred Gipson books on Amazon brought one reader's review to my attention. It is a must-have for anyone with a "classic childhood stories" collection. Fits right in with books like The Incredible Journey and
Where the Red Fern Grows
. I'll be buying this one.
January 6, 2020
Lotta women cooking and even a one man dog. One guy says panther in such a way that I had no idea what he was talking about. Haven't read Old Yeller, but if it's anything like this it should rock.
Every chapter of Hound Dog Man has two or three very memorable moments. I'm still thinking about the smart ass baby possum that thought he outsmarted the coon hunters.
Every chapter of Hound Dog Man has two or three very memorable moments. I'm still thinking about the smart ass baby possum that thought he outsmarted the coon hunters.
January 15, 2021
This is one my dad read aloud in my childhood. Reading it as an adult, I discovered that he edited out some language. 😊
It’s a personal favorite.
It’s a personal favorite.
July 3, 2017
It never ceases to amaze me how an author can write so many good books, and then have one that positively stinks. This one, while having interesting descriptions of a boy's adventures on his first coon hunt, was sleazy, and crass, while the outcome a girl used to get a guy she loved to marry her left me disgusted.
December 12, 2022
Quite the roughneck dialect, full of terms like "woman-cooking" and a black dog named a word we don't use anymore. I cain't pin down what 'xactly it reminds me of, but suffice to say there's a lot of huntin', fightin', hound dogs, sanitized cussin', wilderness camping, grubby men without jobs, and all the other ingredients needed to make a boys' adventure story set in the early part of the 20th century in a less-than-civilized area.
May 5, 2011
Hm. If all the rest of Fred Gipson's books are like this one, Old Yeller is his one and only masterpiece. This one isn't worth reading again. But Old Yeller is.
January 7, 2016
Read it back when I could love it.
December 30, 2023
I was willing to give this book a chance, even though I don’t usually read child-animal bond books (because the animal always dies at the end in a usually deeply unsatisfying manner) BUT the first chapter introduces the father’s dog whose name is literally the N word. It was a fine story and honestly enjoyable at parts especially when the pig gets a knife thrown into him and the fat man who owns the pig gets viciously attacked by dogs directly after this discovery. However Gipson really flubbed the ending and consequently the entire message of the book. I was like “okay we can overlook the dog’s name, the son will be better.” But the last two sentences bring it back in a terrible gotcha moment when the son decides to name his new dog N*****. Then the book ends. I get that it was a different time/place but it seems like Gipson had this ending in mind the entire time as if it’s some clever racist joke that we should all overlook because it’s ’just a dog’. It’s impossible for me to understand why he would do this or what he accomplished through doing so.
You might think that I’m being overly sensitive or flippant about this, but this book was published in 1947, when Gipson was well into his 30s. He had the PERFECT opportunity to present a generational “growth” moment between father and son, by having the son NOT name his dog the literal N word. The novel is classified as a coming of age story, which should speak for itself on why I feel this way.
I’m not even gonna mention the womanizing and mysoginist undertones present throughout the entire story because it’s unfortunately par for the course when it comes to books written in this era and for this audience (young, impressionable white kids). But the ending royally blew it and, in my opinion, rendered the entire plot useless.
Why should anyone care about this book when there are much better stories (Red Fern Grows, Hatchet, Red Pony, even Old Yeller) that are along the same vein and more substantial? I sincerely feel that this book should be forgotten.
Then again, that’s just my opinion and I understand the intrinsic value of nostalgia some feel for this book. But for me, and probably any reader these days, it’s just not worth it. It almost makes me wish that the dog would die at the end if only to glean a slightly better metaphor for ‘coming of age’ and the inescapable passing of time and continuous progress.
+1 star because the dog does not die at the end, unlike literally any other book ever written around an animal.
-1 star because the dog doesn’t die at the end also and the ending is just a womanizer getting married to some girl he doesn’t even care that much for. A dieu, Gipson. Never again.
You might think that I’m being overly sensitive or flippant about this, but this book was published in 1947, when Gipson was well into his 30s. He had the PERFECT opportunity to present a generational “growth” moment between father and son, by having the son NOT name his dog the literal N word. The novel is classified as a coming of age story, which should speak for itself on why I feel this way.
I’m not even gonna mention the womanizing and mysoginist undertones present throughout the entire story because it’s unfortunately par for the course when it comes to books written in this era and for this audience (young, impressionable white kids). But the ending royally blew it and, in my opinion, rendered the entire plot useless.
Why should anyone care about this book when there are much better stories (Red Fern Grows, Hatchet, Red Pony, even Old Yeller) that are along the same vein and more substantial? I sincerely feel that this book should be forgotten.
Then again, that’s just my opinion and I understand the intrinsic value of nostalgia some feel for this book. But for me, and probably any reader these days, it’s just not worth it. It almost makes me wish that the dog would die at the end if only to glean a slightly better metaphor for ‘coming of age’ and the inescapable passing of time and continuous progress.
+1 star because the dog does not die at the end, unlike literally any other book ever written around an animal.
-1 star because the dog doesn’t die at the end also and the ending is just a womanizer getting married to some girl he doesn’t even care that much for. A dieu, Gipson. Never again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 27, 2023
Hound Dog Man is shelved next to Old Yeller, my favorite childhood book, so I started reading again. The adventures are told well,often laugh out loud funny, however it is a product of the times when Fred wrote it 75 years ago. I am a dog guy so those parts were fun too. I named a dog inappropriately once too.
Reread Old Yeller instead if you have not.
Reread Old Yeller instead if you have not.
May 8, 2022
চমৎকার এক কিশোর উপন্যাস। অ্যাডভেঞ্চার আর ড্রামার দুর্দান্ত মিশেল। সাথে বুনো টেক্সাসের মানুষ, প্রাণী, পাগলাটে আবহাওয়া আর রুক্ষ কিন্তু মজারু জীবনযাত্রা। ব্ল্যাকি, কটন, ডনি - এদের মনে থাকবে অনেক দিন।
March 2, 2025
I mostly liked this story. I don't take offense at what is now considered 'offensive language'. It was the way of the times when the book was written.
I didn't care for the last bit though, about the big drunk party and forced marriage.
I didn't care for the last bit though, about the big drunk party and forced marriage.
March 20, 2022
Another good story by Fred.
January 4, 2024
I love Fred Gipson's style... this book is certainly well written. Just can't get on board with the characters... can't stand Blackie.
January 15, 2024
Awesome and sad dog book
Read
March 18, 2024he a hard book to read
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 1, 2024
This book really reminded me of Old Yeller.
August 9, 2025
আরেকবার পড়লাম, এবার মনে হয় ছোটবেলার চেয়ে আরো বেশি ভালো লাগলো!
April 30, 2021
শিকার করতে গেলে , আর আডভেঞ্জার থাকবে না তা কি হয় | এই বই ,জীবনটা আসলে কেমন হওয়া উচিত এবং কিভাবে বেড়ে উঠতে হবে তা খুবিই ভালো করে উপলব্ধতি করা যাবে | এই বই টা পড়তে পড়তে কটন সাথে বন জংগল ঘুড়ে ঘুড়ে টান উওজেনাময় শিকার , তার একটা হাউন্ড পাওয়ার বেকুলতা এবং শেষ পর্যন্ত তা পাওয়া , মনে হবে আপনারও এই রকম একটা জীবন দরকার |
আর অনুবাদক রকিব হাসান খুবিই সবলিল ভাষাই অনুবাদ করছেন , যা তার অনুবাদের অন্যতম বৈশিষ্ট্য |
আর অনুবাদক রকিব হাসান খুবিই সবলিল ভাষাই অনুবাদ করছেন , যা তার অনুবাদের অন্যতম বৈশিষ্ট্য |
tbr-1
March 31, 2023DNFed because I didn’t like the attitude or the MCs or some of the content, and I didn’t feel like slogging through the rest when I have so many other books I want to read. Might give it a second shot sometime.
March 26, 2014
I loved OLD YELLER as a boy so had to read this and it brought back boy hood memories. wonderful book for kids to read.There is nothing wrong with being a kid again for a few hours reading.
May 19, 2015
Gipson is a master of children's animal stories.
March 16, 2018
Good read.
For a brit, writes good westerns. Easy read, good action and story line. One of the top three best western writers.
For a brit, writes good westerns. Easy read, good action and story line. One of the top three best western writers.
May 20, 2018
I love these stories, I grew up reading them and am happy to have found them again. These are the older ones that I haven't re-read a number of times, so it's fun to revisit them.
November 16, 2018
Good Tale!
This is an exciting and interesting story with a good plot. I would have given it five stars if’s better job had been done on the editing.
This is an exciting and interesting story with a good plot. I would have given it five stars if’s better job had been done on the editing.
November 12, 2020
Rcsva13
Just reread this book and it is still a very good read. I started reading Edson while living in England.
Just reread this book and it is still a very good read. I started reading Edson while living in England.
Read
June 24, 2011what a fun book to read and follow from time.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews