The Coon Club Offers Game, and more

By Bob Bumcrot

Manager Eddie Kelley has called the Coon Club home for more than 30 years.

Since 1937, Ye Olde Newgate Coon Club has stood on Route 182 in East Norfolk, but its history goes back to the late nineteenth century. The club, which claims to be the oldest, continuously active hunt club in Connecticut, held its first recorded raccoon hunt on October 28, 1897 in Hartland Hollow, above the Hubbard River. It seems clear that the group, a dozen men and their dogs, had been hunting along the river for years. The reason this particular excursion is memorialized is probably because on the occasion, one Lowell Seth Humphrey fell to his death, from a ledge above the Gusty Cornwall place. The Coon Club was incorporated in 1910, when it purchased property in the Hollow, said to have been the original 1796 site of the Red Lion Inn, which had moved to Stockbridge before the Civil War. In the club’s tradition of commemorating events in light verse, the incorporation was immortalized by carpenter and hunter, George Avery. “Uncle George and Almon,/ Veteran Hunters of the past,/ Got the boys together/ And formed a club at last.” This property was sold in 1937 to the Water Bureau of the Metropolitan District of Hartland and after consideration of several other parcels, the house and farmland of a Mrs. Jenkins in East Norfolk, was purchased that same year for $11,000. Many improvements were made, including a large addition to the dining room. Later, more land was acquired from a Mr. Franklin and others, bringing the current acreage to 624. To help defray expenses, the club began to add family activities, and rented out space for meetings, weddings and other celebrations. The Norfolk Lions Club, for example, has been meeting there on the first Wednesday of each month for decades. During the Great Flood of 1955, the club made its facilities available to the Red Cross. The bar was closed, and meals were served to members and non-members alike over a two-month period. At the end of that traumatic year, the club made a substantial contribution to the Litchfield County Hospital at Winsted, now known as the Winsted Emergency Center. For many years the Coon Club continued to hold raccoon hunts. When Norfolk native, Phillip Byrne was club president, the bounty was weighed and the hunter with the heaviest animal received a silver cup, engraved with the name of his or her lead dog. Times have changed, and raccoons are rarely hunted these days, due not only to the decline in the market for coonskins, but also to the spread of rabies, which has made the consumption of raccoon ill-advised. Today’s hunts are largely confined to deer and the occasional rabbit, with wild turkey, hen and cock pheasant especially popular. There are two well-stocked ponds for bass and trout fishing. In winter, they are used for ice-fishing. At certain times of the year the club also offers skeet and clay shooting. Currently there are 105 members in the Coon Club, with five on the waiting list. For over 30 years, the club has been managed by Theresa and Eddie Kelley. They live in the clubhouse and, among other jobs, Theresa cooks and Eddie tends bar. “It’s a great life,” says Kelley, who says he has caught six-pound trout and bagged many a raccoon on the property.