<p>WADMALAW ISLAND, S.C. _ In the style of Old West gunslingers, Ervin Commodore and his hound dog Lucky II are heading down to Georgia today to defend their title.</p><p>Last fall, Lucky II was crowned the best coon-hunting hound dog in the country. Since then, hound dog owners nationwide have been howling for Commodore to let Lucky II loose from her Wadmalaw Island pen so they can have a shot at beating the champ in a nighttime hunt.</p><p>This weekend, Commodore and Lucky II will compete in Washington, Ga., in one of the first coon hunts of the new year leading up to the national competition in Kentucky in October.</p><p>When Commodores English coon hound treed the most raccoons last year, he became the first South Carolinian to win the Professional Kennel Clubs 30-year-old world hunt. Commodore got $27,500 in prize money, a couple of plaques, a champions cap and a hefty 14-karat gold ring. Lucky II got a years supply of dog food.</p><p>With the win, Commodore and Lucky II have placed rural Wadmalaw Island and its tiny Katy Hill community on the hound dog map.</p><p>After hound dog owners quiz Commodore about Wadmalaw Island, they quickly ask if they can mate their male dogs with Lucky II, said Commodore, a 48-year-old self-employed carpet installer whos been hunting with hounds since he was a boy growing up on Johns Island.</p><p>Commodore said the 4 1/2-year-old Lucky II, who he raised and trained from a pup, will be ready to breed this spring. Being a national champ means one of Lucky IIs pups, will probably fetch $1,000, he said.</p><p>Commodore has owned Lucky II twice. After he trained the pup, Commodore sold her when she was a year old. A month before the October world hunt, he bought her back from a coon hunter in Ridgeville on the advice of his friend and Summerville hound dog owner Frank Priester.</p><p>She is the type of dog that does not make many mistakes, and when you look up the tree, you find a coon, Priester said.</p><p>When she entered the kennel clubs world hunt that drew 1,500 hound dogs from throughout the country, Lucky II beat the best of the best, Priester said.</p><p>The Southern tradition of coon hunting has spread to nearly every state, said Steve Fielder, senior vice president of Evansville, Ind.-based Professional Kennel Club, which has 12,000 members nationwide. In its sponsored hunts, hounds tree the coon, but the animal is not harmed, Fielder said.</p><p>Commodore, who owns Stono River Kennel, is not the typical hound dog owner, he said. He is one of a few who breed and train their own dogs.</p><p>Winning the world championship is the highest honor. It is the plum that everybody is trying to pick, Fielder said.</p><p>Once Commodore had won, he initially was content to rest on the laurels of his dog. But he likes to win as much as Lucky II likes to hunt, so theyre off to the hunt near Washington, just northwest of Augusta, Ga. If she wins it all, Lucky IIs nose can put as much as $1,600 in Commodores pocket.</p><p>If I own her, I have to hunt her, Commodore said. I know they are going to be gunning for Lucky.</p>
