Be Barking Up the Wrong Tree

I’m fixing to be barking up the wrong tree.

I’ve caught myself barking up the wrong tree on many occasions, and the humiliation of it always caused me to be reluctant to admit it, but these experiences in life taught me that when it happens one should just pack up and go home.

A person needs to be able to recognize when they are barking up the wrong tree and learn how to salvage their respectability and self esteem immediately by recognizing their current trail has led them to the wrong tree, and change the subject and go on about some other business.

Barking up the wrong tree means making a mistake or false assumption in something you are attempting to achieve, and the allusion is to hunting dogs barking at the bottom of a tree where they mistakenly think their quarry is hiding.

I learned this lesson when I was a young boy, but somehow I failed to carry it over into manhood.

The way I was taught was through my Uncle Curvin, who used to take me squirrel hunting, and the two dogs we used to hunt with.

The first dog, Old Bill, was the best dog I ever had. He was just an old black dog of a mixed breed, but he had a sleek and shiny coat on him and he was pleasant to pet and rub. Old Bill also had a nose on him that could sniff out a particular gnat in the Okefenokee Swamp.

When he barked up a giant oak tree or a small persimmon tree, you could bet your bottom dollar there was a squirrel or possum up that tree. But Old Bill’s name indicated his true condition—he was a very old dog, and soon went on his last hunt.

Someone, I don’t remember who, feeling sorry for me, gave me a new dog with a pedigree of a Mountain Cur, a breed of hunting dogs with a hereditary squirrel hunting expertise to be revered by all.

But it turned out that wasn’t the case with New Bill. That’s what I named him, New Bill. It seemed that New Bill was one of those exceptions that comes along every few generations which was lacking in hereditary talents.

The problem was, New Bill couldn’t sniff out a steak bone in a turnip patch, and he was always barking up the wrong tree.

After one of several fruitless pursuits of varmints with nary a result, Uncle Curvin had said, “Let’s go home, son. This dog is barking up the wrong tree.”

My Uncle explained it to me by relating New Bill’s lack of talent to humans. He said he had a friend who was real stupid, but that his momma and daddy were two smart people who came from a long line of intelligent folks.

“Barking up the wrong tree,” is a cliche with the first known printed citation in James Kirke Paulding’s Westward Ho! printed in 1832. It must have caught on in the U.S. quickly after Hall’s book, because it appeared in several newspapers throughout the 1830s.

I recently asked my wife if she would fry me up a mess of chitterlings, but I knew the moment I asked that I was fixing to be barking up the wrong tree.