Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also coon it) to crawl stealthily (like a racoon).

1834		A. Pike Prose Sketches 75: Irwin was obliged to straddle the log, and, as they quaintly call it in the west, ‘Coon it across’.
1840		W.G. Simms Border Beagles (1855) 321: There is some soft clay on the log that makes it slippery [...] you had better squat in time and coon it.
1865		V.C. Giles Rags and Hope in Lasswell (1961) 235: No chance to walk across it, so we promptly ‘cooned’ it.
1886		Century Mag. (N.Y.) Nov. 16/2 [footnote]: In trying to ‘coon’ across Knob Creek on a log, Lincoln fell in [DA].
1892		J.C. Duval Adventures of Jack Dobell 123: Crossing on the way a sluggish bayou, over which I ‘cooned it’ on a fallen tree [...] I saw light ahead.
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 300: coon, v. To go on all-fours. ‘I cooned every log we come to.’.
1912		R.A. Wason Friar Tuck 186: The Friar had him coon up on the ledge.
1927		C. Woofter ‘Dialect Words and Phrases from West-Central West Virginia’ in AS II:8 351: I cooned the log across the creek.
1938		L. Beebe High Iron 220: Coon, To: To go over the tops of the cars of a freight train.
1945		F.H. Hubbard Railroad Avenue 338: Coon it – Crawl.
1953		Randolph & Wilson Down in the Holler 236: The ford was washed out, so I just cooned a log that had fell acrost the creek.

2. to pilfer, esp. fruit or other objects of little value.

1890		Rockford Enterprise 23 Aug. 3/1: One of our lads while ‘cooning’ apples in town this week was caught [DA].
1901		Monroe & Northup ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:iii 138: coon, v. Steal; ‘to go cooning melons’.
1916		H.L. Wilson Somewhere in Red Gap 92: ‘Now – I found ’em,’ pleaded the bad man [...] ‘Cooned ’em, you mean!’ thundered the judge.
1948		Antioch Rev Aut. 160: Nearly every man that had cooned a horse in the county was in cahoots with them [DA].