Ten-year-old girl has a love for hunting raccoons with her dog

All daughters eventually break their daddy’s heart. Todd Lux remembers once when the heartache went both ways with his girl, Taylor.

“When I got home, she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Daddy, if you really loved me you would have taken me,” Lux said. “She was really upset and had really wanted to go with us.”

Taylor was 5 at the time, but was already greatly attracted to the sport of hunting raccoons with hounds, a middle-of-the-night event that often takes place in some of the thickest, wooliest timber around. For Taylor, now 10, that can mean being out on hot and steamy summer nights or the bitter cold of mid-winter.

“The part I really like is hearing the dogs barking, and when they tree the coons,” she said. “I like being out with my dad and Uncle Tracy.” The latter is her dad’s older brother.

Taylor has enjoyed winning some prestigious championships with her dog, Ranger, too.

A family tradition

When you’re born with the last name of Lux in northeast Kansas, a love of hounds and raccoon hunting normally runs in your veins. Taylor is the fourth generation of her father’s family to get deep into the sport. Her dad was largely the same as a child.

“I used to ride in the dog box, with the dogs so I could go on hunts,” Todd Lux said.

He said the girl was about three when she started tagging along on short hunts, usually being carried along by Tracy. By the time she was about 5, it was obvious Taylor was becoming engulfed in hounds.

“She was constantly asking when we could go again,” Todd Lux said. “She was always spending time with the dogs. Now, she waters and feeds them every day, and cleans out the pens. We don’t have to tell her. She loves being with our dogs.”

One dog in particular, Ranger, gained Taylor’s fancy. He’s now a 6-year-old redbone hound and Todd Lux said the pair have grown up together and have an obvious bond. That closeness has served both well in competitions.

Taylor competed in her first raccoon hunting competition in 2013, at the United Kennel Club Kansas State Youth Championship. She won that first event and repeated as champion this year beating competition Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas.

In such competitions, several dog handlers and their hounds are allowed to hunt as a pack. Points are given to the handler when they identify their dog’s bark when it first smells raccoon scent and when their barking signals they’ve run a raccoon up a tree. More points are given when the raccoon is seen in that tree. Penalties can be deducted if the handler makes a wrong call. Hackathorn said that’s something Taylor seldom does.

“That girl is extremely sharp, for any age. She knows dogs and she really knows her dog,” said Hackathorn, who tagged along on Taylor’s run for the recent Kansas championship. “She flat-out gets it all.”

She was within a few seconds of flat out winning it all – the UKC National Youth Championship – last summer, too. Todd Lux said his daughter finished sixth at the event, despite a major disappointment.

Taylor had made all the right calls when Ranger struck a trail and treed a raccoon, but once at the tree the raccoon has to be spotted within 10 minutes. That’s not always easily done, especially in huge trees with a lot of limbs and leaves.

The Luxes spotted the raccoon with only a few seconds of time remaining, but couldn’t point it out to the judge before the 10 minutes had expired.

“She was really close, so close,” Todd Lux said. “She still won the national championship for the best of the breed at the hunt.” Other popular breeds of raccoon hounds include Walker, English, black and tan and bluetick hounds.

He, too, enters Ranger in competitions and has done well. The dog has earned enough wins to be classified as a Grand Night Champion by the UKC, which he said is the highest rating available.

At home in the night timber

While Taylor goes to two or three competitions per year, she averages that many hunts a week with her dad and uncle in Kansas. March 1-Nov. 8 this year, people could run their dogs on raccoons as long as no animals were killed. The actual furharvesting season this year is Nov. 12-Feb. 15.

Though Taylor is limited to Friday and Saturday nights, plus any breaks she has from school, Todd Lux hunts several additional weeknights during the hunting season. Never in his 51 years has he seen populations of the highly adaptable animals higher. He regularly gets calls from landowners who want raccoons removed from their property because of damage they’re causing to crops and other wildlife. Several studies have shown raccoons to be the nation’s largest predator on the nests of such ground-nesting birds as bobwhite quail.

On an early November evening, the Luxes let a photographer tag along. The hunt commenced after Tracy, and one of his dogs, arrived.

It was hard to see who was leading whom as Taylor held onto a leashed Ranger as they entered a property where raccoons had been damaging the corn crop. Within a few minutes after the dogs were released, barks and howls were heard and Taylor announced which bark belonged to Ranger, and then again when the dog had treed a raccoon.

She hustled the 200 yards to the dog in the dark, her short legs churning to keep up with those of her father. Atop a steep bank by a small stream, Ranger stood with his paws up on a tree, howling and barking in excitement. Taylor was soon at his side, talking to the dog and imitating the sounds of raccoons fighting trying to get the raccoon to show itself amid the limbs and leaves of an oak. It eventually did, and the dogs were taken back to the truck and all headed to another area.

“She’ll stay up and run as long as we’ll let her,” Todd Lux said. “She seldom is the one who wants to quit for the night.”

When asked if she’d rather be playing inside, watching a movie or talking with a boy, the girl quickly said running with Ranger was by far her preference. Her father knows the day will come when boys will gain some importance in his daughter’s life.

“I can tell you this, he’d better be ready to do some ’coon hunting,” Todd Lux said with a chuckle. “I have no doubt Taylor is always going to want to do this.”

This story was originally published November 20, 2014 at 11:34 AM with the headline "Ten-year-old girl has a love for hunting raccoons with her dog."