Washington County teen earns top PA honors with help from her family and furry friend

As dusk falls over the woodlot, you'll start to hear dogs barking and cruising fencerows in search of fresh scent.

It’s the telltale sound of coon hunting, in which dogs trail raccoons up into the tree tops. Rarely do the hunters kill the raccoons.

In Washington County, a teenage girl now holds the titles of Pennsylvania youth state champion and Bluetick Breeders of America national youth champion.

Bianca Acevedo, 16, of Dunlevy, has been involved in the coon hunting for about three years with her stepfather, Josh Rutter, 37.

“I’m shocked. I got a $500 scholarship. It’s really nice,” she said about winning the overall competition June 25 in Laurelville.

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The family has a treeing walker coonhound named Hickorys Raindrop that they normally just call “Drop." Bianca and Drop partnered in the competition and ended up with the highest overall score. Judges look for a variety of things to score including which dog barks first on a scent and if the treed raccoon is visible among the leaves.

Bianca has developed a passion for coon hunting ever since Rutter took the family to the woods on her first outing. “I really didn’t grasp the concept of coon hunting, but then once I saw the coon in the tree I said 'Wow, this is kind of a really nice sport or hobby.’”

Rutter was raised from a long line of coon hunters. His dad, Tim, was hunting before Josh was born. “He used to carry me on his back before I could even walk,” he said about going when his mom was busy or at work.

“It’s kind of in the blood for me. My sister hunts, my dad hunts. We coon hunted all the time.”

Now Bianca and her brother, Miguel, 15, go with Josh. “She likes coming out to listen to the dog and treeing them,” he said.

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“We go out almost every day,” Bianca said about hunting her dog on farms, parks, game lands and any open space were they have permission.

They seek out larger wooded tracts away from houses and major roads. “When we cut him loose, if he doesn’t stop right here, he's going until he finds one.”

The dog wears a GPS tracking collar to help its owners keep track of his location. The screen shows where the dog is walking and where the nearest roads are as well.

The actual hunting season where raccoons can be harvested is in the fall and winter months, but dogs can be run throughout the year. Rutter said they only shoot a raccoon when they are training a really young dog.

They go out five or six nights a week for an average of an hour to two hours. “Sometimes it’s only 30 minutes if he trees one really close,” Bianca said. They go as often as they can to keep the dog in shape and on top of his game.

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Bianca prefers the transition from winter to spring as the best time of the year to go. “There aren’t too many bugs,” she said. Her mother makes a soap that repels ticks that she said helps when the bugs are prevalent.

Daughter and stepfather believe Drop has a lot of potential at just more than a year old. “He will go far for a coon, if he has too” she said. They’ve discovered his raccoons usually stay visible in the leafy tree tops instead of hiding. “He has his own special bark,” she said about a longer bawl sound that emerges when the prey is treed.

“He’s got one of the better noses,” Rutter said about the dog’s lineage of coon hunting stock.

The family travels to many states to compete. “I like going to the PKC (Professional Kennel Club) hunts,” Bianca said and she’s planning to compete again at the United Kennel Club Youth National Championship in Ohio. In the past, she and her brother competed at the world championship in Illinois. Miguel doesn’t get to hunt as often as he plays football that requires many nighttime practices.

Bianca is passionate about the sport and the future of it. “I want to do it after high school and be able to go on my own hunts.”

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She enjoys seeing the excitement of the dog. “The dogs want to go so bad, so they start pulling on the leash. Once you cut them off their leash, they’re gone,” she said.

Bobby Adams, 32, of Charleroi, Washington County, has been coon hunting for about 20 years including with Rutter and his family. “She goes to the woods about every time Josh and I go hunting,” he said about Bianca’s enthusiasm. “It takes time and dedication to win something like that,” he said about her state title.

“It’s fun to see Bianca go out, she’s a good kid and that’s a nice young dog.”

Adams said the sport is helpful to the development of today’s youth.

He credits his uncle, John Chilzer, for taking him out when he was 12. Adams' father died when he was 7. “My Uncle John kind of stepped in. I was a young kid starting to go down the wrong path and he took me coon hunting and got me straightened out, and I fell in love with the sport and the dogs and I liked spending time with him.”

Adams also likes the personal nature of the sport. “I just like to hear the dogs. It means a lot to me to go to the woods and turn that dog loose in the middle of the night, out in the middle of nowhere, and the dog, using nothing but its nose, finds an animal up the tree and tells you the story the whole time it's doing it with its mouth. I just get excited to hear the dog do the work."

Those involved in the sport like talking to others about coon hunting and helping them understand what they are doing in the woods at night.

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For example, people assume the dogs would be moving deer out of woods, but they usually don’t. Rutter said that many times deer will watch the dogs barking at a tree. One evening a raccoon ran up a tree where a deer was bedded. When the dog stood up on the side of the tree, the deer finally jumped up and moved. “It scared the dog,” Rutter said.

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“They just watch them go on by,” he said about deer not being bothered by coon dogs.

“I’ve had plenty of people just come up to me in the woods and ask what the heck I’m doing and I tell them to come along and see. I ran into a lot of guys that way.”

If you hear a dog barking in the woods, Rutter said, expect its owner to soon come to take the canine home. “We’re not trying to destroy anything or cause any problems,” he said about the dogs being out late at night.

To get involved, Rutter advised to go along with other people who have dogs or visit one a local hunt. He encourages people to attend organized hunts and learn about the pastime. “Most of the time anybody will let you go along to see what’s going on.” Visit prohound.com and ukcdogs.com to see where hunts will be held near you.

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Coon dog hunting is competitive but the members do look out for each other. “When a coon hunter gets sick or passes away, they all seem to come together and have a benefit hunt or do something. I’ve seen that several times that’s impressed me,” Adams said.

Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on your website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on social media @whipkeyoutdoors.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Raccoon hunting in Pennsylvania becomes a family hobby and challenge