Cousin delivers for four

Published 6:45 am Sunday, November 12, 2017

Bryan Savoy’s Benelli Super Black Eagle 2 shotgun was benched and as cold as blue steel on Nov. 4, the day four young duck hunters and three other adults enjoyed a youth weekend duck hunt in the marshland of Vermilion Parish.

The Benelli warmed up the next day when Savoy, a veteran waterfowl hunter from New Iberia, and three other goose hunters, two of them from New Iberia, settled into a goose blind with highly regarded goose hunting guide Jack Cousin of Lake Charles, a New Iberia native graduate who graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Savoy was making up for lost time a day earlier because adults cannot hunt during youth weekend duck hunts.

Cousin’s goose hunting party included Dr. Ken Brown, a pediatric dentist, and Dr. Buddy Donaldson, an orthodontist, both of New Iberia, and Dr. Chris Gardner of Shreveport, a practices periodontics in Bossier City, and Savoy.

Cousin’s goose hunting savvy impressed Savoy, a 54-year-old oilfield salesman and ultra-passionate waterfowl hunter. Savoy gave an impromptu grade to the college graduate.

“No. He’s not good,” Savoy said, “he’s the best.”

“Jack just knows how to do it. He’ll get them down 25 yards on top of us. We’ll keep our heads down and he tells us where they are,” he said.

Cousin called them in and called them out well enough that morning for the goose hunters to fill out a limit of speckle-bellies. Savoy’s Benelli and the other goose hunters’ shotguns took advantage of the guide’s expertise.

“We got our limit,” Savoy said, happily.

Cousin has been guiding goose hunters since about 2010. He spends less time guiding these days, Cousin said, since moving to Lake Charles and starting a career as project planner with Mammoet, a Dutch company that specializes in hoisting and transporting heavy objects over water and roads.

Cousin has a winning personality to go along with his goose hunting expertise, according to Savoy.

“He’s such a humble person, too, one of the finest guys to hunt with I know. He’s an amazing kid,” he said.

That Cousin is a goose calling world champion adds to the success of the goose hunt, he said.

Savoy posed in a photo with the group’s speckle-bellies and pointed out an oddity in the photo. It shows one of the geese with what looks almost like an arrow sticking out of its speckled breast.

“That last goose on the right, it fell directly on the roseau. I’ve never seen that in my life,” Savoy said, remembering how the goose in its fall impaled itself on a stalk of roseau cane, which pushed through the birds, feathers, meat and all, on the impact.”