Chris Courville of Loreauville and other Teche Area squirrel hunters will be in the woods, shotgun at the ready, Saturday hoping to harvest squirrels on opening day of the small game hunting season in Louisiana.

LOREAUVILLE – The second day in October has been marked on the calendar for a few weeks by a young hunter in the Courville family tree in Loreauville.

Fourteen-year-old Landon Courville apparently is counting down the days until the small game hunting season opens in the Sportsman’s Paradise. Truth be told the same probably could be said for his father, Chris Courville.

“My son is coming around (as a squirrel hunter) and he has a couple of his friends who are going to come with us. He’s 14 now. Him and his buddies have been making game plans the last couple weeks for this,” Chris Courville said Thursday evening.

As for himself, he said, “I think about it all the time.”

The Courvilles and friends plan to join other members of the Lake Fausse Pointe Hunting Club when they hunt on the lease Saturday. He said six to eight other members more than likely will walk the woods opening day.

They will be among an estimated 50,000-plus license-carrying squirrel hunters in the state who head to the woods on Oct. 2. Before the 2021-22 season ends Feb. 28, hundreds of thousands of squirrels will be harvested in Louisiana.

Courville, 39, is well aware of the squirrel hunting tradition in his family and other families. Like Landon, Courville began hunting squirrels as a boy, first side by side without a shotgun with his father, the late Lawrence Courville, then following in his footsteps armed and ready, then by himself in the woods around Lake Fausse Pointe.

“He’s learning. He’s got a lot to learn but he’s learning,” Courville said about his son.

Prospects for the season opener are up in the air, which at least cooled considerably with the first significant cold front in September that passed through the region overnight Tuesday. The Louisiana Marine and Propeller Services owner was able to get out and look around two weekends ago.

The trip was intended to be a “work detail” for him but wet conditions discouraged all but a smidgeon of clearing trails. But he was rewarded with some positive info courtesy Mother Nature.

“We made one trip last weekend. We found some signs (cuttings) in some green oaks. We didn’t get to walk around too much. We didn’t get to go ‘clean up’ like we normally do with the tractor,” Courville said about clearing trails and cutting shooting lanes. It’s been raining since March.

“On a little bit of trails I was able to go clear them with a chainsaw and I saw cuttings. I saw a little bit of cuttings,” he said about what’s left after squirrels cut the husk off the mast they feed in the branches.

And that’s where he wants to take his son and friends opening day. They plan to be scanning the oaks when the sun sheds light on the woods.

Squirrels get active around sunrise and sunset, he explained, which is why the squirrel hunters will be out at sunrise. They’ll probably wrap up the hunt around 9 a.m. or 10 a.m., before the winds get too high.

“With the little bit of signs we found, it looks good, so we’re hoping for the best,” he said.

Limits all around?

“Yeah. It’d be nice,” he said.

He will be carrying his Benelli Super Black Eagle while Landon will shoulder a Benelli M2.

Courville is hopeful opening day, heck, the entire squirrel hunting season, is at least fair. After a fair opening day in 2020-21, the remainder of the season was subpar.

“Last year we scratched up a limit. It was rough. The whole season was disappointing. After a couple hunts we gave up on it. I hope this year is better,” said Courville, who also hunts ducks and deer.

Squirrel hunters will converge on private and public lands starting opening day. In Acadiana, it’s hard to beat Sherburne Wildlife Management Area, an area for the public that yielded 3,881 squirrels in 2020-21.

That harvest was below that of 2019-20, according to Tony Vidrine, a 37-year state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries veteran who has been the Lafayette Region biologist manager 15-plus years. Vidrine expects the area’s hunting success to bounce back this season because of favorable mast production, the lack of hurricane damage and minimal flooding.

However, a WMA in the Teche Area’s backyard is worthy of a squirrel hunter’s attention start to finish in 2021-22. The 25,000-acre Attakapas Island WMA appeals to squirrels and squirrel hunters, even though it isn’t as big or notorious as some other WMAs in the Sportsman’s Paradise.

Why? It boasted the highest number of squirrels harvested per hunter effort — 2.3 — in the Lafayette Region in 2020-21.

“As far as hunter/effort, it’s been one of the best ones in the region. It is the best. There’s not a whole lot of squirrel hunters. They get some squirrel hunters the beginning of the season, then it slacks off. The guys who hunt there always do real good,” Vidrine said about the WMA that gave up 748 squirrels last season.

Attakapas Island WMA, accessible by boat only, is inhabited by fox squirrels with some grays and, he said, a surprising number of black squirrels. All thrive on the mast crop available.

“They don’t have a lot of oaks there but they do good,” Vidrine said, noting the area has fewer acorn-producing oaks than others in the region but plenty of other mast-producing trees.

A prime stretch, albeit a long one, is along the west bank of the Atchafalaya River starting at Myette Point. Head upriver to check out the higher ground, the ridges where many squirrel hunters have success.