Tate Denise killed his biggest bowhunting buck this past season while hunting in Texas. The 8-pointer is one of five deer he has shot in 2021-22.

It’s been a winter of content for a 23-year-old New Iberian.

Nevermind he’s been on about half the duck hunts he usually makes during a season — including a recent, rewarding trip to Henderson Lake, where a bunch of wood ducks made the mistake of flying too close to Tate Denise.

It has been a full slate of outdoors sports late summer, fall and winter. Denise also has five deer to his credit, four in Texas and one from the marsh country on Avery Island, where he grew up and started hunting and fishing at an early age.

Much of the time, he has been on the water either hunting alligators during the season in September or bowfishing at night this winter in his new specially outfitted “big boat” for redfish, sheepshead and gar as a recently licensed guide helping out his father, Jarrod Denise of Picayune, Mississippi, who owns Fin Hunter Guide Services LLC. That charter service operates out of Hopedale.

Denise got back to his roots, the basics, a few weeks ago on his first duck hunt of the year, Jan. 2-3 at Henderson Lake. He enjoyed it immensely while hunting with a buddy, Luke Broussard, 22, of St. Martinville.

They had a two-man limit of wood ducks both mornings.

“He (Broussard) knows the Basin (Atchafalaya Basin) pretty well,” Denise said Monday morning about his first duck hunt there this season.

The two young duck hunters didn’t settle into a permanent duck blind or a boat blind. They leaned back or took a seat against trees on the north flats above Interstate 10.

“We sat by trees, mostly. Old-fashioned,” Denise said. “We set out a few decoys in case big ducks flew. But mostly it was passing shots (on the wood ducks) where they were just flying by coming into the hole.”

The duck hunters didn’t blow their duck calls much, if at all, he said.

That was only the 13th or so waterfowl hunt of 2021-22 for Denise. His duck hunting season began with a bang when he hunted with friends on their lease in Vermilion Parish and had a nine-man limit of blue-winged teal Sept. 11, opening day of the special teal season in Louisiana.

He returned from a disappointing duck hunting trip harvest-wise to Oklahoma with friends a few days before going to Henderson Lake. Aside from the camaraderie and the joy of waterfowl hunting, it wasn’t a trip to write home about.

“I just got back from Oklahoma. We didn’t do too good. It was tough. I was still mad at ’em (ducks),” Denise said with a chuckle.

About duck hunting at Henderson Lake, he said, “It’s very hit or miss. If you can find a good little hole before the crowd gets there, it can be good.”

Denise, an electrician who works for E.P. Breaux Electric Inc., used to shoot ducks and doves with a Beretta A400 shotgun loaded with 2 ¾-inch No. 6 shotgun shells. Now he favors a Benelli Field M2 20-gauge shotgun, which is light, durable and the backbone of the gun manufacturer’s semi-auto line.

“I hung up the 12-gauge a few years ago. I started shooting that (Benelli) and I can’t break away from it. It’s nice. I had bought it for doves, mostly, and hunted the whole season. I brought it to Oklahoma to duck hunt with it. That works just fine,” he said.

One of his deer hunting highlights this season unfolded during the last week of November during one of his trips to Texas. He shot his biggest-ever bowhunting buck — an 8-pointer — in the Lone Star State.

Denise also bagged a good-sized doe Oct. 31 on family property in the marsh he grew up hunting and fishing, starting around age 5, with his father at Avery Island. A pipeline that has paid off in the past cha-chinged again for the native outdoorsman, who posted Oct. 31 on his Facebook page after the hunt with Avery Derouen and Dylan Cagnina: “Hunted back home this weekend and as usual the old pipeline was on fire.”

“I’ve been hunting there my whole life. That’s where I learned to hunt deer and ducks. That’s where it all started,” Denise said last week about Avery Island.

The Highland Baptist Christian School graduate undoubtedly is one of those kindred souls born shotgun in one hand and a fishing rod in the other. The Teche Area has beaucoup outdoorsmen who have ramped up their passion for the outdoors as they reach their late teens or into their 20s, like Denise, Broussard, Derouen and Cagnina. The local list of young outdoorsmen who prefer to be hunting or fishing more than anything else includes but sure isn’t limited to Saint Schwing, Hunter Neuville, Andre Weber, Charlie Gaspard, Austin Theriot, Braxton Resweber, Brennon Bourgeois, Jack Cousin, Brad Romero and Dylan Trim.

Who wouldn’t want to go to work after dark-thirty and stay on the job until the customer satisfies his or her desire to stick an arrow in redfish, sheepshead and garfish? That’s Denise, who got his charter boat captain’s license last year and spends as much time as possible assisting his father run bowfishing (or sight fishing for redfish) charters.

His bowfishing zeal probably stems from his affinity to bowhunting. He absolutely loves bowfishing and has years of experience. It’s at its best now through August, he said, with a lull in the action during the fall months.

A compound bow in his hands is as natural as a rifle, shotgun or fishing rod, a sure sign there are more outdoors adventures — making moments and memories — ahead this season, then throughout the spring and summer at Avery Island, around Hopedale, in Texas and Oklahoma, everywhere in between and, of course, Henderson Lake. Look out, woodies.