Lights. Cameras. Action.

All of the scenic outdoors world we live and play in was a stage Monday and Tuesday. Cameras valued as much as $70,000 followed ducks and duck hunters from the camp along the Gulf Coast to the duck blind and back as “The Fowl Life” cable television show host Chad Belding filmed a show in the marsh west of Pecan Island.

Belding, a Reno, Nevada, native, wanted to showcase southwest Louisiana culture and his friends, Blaine Broussard, 75, and Kyle Broussard, the father-and-son team from Loreauville responsible for the introduction of GatorTail Outboards in 2004. The duck hunting trips were planned for the first week of the 2022-23 season in Louisiana’s West Zone.

Belding, who has the top-rated show on The Outdoor Channel, hunted Monday with Kyle Broussard and his sons, Owen, a sophomore offensive tackle for the Loreauville Tigers, and Max. He was out again the next day morning with the elder Broussards, Kyle and Blaine.

His camera crew – Jack Orlandi and Eli Neeley, both of Reno, Nevada — was chauffeured to the main duck blind each day by Ricky Nicholas of Lafayette. Nicholas, who may be the most “hard core” duck hunter around, is a recruitment manager for the Louisiana Army National Guard who also promotes and markets GatorTail Outboards.

Orlandi set up with a camera and appropriate camo behind the GatorTail Quack Shack while Neeley spent the morning manning a camera at the edge of the pond being hunted by the Broussards and Belding. Dressed to stay out in the elements, it appeared Neeley had more brush and camo than the floating duck blind.

The cinemaphotographers rolled the camera, so to speak, start to finish.

Also hunting ducks that day was Loreauville native Charles Judice of Arnaudville. He’s 50, married, a regional sales manager for Teleflex and still passionate about duck hunting.

Judice is proud to know Kyle Broussard. They have been close friends since he can remember, teaming up on duck hunts years ago to the Wax Lake Outlet and recently to Saskatchewan.

Judice said he sees GatorTail Outboards and boats on the highways all the way to Colorado, where the friends have hunted elk.

“It’s truly amazing what he’s done. One of the amazing things is how it took off,” Judice said as he waited on ducks to pass.

The Broussards have improved and kept up with technical advance over the years, he said. Most importantly, he said, they listened to customers.

Go-Devils were popular surface drive engines when the two friends were growing up, Judice said. The long shaft, or tail, made it difficult to make sharp turns and there was no reverse, he said as Nicholson gunned the GatorTail through the marsh, skillfully navigating a labyrinth of cuts and drains to a two-man duck blind about 10 minutes away from the GatorTail Quack Shack harboring the Broussards and Belding.

Judice’s buddy kept thinking about developing a different mud motor. The idea consumed him throughout college, which prompted the mechanical engineering major at UL-Lafayette to do his senior project on the air-cooled surface drive outboard motor.

His father, also an engineer, helped him design the GatorTails, first patented in 2006.

“They wanted to build a short long tail, if you want to call it that,” Judice said.

The Broussards did just that. GatorTail is billed as the smoothest, toughest and most adaptable mud motor on the market, Judice said.

Tuesday was Judice’s first duck hunt of the season and, he admitted, it showed. There were more misses than hits with each blast of his Binelli 12-guage shotgun.

During one sequence, as about nine teal strafed the decoys, left to right, he emptied his chamber to no avail.

Judice paused a few moments after those misses, smiled sheepishly, then shook his fist at the departing ducks in mock anger, raised his voice and yelled, “Like my buddy says … Don’t come back!”

He was able to shake it off. He knows from experience that a slow duck hunt can get very fast.

“It can go from nothing to wide open in 30 seconds,” said the former quarterback for the Loreauville High School Tigers.

And it did just that soon after Nicholas chauffeured the local outdoors writer at midmorning to the GatorTail Quack Shack manned by the Broussards and Belding.

Judice was tending to some business when he saw a small bunch of teal closing in on the pond in front of him. He hurriedly tidied up, reached for his shotgun.

The avid duck hunter hit one duck, then downed two with one shot, and knocked down another.

Besides teal, plenty of grays and spoonbills flew by but avoided the gumbo pot.

Nicholson, who killed a limit easily a day earlier in the same duck blind, said, “I see more big ducks today. I didn’t see a single big duck yesterday.”

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.