Chris Courville has walked the woods along Lake Dauterive‘s shoreline to hunt squirrels each opening day for 3 ½ decades on an 1,100-acre hunting lease near his home in Loreauville.

Louviere, 41, will be out there again when the sun rises on the first day of the small game season in Louisiana. He’ll hunt again with his teenage son, Landon Courville, friends and, for the first time, his 9-year-old daughter, Remi Courville.

“I’ve got two daughters coming up,” Courville said about Remi and Audrey Courville, 8, noting the oldest seems to have a love for the outdoors.

Rem has a .22-caliber rifle, a Crickett, that she has become comfortable with at an early age.

“She walks with that thing and shoots at everything moving. Yeah, she’s probably going to be there opening morning,” Courville said, adding his youngest daughter will walk with him the second day of the season on Sunday.

That there will be yet another Courville hunting squirrels for the first time when the small game season opens Oct. 7 should come as no surprise. Squirrel hunting has been part of the family for many generations, particularly on Day 1.

Courville stepped in and walked step for step at age 5 with his father, the late Lawrence Courville, as did his brother, Jed Courville of Loreauville. Courville started going out to target squirrels on his own around age 12 or 13, he has said in the past.

For sure, Landon, 16, can’t wait.

“He’s ready. Oh, yeah, he’s chomping at the bit. He’s ready to go,” Courville said about Landon, a junior at Loreauville High School.

As for himself, he said, “I’m always ready, too.”

Courville has a few buddies who want to join him on opening day, he said, while his son has a couple of friends interested in hunting with them the first day. They’ll be hunting on the Fausse Pointe Hunting Club lease along the lake in Iberia Parish.

Aside from scouting the area, Courville still follows advice for successful squirrel hunting from his father, who always said, “Pick up your feet and be quiet.”

How does the squirrel hunting opener shape up for 2023?

While he hasn’t been on the ground there in the weeks leading up to opening day as much as he would prefer, Courville did go Sept. 26 following a tractor ride onto the lease and took a close look around the area he starts squirrel hunting each season.

The Loreauville outdoorsman said he saw very little sign of “cuttings,” the remnants that fall to the ground after nuts or cones are shredded by feeding squirrels. Cuttings on the ground are dead giveaways that squirrels are or have been in a tree’s branches.

On the plus side, Courville reported seeing “some acorn(s)” in a few green oaks and sweet gums. The seasonal mast crop is a key to squirrel hunting every fall.

He’ll stay in the woods throughout the fall and winter hunting either squirrels or deer. Last year the father and son combined to harvest two does while letting six bucks walk.

“I have a few on camera (trail cam) now. It’s looking like it’ll be a decent season this year,” he said about deer hunting prospects.

Courville, who has owned Louisiana and Marine Propeller Services LLC in Loreauville since 2012, is hopeful this year’s squirrel season is as bountiful, or more, as it was for him in 2022.

“It was a really good season last year, a very good season,” he said, noting he hunted about a dozen times after a so-so opening day and limited out on approximately 10 of those trips.

It was so good that after the first few outings with limits he left his shotgun at home and carried a .22-caliber rifle into the woods “to make it a little more of a challenge.” He enjoyed it immensely.

He really isn’t that fired up to hunt on the first week of October with daytime temperatures in the lower 90s. The heat has been even more pronounced since the scattered and precious few rains, he said.

If he needs to cool off after each hunt opening weekend, he can treat himself and the hunting party to snoballs from Sizzlin Sneaux, which his wife, Ashley, opened this year.

No doubt, it’s time to get in the squirrel hunting mode. As he said the day he talked about the upcoming opener, while delivering some treats from the snoball stand that also offers snacks, plate lunches and more, “It’s always good to talk about squirrel hunting.”

His son, daughters, brother and many other across the state agree.