LOREAUVILLE – A Loreauville outdoorsman and avid hunter may never experience another squirrel hunting trip like he did one day last season.

Chris Courville sure wouldn’t mind it happening again, however, when Louisiana’s 2024-25 squirrel hunting season opens Oct.5. (Rabbit hunting also begins that Saturday.) He’ll be in the woods with his son, Landon Courville, and daughter, Remi Courville, and probably two of Landon’s buddies from Loreauville High School.

What happened that day during the 2023-24 season? Courville stood in one spot to shoot and kill six squirrels off a single oak tree … a dead oak tree that apparently met its demise during a lightning strike. The squirrels were chewing on bark.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Courville said Sept. 24 while talking about the upcoming squirrel hunting season and reminiscing about the past season, particularly that unprecedented day at the dead oak tree.

The 42-year-old Louisiana Marine & Propeller Services owner didn’t see a single squirrel on his next visit to the same dead oak tree, which typically don’t harbor squirrels. In fact, there was nary a bushy-tailed small game to be seen there the rest of the season.

Most of the squirrels he harvested last season were on sweetgum trees, Courville said recently, warming up to the subject of another squirrel season at hand.

He’ll gladly take another limit of squirrels on opening day Saturday, one similar to so many previous openers he has enjoyed every October since he was a boy hunting with his father, the late Lawrence Courville. All the while he’ll be hopeful his daughter, a fifth-grade cheerleader, bags her first squirrel, or even a limit of eight squirrels to take home after their walk together in the woods on Lake Fausse Pointe Hunting Club property that spans 1,100 acres.

Courville said his son, a senior at LHS, is just as excited as he is about the fast-approaching season opener.

“Yeah, he’s pumped up. He’s ready,” he said.

“We just need some cooler weather … at least cooler in the morning.”

Courville has yet to walk the woods in the weeks leading up to opening day as of Sept. 27. He tries to get out and look around at least once before each squirrel hunting season.

“I haven’t had a chance to go scout. I’ve been busy at the shop. I haven’t had a chance to go on the lease this year to look at anything,” he said.

With luck, he said, he’ll be able to get out at least once during the week leading up to Oct. 5.

“I’ll take the four-wheeler, poke around and see if they have any cuttings,” he said, referring to the debris from mast crops eaten by squirrels.

Courville, an avid deer hunter, has a feeling opening day will be a good one for him and his small hunting party that hunts the woods near the Lake Dauterive Boat Ramp. That area’s mast crop was “pretty good last year,” he said, which bodes well for the upcoming months of squirrel hunting that ends Feb. 28.

Overall, he’ll take another squirrel season like he enjoyed in 2023-24. He hunts with a Super Black Eagle Benelli loaded with 12-gauge shotgun shells he loads himself.

“Everybody should do good. I don’t think the storm messed up the mast crop over here. It didn’t pass that bad here. I think we’re good here. I believe others (in the Teche Area) will do good, too,” he said about squirrel hunting prospects around Lake Fausse Point Hunting Club’s acreage.

Courville believes others in the region will have success, as well.

And maybe, just maybe, that lone dead oak tree might have half-a-dozen or so squirrels on it again this season.