Since Louisiana’s small game season opened Oct. 5, Justin “Mikie” Molbert has 60 squirrels to his credit while hunting around Coteau Holmes and elsewhere in the Teche Area.

“Mikie,” as family and friends call him, has bagged an eight-squirrel limit often this season as he walks the woods with a 20-gauge pump shotgun. His squirrel hunting success belies his age.

The 14-year-old high school student has been hunting squirrels and deer since he was about 6, he said a few days after killing a bushy-tailed “tree hugger” to remember forever on Oct. 21.

Mikie’s first kill that morning was a white squirrel. The white squirrel is being mounted by a taxidermist, soon to be hanging on a wall next to a black squirrel killed last season by Mikie.

The son of Justin Molbert of Coteau Holmes and Blair Prados of Catahoula spends as much time as possible with his paternal grandfather, Dale Molbert of Bayou Portage near Coteau Holmes. Mikie kept telling his grandpa and an uncle about seeing a white squirrel for two days prior to his solo hunt.

“Whenever he told me a couple days before (the white squirrel was shot), he saw a white one, I didn’t believe. On Sunday, he said he saw it again,” Jude Molbert, an uncle, said.

Ditto for the young hunter’s grandfather, who heard the same claims over those two days before the kill. Then the young hunter shot it shortly after 7 a.m. Monday while taking advantage of fall break from St. Martinville Senior High School, where he is a freshman.

Dale Molbert recalled the conversations and said, “He said, ‘Papa, there’s a white squirrel in the yard.’ I said, ‘Mikie, there’s no white squirrels (in the area).’ He came prove it to me. He was all pumped up.”

That Monday morning, Mikie spotted the white squirrel once again through branches of an oak tree. He snuck up to the tree, he said, apparently unnoticed by the white squirrel.

The teen said his target was crouched between the fork of the oak tree. He lifted the shotgun he was carrying, aimed and fired one shot.

When he got to the fallen white squirrel, he said, “I was, honestly, just shocked.”

His uncle felt the same way.

“I’ve never seen one solid white,” Jude Molbert said.

White squirrels are uncommon in North America but not as rare as one might believe, according to various sources. According to the White Squirrel Institute, they are typically Eastern gray squirrels with coloring determined by two main factors – albinism and the white morph gene.

Dale Molbert said he saw a white squirrel once a long, long time ago. It was mounted.

The 65-year-old outdoorsman, a welder at Metal Shark Boats before he retired, hunted deer and squirrels hard most of his life but hunts less frequently since both knees have been replaced. The soft ground across much of the Peche Coulee Hunting Club lease makes walking difficult.

“I don’t hunt like I used to,” he said.

He revels in the hunting accomplishments of his grandson.

“Oh, he loves hunting, hunting and fishing. We have a pond in the front yard. He stays there fishing,” he said, noting his residence is surrounded by woods on three sides.

Mikie has yet to kill his first deer as of Oct. 25. However, he planned to go deer hunting over the weekend with Jude Molbert, who’s also his godfather, carrying his .44-caliber lever action rifle.

Dale Molbert said he already has taken the white squirrel to a taxidermist in Franklin.

“He’ll have a black one and a white one. You don’t see that too often, a white squirrel,” the proud grandfather said.