Small game time BIG time

Published 12:30 am Sunday, October 7, 2018

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OREAUVILLE — Squirrel hunters from Loreauville joined hundreds of others in the Teche Area and across the Sportsman’s Paradise and came home with squirrels for many meals to come when the season opened Saturday.

Unlike a day in say, December or January, squirrel hunting offered its share of challenges opening day with the heat and amount of greenery on the mast-producing oak trees that harbor the bushy-tailed small game.

“It was hot today. We should have been on a beach this morning,” Chris Courville, 36, said with a laugh after returning from a squirrel hunt with his son, Landon, 11, and five other members of the Lake Fausse Pointe Hunting Club, including two other youngsters.

They had a total of 40 squirrels on the morning that ended months, weeks and days of waiting for the small game season to open. Courville and his buddies cleaned 32 of them (one of the squirrel hunters left with his limit) and many of those fresh-dressed squirrels are destined to be cooked and smothered, which is the way he likes them.

“Oh, yeah, four of us cleaned them. We got ’em knocked out real fast, got that out of the way,” he said.

Courville, who owns Louisiana Marine and Propeller Services in Loreauville, said his son and he began hunting at daybreak and were back at the pickup truck about 9 a.m.

Like his father, Landon is learning about squirrel hunting at an early age. His father was in the woods with his brother, Jed, and their dad, the late Lawrence Courville of Loreauville, when they were young boys, then Chris Courville started hunting squirrels on his own when he was around 12-13 years old.

Landon shot and killed four squirrels with his Remington 870 20-gauge shotgun, his father said. He got his bag limit of eight squirrels using a 12-gauge Benelli shotgun, he said.

“They were feeding in the green oaks,” he said.

“We walked the whole time. We didn’t walk far … about 100 yards in one little circle (for the duration of the squirrel hunt),” he said.

“Me and Landon kind of split up for 20 minutes. I managed to get six out of one tree,” he said.

The scene was repeated in woods across the area, across Acadiana and across Louisiana. Squirrel hunting on opening day is a tradition passed down generation to generation, especially in this area.

The state’s squirrel hunting season ends Feb. 28. There is a special spring season May 4-27.

The rabbit hunting season also opened Oct. 6.

Courville did his homework before the squirrel hunting opener. He scouted several areas and found a few cuttings under the green oaks and even better sign of mast in the water oak areas.

Courville, who also hunts deer and ducks, mostly the former, said he plans to make another squirrel hunt today, the second day of the squirrel hunting season.

“I’m going to try to go tomorrow. I don’t know who all’s coming tomorrow,” he said.

The squirrels will be there.