EDITOR’S NOTE: This is last of a series of stories on women in the Teche Area who hunt and love being in the great outdoors, a series featuring Anna Baquet, Lauren Gonsoulin, Kathryn Templeton and Kate Ditch, and, today, Ondina Louviere.

The silver-haired, bespectacled great-great-grandmother with an eyepatch at the ready felt right at home, albeit a little chilly, inside a ground blind in central Texas late one afternoon last December, about a week before Christmas.

Ondina Louviere of Loreauville, one of many women, young and old, changing the face of hunting, was hoping to continue a three-year tradition of shooting one buck each December. It’s all about the experience of deer hunting that’s overwhelmed her ever since she first targeted deer in her late 60s.

Still, Louviere said recently, “I’m 83 years old and I don’t like the cold weather.”

The retired school bus driver does, however, like being on a deer stand or in a ground blind “with a heater going, feet nice and toasty and warm and seeing some deer go by.”

Louviere started hunting around 2009 during a participation boom in women’s hunting numbers. The National Shooting Sports Foundation reported female hunters’ numbers nearly doubled from 1.8 million in 2001 to 3.3 million in 2013.

The daughter of Lennet Grivat Sr. and Anita Trahan Grivat was born and raised in Loreauville. Grivat, an Orange, Texas, native who moved to Loreauville, and her mother, a Louisiana native and Loreauville resident, raised their daughter in a home 400 yards from Breaux’s Bay Craft Inc. along the Bayou Teche.

If Louviere has a lifespan similar to her mother’s, she’ll be in the woods hunting deer for a long, long time. Anita Grivat, who enjoyed sewing and crocheting, died in 2015 at age 96.

Louviere’s husband of 56 years, Widley J. “Pop” Louviere Sr., a U.S. Army paratrooper who served in the Korean War, also died in 2015. He was 81. The St. Martin Parish native loved to hunt and fish with family and friends.

His passion for deer hunting took him to Texas and, mostly, to north Louisiana as a member of Cypress Creek II. He spent as much time as possible at the camp with their sons Larry Louviere of Breaux Bridge, Jim “Jimmy” Louviere of Keller, Texas, and Widley “Joe” Louviere Jr. of Loreauville. The Louvieres also raised a daughter, Dawn Louviere Crum, of New Iberia.

That hunting camp and hunting life intrigued his wife, who wasn’t a hunter at the time.

“What happened quite a few years ago when I started hunting, my husband and my oldest son were talking about the annual (hunting club) meeting that was coming up and members were going to pay their dues,” she said, noting the wives of two hunting club members were members then.

Jokingly, Louviere said, she told her husband, “‘You know, one of these days, I want to ride and see what hunting and club are all about.’”

Later, Larry was at a gun show and brought his mother a 7mm-08 Remington Rifle, which she used and still cherishes but has since upgraded.

“That (Remington rifle) was a youth model so it fit me perfect … so it was the perfect gun for me. I still have it. But I upgraded to another rifle” about three years ago, she said.

She began hunting with that first rifle about 15 years ago. Her initial kill was a doe and she was hooked for life.

“When my husband died, my boys said, ‘Mama, you’re not giving up hunting,’” she said.

And the boys have been true to their word. She hunts in-state and out-of-state.

“My son, Jim, has a good friend he works with in west Texas. He told the boys to bring me up there,” she said about the invitation several years ago.

“They bring me up there a lot. Three years ago I shot my first big buck, about 180 pounds,” she said.

Louviere has been making the most of those trips by killing a buck each of the past three seasons in the Lone Star State. Her 170-pound class, 7-point buck was the latest.

Jimmy’s co-worker and friend is Brett Gardner, who has plenty of land to hunt near Clifton, Texas, nearly eight hours from Loreauville. Gardner also loves to eat shrimp po-boys from Bon Creole in New Iberia. The Louvieres brought him the fixin’s and po-boy bun from the restaurant in New Iberia.

That set the stage for Dec. 17 as she sat in a ground blind with her son, Joe, and grandson, Noah Louviere, one of seven grandchildren. Louviere also has nine great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild.

Noah was on hand strictly as a photographer/videographer. The 22-year-old all-around outdoorsman and accomplished archer also is a shutterbug who has taken to photography like a duck to water.

The Loreauville High School graduate was caught up in the moment they saw a nice buck.

“We had to decide quick,” Noah said about the crucial minutes ticking away after they first saw the buck.

It was their last day before returning to Acadiana, he explained. It was that or go out again the next morning.

His father got on a cell phone call with Gardner, Noah said, and got the OK to shoot the deer from the owner just before 4 p.m.

“I didn’t wait very long. Sometimes you don’t have very long,” Louviere said, noting inevitably someone coughs or something else spooks the wild animal.

That from an outdoorswoman who must have had the patience of Job while driving a school bus 24 years for the Iberia Parish School Board, then retiring at age 65.

Approximately five minutes after getting the green light that afternoon, Louviere sighted in with the unpatched eye and fired the 6.5 Credemoor Rifle she’s had since in 2020. Then the retired school bus driver who loves to sew and crochet squeezed the rifle’s trigger.

“When she shot, her first reaction was, ‘Did I miss?’ I said, ‘No. You did not miss,’ ” Noah said about the 80-yard shot.

“At my age, you know we don’t talk about eyesight or hearing,” she said, chuckling and noting her three sons tell her she shoots low. “So I’m improving.”

The buck ran about 20 yards into the woods and crumpled on the ground.

About the eyepatch …

Noah was in the backseat and his grandmother in the passenger seat one day approximately 11 years ago. As Joe drove, they discussed how she was right-handed but left-eye dominant, which can mess with peering through a riflescope.

“I said, ‘Granny, why don’t you shoot with a patch (eyepatch)” over the left eye, Noah said.

Louviere probably gave Joe, his father, a sidelong glance, perhaps rolled her eyes at the advice from a youngster. The more she thought about it, however, she decided to give it a whirl, shopped around and bought an eyepatch.

The moment of truth came on her next deer hunt when a deer walked into sight.

“He (Noah) comes up with this (eyepatch idea). I pulled the eyepatch down. I said, ‘Well, here goes nothing,’ ” she said.

Sure enough, she said, “I nailed the deer.”

She’s looking ahead to more hunting trips next season and beyond. It’s more than the hunt to her, however.

“You know, to me hunting is not just shooting. The big part for me is the camaraderie at the camp. It’s so much fun,” she said about the days and nights spent in and around camp with family.

“What we call it is making memories,” her grandson said.