These bushy-tails were bagged on the first day of the 2019-20 small game season by Chris Courville of Loreauville and his hunting party, which included his son, Landon.

LOREAUVILLE — The occasional boom of a shotgun rose above the stillness of the woods awakening for the day ahead along Lake Fausse Pointe on Saturday morning Oct. 5, the first day of the squirrel hunting season in the Sportsman’s Paradise.

   Some of those booms came from the shotgun shouldered by Chris Courville of Loreauville, a 37-year-old outdoorsman enjoying the day for the umpteenth time in, say, the past 25 years. It was especially meaningful because Courville was in the woods hunting squirrels with his 12-year-old son, Landon, and friends who share a similar passion for small game hunting.

The Courvilles and other successful squirrel hunters cruise the hardwoods quietly because squirrels are masters of evasion. The snapping of twigs and the shuffling of leaves puts squirrels on alert and often shut them down for an hour or more.

Courville also knows that patience and persistence are a squirrel hunter’s biggest allies. Those two traits paid off on opening day.

“Well, it went well. I killed seven, Landon killed five and another guy (Luke Owens) who went with us killed his limit,” he said about the first day of the 2019-20 squirrel hunting season in Louisiana.

Courville’s brother-in-law, Jarad Hunter of Loreauville, and Hunter’s son, Jase, 6, also joined them. The youngster shot his first squirrel with a .22-caliber rifle but was unable to locate it after it fell.

“He (Jase) was pumped up and upset at the same time because he couldn’t find it,” Courville said.

His brother-in-law, he said, “Let his little boy hunt to scratch the itch. He’s been wanting to go hunting.”

“We got out right at daybreak. We shut it down at a quarter-til-9, 9. Had we kept hunting, we probably would have gotten a few more but it was getting hot and the wind was starting to blow. I don’t like hunting in the wind.”

Approximately 95 percent of the squirrels they saw and shot were feeding in the treetops, as squirrels do early in the season. Squirrels are most active at sunrise and sunset, which explains why the squirrel hunters were out at the crack of dawn.

About halfway through the morning trip, Courville said his son complained it was difficult to down the bushy-tails with his 20-gauge shotgun, so he loaned him his 12-gauge Benelli shotgun. Landon had two squirrels at the time, then bagged three more after getting the 12-gauge, while his father hunted the rest of the time with the 20-gauge.

Courville said the woods were pretty empty of squirrel hunters with the exception of a “couple people hunting from our lease but not a whole bunch.”

He compared this season’s squirrel hunting to the first day in 2018.

“I’m going to say it was fair. Last year’s opening day was better. We saw more last year,” he said. “People I talked to said it was fair but not great.”

However, Courville expects the squirrel hunting success to improve when weather conditions permit.

“I believe it will. It just needs to cool off a little bit. Once we get cool spells to pass it’ll definitely cool off,” he said.

Friday’s cold front more than likely will be what the doctor ordered for early fall squirrel hunting in the heart of Cajun Country.

Courville said he planned to go twice more this past week, on Wednesday by himself and again on Saturday with Landon.

It’s special hunting with his son, like his father, the late Lawrence Courville, went squirrel hunting with him and his brother, Jed.

“Oh, yeah, he likes that. He’s been whooping and hollering for about three weeks” leading up to the squirrel hunting season opener, Courville said.

He plans to hunt squirrels as often as possible this season, he said.

The 2019-20 Louisiana squirrel hunting season and rabbit hunting season, which also started Oct. 5, end on Feb. 29.