Early last year, before and after my retirement as senior news editor of The Daily Iberian, I began removing the contents of a couple of desks.

After 44 years, I accumulated beaucoup outdoors photos, both submitted or snapped by myself or the newspaper’s photographers. They all were filed away, out of sight, out of mind, alphabetically by category — i.e., bass fishing, waterfowl hunting, saltwater fishing, etc. — until needed and many were used as file photos over the years.

The unpacking got a little more serious when word came down the pipe the physical relocation of the newspaper was imminent. The task at hand got real in late spring and early summer.

What a nostalgic couple of hours was spent each time digging out the collection. I got another look at the many photos submitted by outdoorsmen in and around New Iberia. Each reminded me about the way they accompanied this story or that story.

One of them in particular struck me. It was a duck hunting photo taken by Brian Lipari of New Iberia and submitted by Bubba Judice, another New Iberian who has since moved to New Braunfels, Texas.

Judice was pictured with his good friend to this day, Mark Lipari, and Lipari’s brother, Michael Lipari, and their father, Lenny Lipari, all of New Iberia. Judice’s golden retriever, Reba, and Mark Lipari’s black lab, Pepper, were in the photo centered around the bed of a pickup truck, along with 20 mallards shot Dec. 12, 1998. (See related story on this page.)

I looked at the back of the photo. The names of each duck hunting were listed, along with the words, “20 mallards. Killed 12-12-98 Sat Location Forked Island. Bubba Judice” (and his phone number and hours to reach him).

I kept that photo in mind for the 2019-20 waterfowl hunting season. I remember thinking it’d be great to relive that story.

All of those photos and the contents of those desks are at home now, creating some consternation space-wise and, as a result, raised eyebrows from the missus. But I didn’t forget that one.

This past week I called Mark Lipari, 44, after getting his cell phone number from Tommy Lipari of New Iberia over at Lipari Specialties. Mark, who works in sales at Action Specialties, which is owned by his father, was in Florida at the time and was oh-so excited about rehashing the events of that photo after his return to New Iberia on Wednesday.

Before hanging up, he remembered the exact place that photo was taken. The pickup truck was parked on the side of his old house on Adrian Street next to a trash can.

Informed that the location listed for the great duck hunt was Forked Island, which is in Vermilion Parish southwest of Abbeville, Lipari laughed and said it wasn’t that Forked Island. It was one of their favorite duck hunting locales at the mouth of the Wax Lake Outlet, one they named themselves. 

“We killed a lot of ducks back then,” he said.

Later that day, I called Judice, 51, an oilfield consultant who owns HCCI and also runs his family-owned food truck, Cajun on da Geaux LLC, which is wildly popular in New Braunfels.

Mark and Bubba remain friends. They don’t fish and hunt together like they did so well together in their 20s but they do keep in touch, both outdoorsmen said.

“Me and Bubba are still real good friends,” Mark said. “Me and Bubba used to catch a lot of speckled trout in the summer and hunt ducks in the winter.”

Bubba said, “You should see the speckled trout we used to catch (in Vermilion Bay).”

Mark doesn’t hunt ducks as much as he once did. He mostly hunts deer and wild pigs on the family’s leased property in the marsh at Cypremort Point, he said.

It seems, he reasoned, there are more deer to be seen these days than ducks.

His younger brother, Michael, also mostly deer hunts and pig hunts, he said.

Bubba hunts deer most of the time in the Texas hill country and rarely duck hunts unless he goes to North Dakota, which he did in October. And he loves to catch ol’ yellowmouths — 8- and 9-pound speckled trout — on topwaters while wade fishing in Baffin Bay below Corpus Christi, Texas.

He’s proud of how Caterall Co., his food truck business, has brought Cajun cuisine to New Braunfels.

“We’ve been doing that five years now,” he said about his wife, Gypsie Dugas Judice, a Loreauville native, and sons Gabriel, 18, and John Paul, 12, and daughters, Blaize, 22, and Zoe, 19.

They cook and serve gumbo, boudin, jambalaya, you name it if it’s from the heart of Cajun Country, and the populace eats it up.

He was glad to take a few minutes to talk about the good old days duck hunting with family and friends at the Wax Lake Outlet. Ditto for Mark.

 

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of the Daily Iberian.