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Bark up the right tree – How to make the most of squirrel hunting with dogs

January 1, 2013 John Flores

Somewhere inside the small patch of woods surrounded by sugarcane fields, Hoke hunted. Maybe no more than 20 acres in size, if you flew over it the woodland would resemble a postage stamp stuck in the middle of an envelope.

A mix of hackberry, swamp maple, water and pin oaks, the isolated habitat wasn’t large enough to support a deer population, but it’s perfect for big red fox squirrels.

Hoke was used to the terrain, having hunted it before. There’d be no surprises on the afternoon. The goal was simply to spend a couple of hours hunting on a day already short because of winter, and if all went well the day would culminate with shooting a couple of the tree dwellers for the pot.[…]

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Sibling Rivalry — How this brother-sister team hunt Atchafalaya WMA ducks

January 1, 2013 John Flores

A midmorning hunt with a late arrival on the Atchafalaya Wax Delta was the plan. Adam Rhodes had no desire to get up at 3 a.m. to beat the weekend crowd to some of the better locations he already scouted and plugged into his GPS.

The diehard Morgan City waterfowl hunter had done the middle-of-the night thing before in order to beat others to a preferred location.

And he figured out it isn’t always necessary.

Rhodes is now accustomed to making later-in-the-day hunts on the Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area, understanding the tidal conditions and advantages of scouting prior to hunting the vast 141,000-acre refuge that can only be reached by boat.[…]

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The more things change — Fishing for trout, bass, redfish at The Pen

January 1, 2013 Chris Ginn

Change is inevitable in coastal marsh.

The tide gives when it rises and takes away when it falls.

Land piles up in some places while washing away in others.

Fish that you couldn’t stop from biting one day cease to exist the next.

Nowhere is this change more evident than in The Pen. One of the most-famous fishing holes in all of Southeast Louisiana, this Lafitte hotspot once wasn’t even a lake.[…]