John K. Flores: Louisiana offers opportunities as squirrel season opens

It was some 20 minutes before sunrise Saturday when suddenly a loud pop broke the silent solitude of Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge. The subsequent scratching of squirrels chasing each other high up in the live oaks revealed the source of the popping sound.

Essentially, when an acorn drops 40 to 50 feet and strikes a palmetto on the way down, it sounds like a single beat on a snare drum. What’s more, squirrels are indiscriminate in the way they feed, especially when breakfast is a tree full of acorns. If they happen to drop a few, so be it, there’s plenty more where that came from.

If you were lucky enough to hunt opening day of squirrel season last weekend, not only were you greeted with fall-like temperatures in the 50s at daylight, you probably had plenty of bushy-tailed targets to shoot at too. That is if you did your homework and scouted around a bit.

From small game harvest surveys, both hunter participation as well as harvest numbers have been fairly constant the past three seasons. There were an estimated 52,200 squirrel hunters in 2018-19, 48,600 in 2019-20 and 53,700 in 2020-21.

Those hunters harvested an estimated 703,900, 682,700 and 737,400 squirrels, respectively, the past three seasons.

The Louisiana Big and Small Game Harvest Survey for 2020-21 estimated that squirrel hunters hunted 328,600 days. Moreover, 69% of those squirrel hunters hunted at least one to five days last year.

In an email exchange with Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Small Game Program Manager Cody Cedotal, the biologist says there is suitable habitat for squirrels found throughout the state and harvest rates are typically low, thus, the reason for the long season and unchanged bag limits over the years.

There are two common species of squirrels that St. Mary Parish hunters harvest annually in a variety of habitats, the gray squirrel (Sciurus Carolinensis) and the fox squirrel (S. niger).

In describing the differences between the two species besides the obvious color variation, Cedotal said, “Gray squirrels seem to be more habitat generalists and can thrive in a wider variety of locations. Fox squirrels generally spend more time on the ground than gray squirrels and tend to use more open forests with sparse understory for the most part.

“And, although gray squirrels do forage on the ground,” Cedotal continued, “they tend to stay in the forest canopy more and typically select sites with relatively dense and/or understory cover. Both species use cavities in live or dead trees as dens, whereas leaf nests are used for resting, escape cover and rearing young.”

When it comes to finding a place to hunt squirrels, that’s easy. The LDWF maintains 1.6 million acres of Wildlife Management Areas. Kisatchie National Forest has some 604,000 acres. Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge is made up of 9,028 acres and is just one of 23 national wildlife refuges in the state.

One of the things hunters need to be aware of when hunting on public land is they need to get very familiar with various “refuge” regulations. NWRs require the use of non-toxic game loads when hunting small game on these refuge systems.

It’s also important to note that State WMA and NWRs have specific regulations concerning check in and game harvest reporting. Prior to hunting any of our state’s refuge systems, take time to read and learn about specific regulations.

In other hunting news, in a LDWF press release issued Sept. 28, the department reminded hunters and the public to take care in handling and preparing harvested wildlife.
The release offered eight general safety guidelines for hunters and others handling wildlife and their tissues. They include:

1. Do not handle or eat sick game.
2. Field dress and prepare game outdoors or in a well-ventilated area.
3. Wear rubber or disposable nitrile gloves while handling and cleaning game.
4. When done handling game, wash hands thoroughly with soap or disinfectant and clean knives, equipment, and surfaces that were exposed to game with hot soapy water and a 10% bleach solution.
5. Do not eat, drink or consume tobacco products while handling animals.
6. All game should be thoroughly cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees.
7. Avoid contact with surfaces that appear to be contaminated with feces from wild or domestic bird.
8. Waterfowl hunters should adhere to these guidelines.

With an abundant population of squirrels, plenty of public land available, a generous bag limit of eight squirrels per day, and a long season that runs through
the month of February 2023, why not take advantage of some of the best small game hunting in the country? Some of it is right here in St. Mary Parish.

John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththef lo@cox.net.