John Flores: Grandpa, dad take 5-year-old on first hunt

Five-year-old boys are known to get a little fidgety when it comes to having to sit quietly for extended periods of time. Their attention span also tends to wane as well. Such was the case this past weekend on opening day of squirrel season.
My son David had called me earlier in the week asking what season was open and if I could take him and my grandson, Eli, on a squirrel hunt. It would be Eli’s first hunt of any kind, and his dad was anxious to start introducing him to hunting.
Of my three sons, David was always my shadow when it came to my outdoor pursuits. I can remember carrying him, a sack of decoys, my shotgun and ammo through the marsh to hunt ducks when he was about the same age as Eli.
So, there we were, three generations of men with our eyes glued to the canopy of several live oak trees looking for movement in the branches as the twilight gave way to sunrise.
In short order the forest on Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge had come alive.
“What’s that bird calling, Papa?” Eli inquired.
“It’s a pileated woodpecker,” I whispered.
“A pileated woodpecker?” He said, repeating my words.
“Yes, buddy,” I answered.
I wondered if he’d remember the woodpecker’s name knowing full well that kids his age are like little sponges. Besides, I thought, the dang bird also looks something like a small pterodactyl; only with colored feathers. And most kids his age know their dinosaurs.
Right about then we could see and hear the rustling of tree limbs high above us. My son looked at me and using his index and middle fingers, he first pointed to his eyes and then to a location above, letting me know where he saw a squirrel.
Sure enough, the bushy tail was cutting acorns for breakfast.
The squirrel ran along a branch and my son took aim. The shotgun bellowed and a load of fine steel shot plowed through the leaves hitting its mark. Our first squirrel of the morning!
With a big smile on his face, Eli said, “That was loud. It scared me.”
We all walked over to the tree we saw the squirrel fell from and scoured the ground until we found our quarry.
Eli struggled a bit keeping up, because much of the understory was covered in chest-high palmettos. We could see where we were walking, but for him the vegetation was like a big green wall.
After I saw a copperhead slither away while we were looking for the squirrel, I let his dad know we needed to keep Eli extra close and be on the lookout for other snakes.
There are two species of squirrels in Louisiana: the gray squirrel (Sciurus Carolinensis), which is the most common coastal marsh hunters chase in the fall and the fox squirrel (Sciurus Niger) found more in the uplands.
Both species are omnivorous. Nuts (buried and unburied) like acorns, pecans and hickories are mast that dominates their diets during the late summer and fall. However, these critters also eat buds, beetles, bulbs, tubers, roots, berries, fruit, grain and even eggs of birds.
Basically, there’s no scarcity of food sources that would disrupt populations. What’s more, the season dates and bag limits have never changed as far back as I can remember, with opening day traditionally the first Saturday in October.
The last in-depth report from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries that provided small game harvest statistics was issued following the 2012-13 season.
That report indicated some 50,700 small game hunters bagged an estimated 872,100 squirrels that season.
Essentially, a small army of Louisiana hunters barely put a dent in the state’s squirrel population annually.
The oak trees we happened to be sitting under were full of acorns the squirrels were feeding on. There wasn’t any need to do a lot of walking opening day, that was for sure.
I told David after he picked up his squirrel, “We’ll just sit and let things quiet back down. They’ll come right back to this little group of trees.”
It wasn’t long before we started seeing movement in the upper canopy again and we shot a couple more squirrels. That’s also when Eli began to fidget and say he was hungry. Unfortunately, we forgot the little bag of goodies his grandma took time to prepare.
Not to worry though, Papa always carries a few Rice Krispies treats in his truck, which got us through the next 30 minutes of the morning’s hunt.
Just past 8:30 a.m., David leaned over and said, “Dad, let’s go. I want Eli to have a good experience on his first hunt, so he’ll want to go again.” That boy had grown up to be a wise daddy.
No doubt had we stayed, we would have limited out or come fairly close.
But, with a half limit of squirrels in the bag we went home with a good mess to cook up. And more importantly, the knowledge of a mission accomplished, gently introducing a 5-year-old to hunting.
Squirrel season runs through Feb. 28, 2022, with a daily bag limit of eight.