Volume 32 Number 10 - October 2012

FEATURES:

	82 Options: Fishing locations abound along Highway 82 Highway 82 hugs the Southwest Louisiana coast and provides plenty of options for anglers looking for a quick fix. Highway 82 in Vermilion Parish is a paved corridor through some of the finest natural areas in the state. During the fall, the wings of autumn buzz highway travelers on 82 while alongside the scenic highway, camo-clad hunters start getting their ... Marty Cannon

	Bushytail Booyah: Making the most of the opening weekend of squirrel season Opening week of squirrel hunting season in the Bayou State presents your best opportunities at bagging a limit. Sammy Guillory of Breaux Bridge was a man on a mission near the end of one of his first hunts during the 2011 Louisiana squirrel season. Looking through his bag, the 50-year-old hunter counted seven squirrels — five greys and two ... Chris Berzas

	Cypress ball banquet Cypress trees provide not only an alternate food source for bushytails, but they offer hunters easy opening-weekend limits — without all the hunting pressure. Traditionally, Louisiana’s hunting season kicks off in earnest at the crack of dawn on the first Saturday of October when a veritable army of camouflaged hunters creep into the woods in search of fox and cat squirrels. The vast majority of ... Terry L. Jones

	Food facts: Target the best deer foods to kill more deer There are around 600 different species of plants that deer eat in Louisiana. Here are some findings that will help you focus on the most-popular deer foods to up your changes of hunting success. As we all know, the 2011 mast crop was tremendous, but the overall statewide deer harvest was way down from past years. While many are quick to blame low deer numbers due to drought, coyotes, poor habitat, etc., the plain and simple ... Dave Moreland

	Going coastal: Up your odds of deer-hunting in the marshes Marsh hunting is a step outside of the norm, with the tangle of vegetation making it easy for deer to disappear. Here are some tips to up your odds. The suspicious speck of white flickered some 200 yards away, resembling what might have been simply a bird flying or the cotton-like puff from the head of a cattail bursting its contents in the wind. But, when hunting deer in the ... John Flores

	Haunted Graveyard: Head to Lafitte’s Indian Graveyard for hot fall redfishing action Lafitte’s Indian Graveyard is said to be haunted. Certainly a lot of redfish lurk around the burial mound — Just be careful not to spook them! So, when the voice on the other end of the phone said we’d be fishing in a graveyard, I’ll admit it took me aback. The call came a short time before Hurricane Isaac struck, so we weren’t talking about fishing a flooded cemetery. Rusty Tardo

	Highway robbery: Catch plenty of reds and specks within minutes of Highway 1 State Highway 1 between Fourchon and Grand Isle provide a great jumping-off point for kayakers looking to find easy pickings for reds, specks and more. There are some pretty cool perks to being an outdoor writer. One is that opportunities sometimes present themselves to step out of your comfort zone and try something new. For example, Corey Coghlan, co-owner of Kajun Custom Kayaks, ... Terry L. Jones

	Home Run Trout: Head to Lake Pontchartrain’s Causeway bridges for trophy specks Hit a home run this month by heading to Lake Pontchartrain for some of the best trophy speckled trout fishing of the year. CRACK!! The sound that a white ash baseball bat makes in the dry, crisp October air is unmistakable. It’s not the hollow ping from the aluminum bats used in college and high school. The best of the professionals put ... Jerald Horst

	Pinewood Derby Deer: How to up your deer-hunting odds in pine plantations Pine plantations might not be the best habitat, but piney woods definitely hold deer. It’s just a matter of refining your block of woods to find the winner within. My son tossed a block of wood onto the counter and asked me to help him turn it into a car that would win his local Cub Scouts’ annual Pinewood Derby race. I stared at it a while and wondered how in the heck we were going to turn a ... Chris Ginn

	Start with squirrels: Hunting busy-tails is a great way to initiate young hunters They might not be glamorous, but squirrel hunting certainly is more active than deer hunting — especially for kids just starting out. Squirrels aren’t sexy. They don’t have 12-inch beards and 1 ½-inch-long spurs that hunters just can’t wait to measure. They don’t have G2s and main beams that hunters just can’t wait to see how they fit in the palms of ... Chris Ginn

	Suburban cross: Learn how to hunt suburban deer Strip malls and subdivisions are slicing up Louisiana’s piney woods, but that doesn’t mean the deer have gone anywhere. Here’s the best way to take one of these suburban deer. By 8:20 a.m. five text messages had alerted me to many vital matters. “Remember I gotta get home in time for the Saints-Colts tailgate party!” read one. “Wait till you see my Harry Potter Halloween costume!” read ... Humberto Fontova

	Tale of two weeks: Bayou Dularge redfish action goes crazy in October Learn how to change fishing tactics to continue catching Dularge redfish during the transitional month of October. Three days after Hurricane Isaac raked across coastal Louisiana, Capt. Marty LaCoste launched his 24-foot Blue Wave Pure Bay from Jugs Landing at the end of Highway 315 below Houma in Terrebonne Parish. He knew what he was looking ... Chris Ginn

	The rub about deer: Understanding rubs The language of whitetail sign-posting (aka rubs and scrapes) is diverse and, at times, complex — especially when rut-crazed bucks ravage the timber with cluster rubs. So what is a hunter to do? *Editor’s note: Tommy Kirkland has spent years photographing white-tailed deer, and this article is based on his observations. Moving along the woodland edge, the morning dew saturates the footwear. As the sun breaks through, you ... Tommy Kirkland