Assessing the hunt

By: TONY MARKS
Editor

Other than Rocky Balboa, one of Sylvester Stallone’s most iconic roles is John Rambo, who joins a group of mercenaries in the jungles of Burma as they try to rescue kidnapped Christian aid workers.
The term “Rambo” now describes someone as being a lone wolf when using violence when it comes to dealing with difficult situations.
Here, locally in Evangeline Parish, Wacen Fontenot is a mild mannered deputy assessor. But, when it comes to hunting pigs with dogs, Fontenot channels his inner Stallone and turns into the Cajun Rambeaux.
Fontenot hunts pigs in the Gold Dust area of northwest St. Landry Parish on a farm belonging to Kent Soileau. Fontenot and Soileau’s son, Garrett, hunt the pigs as way to get them off of the property.
“Let me tell you that’s one of the most exciting things you can ever hunt,” Fontenot declared. “We hunt off of horseback and with knives and our dogs. There are no guns allowed. I feel like I’m Rambo.”
Fontenot and Soileau kill the pigs by sticking them with a knife in the neck.
Hunting in general, for Fontenot, is an enjoyable activity because he likes being in the woods. As he said, “It’s not so much that I love killing the animals and the sport of it as I love being outdoors. Life gets pretty stressful and stuff. If you can just go to the woods and hear nothing for about four or five hours, it just does something good for the soul.”
Fontenot works for Evangeline Parish Assessor Chris Guillory, who has a similar affinity to the sport of hunting.
“There’s a challenge to it,” Guillory said. “For those of us who like competition and challenge and working hard to reach a final goal, it’s rewarding. You go out, shoot well, and kill a few doves, a few ducks, or a deer.”
Also enjoyable for Guillory is eating what has been killed. He said, “I enjoy cleaning and cooking fresh game. I do enjoy a teal or a wood duck or some good fried backstrap or a little dove gravy while watching the LSU game.”
Now that Guillory is getting older, his favorite part of hunting is making memories with his children, especially now with his son, Walker. “I enjoy making those memories because I see him smile,” he expressed. “Sometimes, I don’t even bring a gun. I just like to see him shoot.”
He went on to say, “One year, all three of my daughters killed a deer in Piney Woods Hunting Club. All three killed a deer in the same deer season.”
For Guillory, hunting is a part of the Cajun culture that he received from his father. “My dad wasn’t a big hunter,” Guillory said, “but he was a huge advocate for us to hunt. He always bought us a gun, and he encouraged us to hunt. We would walk the fields. If we killed some birds, my mom would clean them and freeze them and would make a jambalaya.”
As for the Cajun Rambeaux, Fontenot also enjoys teal hunting. “Opening weekend doesn’t get much better than that,” he commented. “It’s hard to beat hunting with a good dog, too. I had a dog named Smokey for nine years, and I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just the bond you have with your dog. Some of my best hunts are just me and him with nobody watching. After a while, he’d start whimpering, and I knew they were coming.”
Fontenot’s favorite type of hunting, though, is squirrel hunting. It is a love that was passed down from his dad.
“In our family,” Fontenot said, “squirrel season is bigger than Christmas. When I was a kid, we used to go up to Corney Lake. We would leave on Thursday night, and we’d head up there and camp all weekend. Man, if you didn’t kill your limit of squirrels, you just as soon not come back because we would rag you so hard.”
Nowadays, Fontenot continues the opening weekend of squirrel season traditions at Dr. Marcel LaHaye’s camp in Oakdale. The “ritual,” as he calls it, dates back approximately 10 or 11 years.
“It’s usually 20 or 25 of us,” Fontenot said, “and we even have a book of how many we killed over the years and who’s killed the most. We usually cook a big ole pig all day long on Saturday, watch the Tigers win against whomever they play, drink some beer, and have some good times.”
Fontenot played football for Sacred Heart and recalled not playing games on Friday nights during opening weekend of squirrel season. “Every time I talk to people, even those from Lafayette and Lake Charles, and say the town shuts down on Friday they’re very amazed with that.”
He continued, “Even while going to college, one time we had a test on the Friday. I hurried up to take the test, and my professor, Dwight Bertrand from Elton, said, ‘Well, I guess Wacen is in a hurry. It is squirrel weekend. He’s got to go home. Evangeline Parish is special.’”
For Guillory, the parish’s reputation when it comes to opening weekend of squirrel season reaches all parts of the state.
“Some of my fondest memories growing up about hunting was squirrel weekend,” he shared. “My dad never shot an animal. I never witnessed my dad shooting an animal. He got us involved in hunting. He just wasn’t a hunter. He was what we call the ‘camp dog.’ My dad loved to take us out there in the woods with the rest of my family. He would cook, and we would hunt. He’d help us clean and cook and do all of that.”
Guillory continued, “We would load that truck on Thursday afternoon after school to head to North Louisiana with all the pots and stoves and everything. Then, when we hit the road, it was like going to the Super Bowl. It was the excitement of that weekend, and we did that for probably seven or eight years. It still makes me excited when I think about it.”