A Ville Platte huntress

Tammy Fontenot, of Ville Platte, proves hunting is not just for the boys
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You would not know it to look at her, but nurse Tammy Fontenot has been hunting all her life, tagging along with her father, Sherman, when she was just a little girl. “I was a little hemorrhoid in my dad’s butt. No little girls went hunting. It was the boys who went hunting. I was the only girl in the camp. It was always my greatest memory, just he and I walking in the woods. Him teaching me little things--gun safety always--but also about the trees, and animals, and where to step. He’d tell me not to step on the sticks. He’d fuss if I stepped on a stick and made a noise. It was nice. It was always bonding time with my dad. Now there are more girls hunting, which is awesome. And the wives are getting into it more.”
Fontenot has fond memories of being there when her dad and his friends cooked and told stories. “They’d tell these tall stories. You didn’t know if they were true or not, but you cherish those memories. Some of those friends are no longer with us. I didn’t grow up with grandfathers. They passed away before I was born. Those guys, my dad’s friends, were older than my dad, and they were like my grandpas.”
Fontenot still goes to the camp with her dad, but due to illness, he can no longer hunt. “He just likes to go camp and likes everybody’s stories.” She has also shared the hunting experience with her niece, Meghan, and her cousin, Brannon. “Since he was tiny, every Thanksgiving afternoon, we’d go hunting at our camp around Mamou or Oakdale. We’d make our peanutbutter sandwiches and homemade sweet potato pie like Maw Maw used to make. Now he’s 21, but we try to do that every year. He’s always been my partner in crime since he was tiny.”
Fontenot said hunting and cooking are big in her family. “It’s all about family. And Meghan is a huge cooker, just like me. My mom and dad were big cooks. We do little competitions.” Fontenot and her all-girl team came out first out of 119 cooks with her chicken and sausage gumbo for the St. Jude’s gumbo cookoff in Opelousas a couple of years ago. Fontenot said her favorite wild game to cook is rabbit and deer backstrap. “When my dad and I kill a deer, we just take the backstrap. We’ll use everything else to make sausage. We’ll do 60/40 and put some pork in there.”
Fontenot said some people try to kill as many animals as they can when they go hunting, but her dad taught her to only take what is necessary. “He’d kill, but he wouldn’t over kill. He always taught me to just kill what you need.”
While she enjoys hunting, just being out in the woods is what she enjoys most. “I don’t like to kill a whole lot. Actually I like to go and just sit in the deer stand. I’ve always wondered why my dad would just go for the week sometimes, just to go to the camp and walk in the woods. He didn’t really come back with anything. It’s just the peace and quiet and to collect your thoughts. It’s beautiful. I can just go sit in the deer stand and have peace. People will ask me if I killed anything. I tell them I don’t have to kill anything. I actually don’t really want to kill anything. I just like to see everything. It’s just so calm and peaceful. It’s good mentally for me. It’s a cleanse.”