One of My Offices

Posted March 2, 2010 at 4:46 pm
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Can you guess where this is?

Here’s a clue. The sky is blue, and the water reflects it, making the water look blue, even though those of us who have been there know that the water is not blue.

The answer is below the picture.

It’s the rock piles between Holly Beach and Johnson Bayou, and I couldn’t help but put my toes in the water.

The Holly Beach area has been my office for two stories in the last nine months and several photo assignments over the last few years (when I head down that way for work, I piggy-back, office-speak for “look for other photos or stories.”)

With slowly warming temperatures (sorry to those of you who like the cold, but I’m ready for a little warm weather, although not that sweltering heat we get during the summer, lol), I look forward to assignments in that direction, especially surf fishing. The ride out there is so peaceful, and I’m always up for a trip down there. I actually spent several Saturdays last summer down there, just hanging out.

When I showed the picture to Scooter, my sports editor, he asked me “You getting artsy on us?” What can I say? I like to blur the lines sometimes when it comes to by photo work and my outdoor work.

Someone else even told me it looked like a postcard.

And who do the boots belong to? They were my dad’s, and since he wasn’t a big guy, they actually fit me. I wear them to work, something I know he would have enjoyed tagging along for, especially if I was hunting or fishing, lol. Everyone loves them and asks where I got them. They’re Noconas, and they’re probably about as old as I am. Nothing beats a good, broke-in pair of cowboy boots, especially not those knock-off “fashion” cowboy boots I’ve seen around town. Those boots look cheap as heck and wouldn’t last two seconds in the places I’d put ‘em, lol.

It’ll Never Fire Again

Posted February 24, 2010 at 9:19 am
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That’s the latest story on my great-grandfathers double barrel shotgun.

Here’s what I know about the gun.

The gun belonged to my namesake, my dad’s mom’s dad, Claude Rozas. Claude was born in 1914 and died in 1980, nine days shy of his 67th birthday. My mom and dad were always telling me, “If he had lived to see you, you’d be spoiled rotten.” He died when my brother was three and three years before I came along.

The gun was given to my dad because he was the first grandson. I don’t know if the gun was given to him before or after Claude died, and the only person who may know when the gun was fired last is my grandmother.

According to a little Internet research, the gun was manufactured by a company called Wiltshire Arms Co., which was one of several arms companies owned by Crescent Fire Arms Company. Wiltshire guns were sold by a New Orleans catalog and hardware store, which is where the gun was more than likely purchased, and the gun was probably made sometime between 1900-1930. If the gun was made before Claude was born, I wonder how it ended up in his possession. One web site said to check under the barrel for a marking that would tell me whether it was made in the United States or Belgium, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it got sawed-off, lol? And the funny thing about the gun? It’s not really worth anything, but that doesn’t matter to me. I come from a family that values antique possessions, useful or not. According to my research, the gun was part of a lot of “quantity over quality,” and it probably wouldn’t even be safe to shoot.

Over the years, I’ve heard several stories about the gun.

“He’d shoot at the cows to scare them when they’d get in the rice lakes.” That and drive in the middle of the highway. And when the police would stop him for his half-Bond, half-American driving, he would tell them, “I own the land on both sides of the road, so I can drive in the middle of the road.”

“It’s sawed-off.”

And there’s the one about the hole in the living room ceiling of the old farmhouse. After retiring from farming, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother closed up their farmhouse, and moved to a local town. But the house soon found use as a starter home for my parents and later more of my dad’s siblings and their spouses. The house was very much a typical large farmhouse, complete with hardwood floors and even redwood ceilings in some of the rooms.

I remember the house well, and boy do I ever remember asking what was up with the ball of tinfoil shoved into a hole in the redwood ceiling of the house’s den.

“Your great-grandpa was cleaning his gun and forgot to unload it.”

By the way, gun boo-boos like that run in the family but they apparently skip generations. My dad shoved a wet shell in one of his guns on a hunting trip, fired, or so he thought, reloaded, fired again and blew the end of the barrel up when the good shell hit the bad one, which was still stuck in the barrel.

With my dad’s passing in the fall, my mom, brother and I have made sure to take extra special care of my dad’s firearms. He wasn’t a materialistic person, and the guns are most dear to us of all his few possessions. He wasn’t into art, collecting cars (although when my brother showed him a pic of the new Dodge Chargers he laughed and said “Get that away from me before I have a heart attack,” because he and my mom both had Chargers when they got married in 1972), the life of a country gentleman raising horses or even having a boat. His prized possessions were “me and your mama’s marriage,” “the two good kids I raised,” his home, his hunting dogs, Einstein and Susie, and his guns. He was a simple man. Like that John Anderson song goes “Wake me up early, be good to my dogs and teach my children to pray.”

Of his firearms that still shoot, a 12-gauge (Belgian Browning Gold Hunter), a 16-gauge (a dial-a-duck Remington Sportsman 58 that I shot for the 2008-2009 seasons), and Belgian Browning .22 rifle, all have spent time in the shop in the last year getting the star treatment. The last one to go in for an overhaul was the double barrel.

I brought the gun, which at first glance is missing a hammer on one side, the side that does have a hammer has a bubble in the barrel (no clue how that one happened) and the butt pad is gone, to Earl Gothreaux at Hunters Supply and Pistol Range.

After I explained the gun’s sentimental value and let Gothreaux have a quick look at it, the prognosis was not good.

“It’ll never fire again,” Gothreaux said. “That’s the kind of gun you hang over your fireplace.”

In addition to the barrel being sawed, Gothreaux also determined that the butt stock had also been cut down (according to my mom, Claude had short arms), which is a shame because the wood is so beautiful.

Gothreaux asked me to bring back the gun in March, and he’ll give it a good cleaning before it makes its way back to it’s new home over my mom’s fireplace.

On a funny tangent, my niece Skyler is going to make the children in her class cry when she goes off to school in a few years.

Here’s why.

New Year’s Day, I cooked some teal for my best friend Tiffany, her husband Clint, and their daughter, who is my niece. We three adults had the teal on our plates, and Tiffany fixed Sklyer, who is two, a plate of rice and gravy, some veggies and a piece of cornbread.

Skyler soon pointed to the duck and said “What dat?” Tiffany told her it was duck, and asked her if she wanted some. In addition to the “yeah” that came out, she also started saying “quack, quack, quack,” which had us three adults dying laughing.

“I have no idea where she learned that,” Tiffany said.

“It’s going to cause a problem when her class takes a field trip to the lake, and when they start feeding the ducks, Sklyer tells all the rest of the children that she eats ducks,” I said. “Some of those children are going to freak!”

And we all laughed again, with Sklyer looking at us like we had lost our minds.

Feathers in the Fog

Posted February 12, 2010 at 9:41 am
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Here’s the photographic farewell to the waterfowl season of 2009-2010.

I joined Greg “Bull” Byrley for a hunt on New Year’s Eve morning, and boy was it foggy out in Thornwell!

For the story behind the photos, pick up the Sunday, Feb. 14 of the American Press!

And for good measure, a photo of my dad, left, and a pic Byrley took of me, right, after the hunt. See some family resemblance near the hands, lol?

Can You Believe It?

Posted February 8, 2010 at 8:27 am
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It just doesn’t seem real. Yet when I groggily stumbled out on my front porch this morning to snag the paper, there it was in black and white. And gold, lol.

The Saints have won the Super Bowl!

Our state and our citizens needed this oh-so-awesome pick-me-up so much. I think everyone in this state is going to walk a little taller today, lol.

Although I missed the first five or so minutes of the game, I was so deep into once I started watching it that I was in between fits of choking and/or ripping the shirt off one of my friends who was watching the game with me at a local bar, lol. To top it all off, I’m hoarse from yelling, and my feet hurt from jumping up and down too.

But it was worth it.

The Duck Off Cook-Off

Posted February 4, 2010 at 11:42 am
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If you weren’t at the Duck Off in Hackberry last Saturday night, you sure missed some good cooking.

The event, sponsored by Hackberry Rod & Gun, features live and silent auctions, skeet shooting and a waterfowl cooking contest.

I had the pleasure of judging the cooking competition in 2008 and 2009. I was the token “chick” of the group, lol, invited to join the judging panel of local celebrities because of my job as the Outdoor reporter at the American Press.

First place at this year’s cooking competition went to Edwin McCall of Sulphur with his stuffed chili rianos. Second place went to Ronnie Nunez of Hackberry with his stir fried duck, and third place with to Gauge Byler, a sixth grader at Hackberry, with his barbecue duck wraps.

In the two competitions that I judged, I sampled delectable dishes like roast duck, duck casserole with cabbage (and I normally HATE cabbage), smoked goose, duck stew with carrots and potatoes, duck egg rolls, and even duck pot pie to duck with sweet potatoes (love duck with sweet potatoes. To me, it brings out the wild flavor better.) and sausage.

Last year, we almost got into a ruckus when we were tallying our final scores. It’s funny how singing David Allen Coe’s “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” the alleged “perfect country and western song,” can make you forget about your problems. The song managed to disrupt a dispute over which dish was tops: the duck kabob or the smoked speckled belly? Some friendly arguing started between the judges, and when the song came on, someone in the group of judges started singing. And that was all she wrote. Before long, we were all singing at the top of our lungs, and people were peeping behind the judging curtain to see what all the racket was about.

I’ve got one speckled belly and two teal left in my freezer from this year’s hunting season. Maybe I’ll swap out the tried and true pot roasted duck and try out some of these recipes.

Skip the Hunting and Fishing This Sunday

Posted February 2, 2010 at 10:23 am
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Unless you’ve spent the last few weeks alone in the mountains doing a vow of silence or if you’ve been on vacay at the South Pole, you know that this Sunday will be a day to mark in future Louisiana history books. You may want to keep the camo in the closet and the boat docked (although if you’re not a football fan and do head out, all the fish and game will be yours for the taking because I doubt very many others will be out and about anyway), because this Sunday our New Orleans Saints are playing in the Super Bowl!

Obviously I’m not an “anti-sports” female, but do I have an odd opinion about football. I’m kinda on the fence about it in the way that I like football if I’m actually at the game, but I’m not really down for watching it on television (I don’t watch television in the first place anyway). But this Sunday I will have myself firmly on the “I like it” side, but I don’t even know where I’ll be watching the game yet. Females aren’t “supposed” to like football, lol, so I have yet to receive any invites to watch the game. But if I can get in front of a television with the big game on, I plan on watching the action.

Who dat?!

All in a Day’s Work

Posted February 1, 2010 at 12:58 pm
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Where am I, why am I standing in a canal, bare-footed no less, and doing the beauty queen wave you ask?

The things I don’t do for my job, lol, but I love every moment in the outdoors, even if I’m standing bare-footed (shoes would have popped off in the mud, and boots would have filled with water) in a canal on Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge.

This picture recently surfaced, literally, from the waterlogged camera of “In the Light” photographer Geoff Russell. The photo was taken in July of last year, when I was shooting a Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana planting at the refuge.

And no, I was never a beauty queen, but I did compete on the beauty contest circuit a bit in high school. The only title I hold, unofficially given to me by a co-worker, is the Cajun-American Princess, lol.

Never Take the Sport for Granted

Posted January 22, 2010 at 12:20 pm
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How lucky many of us are to be able to fish and hunt independently, but for one local hunter (and many others in Southwest Louisiana), hunting is half the battle.

Devan Temple of Lake Charles suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, is unable to walk and has limited hand use, but that still didn’t stop him from shooting his first deer.

For the story behind the photos, pick up the Sunday, Jan, 24 edition of the American Press!

Boom-Boom-Boom!

Posted January 14, 2010 at 4:03 pm
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Have I got my burners full or what?!

I’m on the backside of hunting season, with a few more hunts possibly up my sleeve, and right now I’m sitting on the notes for five different stories. And we won’t even get started on all the non-outdoor work I’ve got going at the Fort. Before I know it, the weather will be warm, and it will be time to get back to fishing, lol.

Anyways, in my line of work, guns are obvioulsy a necessity, and every now and then, I worry that work will call me and say, “Hey, we need you to go to such and such high school/elementary/etc.,” which would be a problem if I had a gun in my car. Guns are a no-no on school grounds and for good reasons.

A while back, I had my gun with me in the car (I was on my way home from duck hunting with the Poes), and I stopped by the Lake Charles Gun Club to get some pictures for an article.

Since I’m short on time to write, I’ll share a few pictures LCGC Manager Lee Perkins took of me shooting.

Taking Shots!

Posted January 8, 2010 at 10:36 am
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And no, not the kind you get at the bar, lol!

I recently got to spend the late afternoon (and the wee hours of the morning, but you’ll find out about that if you pick up Jan. 31 edition of the American Press!) with about 25 Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries enforcement agents who were renewing their department-required firearms certification.

For the pictures from the shootout, check out the slideshow below!