BY KYLE BARNETT

Staff Reporter

RESERVE- “When you are coming up with this, it is in your blood,” said Dean Torres of Tattoon’s hunting club. “It is extremely difficult. We have people come in once and they swear they are never going back in. I’d rather hunt that swamp and kill nothing than go other places and kill.”

In late October, Torres was piloting his airboat down Reserve Canal. He was breaking the runs, something he has done every year since he has been hunting the swampland.

“We have to get in by boats to break flota. The flota is mud that is about a foot thick that floats,” said Torres. “If you don’t break that mud and grass you can’t get back there to hunt.”

As Torres set about his work he came across the spot where Reserve Gun and Rod’s lodge had once stood. It had been burnt to the ground. He went further down the canal and saw the smoldering remains of two other camps, including the lodge that he had been hunting out of for the last 40 years.

The lodges had been burnt with no notice, bringing a resolute end to a six year court battle that ended in March this year with the Louisiana State Supreme Court decision to prohibit hunting lodges from operating in the 67,713 acre Maurepas Swamp.

“The department chose the most expedient, cost-effective method of disposal of the structures that remained,” Bo Boehringer of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries wrote in an email.

“After we lost the court case we knew they would tear them down. It is a shame we lost some really nice trees in the process. I guess that was just the most economical thing for them to do,” said Torres. “As far as I know they haven’t come back to pick up the debris. They were supposed to be returning them to the wilds.”

“The ultimate goal is to have that area return to natural swampland,” Boehringer said. “There may have been an adjacent tree to the structure that was burnt, but our wildlife technicians didn’t just light a match and take off. What is left out there is aluminum roofs and signage. Those piles will be cleaned up.”

Tattoon’s lost many of its members after the hunting lodges were lost, but they have not stopped hunting together.

“When you hunt that swamp you need all the help you can get,” said Torres. “We are getting ready for deer season on the Friday after Thanksgiving for two days.”