One childhood memory above all stands out for Blake Richard, the Director of Marine Supply and Commercial Sales for Rouses Markets. “Growing up, every Thanksgiving, we would all wait for my Uncle Donald to say, ‘All right, are y’all ready?’” he told me. “Some of us, like myself, would already have our bags packed, because we knew we were going to the duck camp.”
After that, it was on. Blake and his cousins would pile in the car with their grandfather, Anthony J. Rouse, Sr., for a quick food run to the nearest Rouses location. They needed snacks and supplies. His grandfather — the founder of Rouses Markets — would shop for snacks and supplies (and of course, he’d make Blake and the boys round up buggies or help bag groceries at the checkout lines). From there, however, they were off to the Bayou Black boat launch. They would hop in the mud boat, crank the motor, and ride down to the camp.
Hunting and fishing have always been core to the Rouse family experience. “My earliest hunting memories of squirrel hunting were with my dad,” said Donald Rouse, Anthony’s son. “I was probably seven or eight years old. Squirrel hunting was my dad’s favorite out of everything. He hunted ducks, rabbit and deer, but his favorite was squirrel.”
In those days, they would go hunting in the swamps off the old Morgan City Highway. They would look out for ridges in the swamp where oak trees and palmettos grew. “My dad taught me to listen for acorns to drop and hit the palmettos. It meant that there was a squirrel up there eating. Or we’d listen for their barking. You’re always looking far out in front of you, because the squirrel’s not going to see you far away. But if you’re just looking straight up, the squirrel’s already finding a place to hide,” he said.
They always ate what they killed. “Dad would smother squirrel in a cast-iron pot, smother it in the onions with seasonings and stuff like that. He would also make rabbit a lot of the time. He would make a great sauce piquant with it, or with deer or rabbit.”
The deer hunting happened in the swamps, too. “I was the only one in the family besides my dad that actually took up hunting, and loved hunting the way he did,” said Donald. “Whenever he would go, I was along with him.” He started hunting deer around age nine. His dad had to load the gun for him. “We would often be joined by my dad’s friend, Mr. Wilbert Percle, and his son, Perry, who is a lifelong friend of mine.” Donald’s dad couldn’t always make it, because he had to work; but when that happened, he would still let Donald have the day off and join the Percles to make the hunt.
“I hunted for about 18 years and never killed a deer!” said Donald with a laugh. “My buddy didn’t have any problem shooting them — I just had the worst luck. Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing, making too much noise, moving around or whatever. But eventually I got better. The first deer I finally got was in Texas. I was 27!”
While his dad’s favorite thing to hunt was squirrel, Donald’s was duck. Four generations of the Rouse family have duck hunted on the same land. As his father had for him, Donald started bringing his son, Donny — the third generation and current CEO of Rouses — duck hunting when he turned four. “I remember when Donny shot his first duck,” said Donald. “He was four or five. I had to help him with the gun — it was too heavy for him. And I can, in my mind, pinpoint exactly where he shot it. It was a good day.”
Donny has since continued the tradition, taking his own son on hunts. “I grew up doing it, and my son’s growing up doing it now. It’s something we live for,” said Donny. “Duck hunting is my first passion when it comes to hunting, but I also hunt white-tail deer and elk — I just love being outdoors, and having the opportunity to harvest different animals.”
He shot his first deer when he was 12 years old, and stayed with duck and deer through high school and college. “It wasn’t until after that I started going on elk hunts with some friends,” Donny told me. “My wife came on one elk hunt with me, and just followed us around and watched how it happened. That really was an awesome time.”
Once the weather starts to change and hunting season is open, Donny said he is at the camp every second he can get. “It’s just part of my life. Occasionally I’ll make a hunt by myself, but I really want to be with a group of people and just share an experience with everyone. Especially now that my son’s getting into it, it changes everything. And it really makes it exciting just to watch the passion in his eyes after a hunt.”
Of course, teaching your kid to hunt also means taking home a little less than you did in your youth. “Now that my son’s hunting, I think I shot one deer all year, because he’s with me every time, and I’m letting him shoot,” Donny said with a laugh. “So it seems like I’m going to be taking a break for a while until he’s old enough to hunt on the ground.”
With hunting comes responsibility. “Our thing is, if you hunt it, you clean it, you cook it,” said Donny. “My son, he’s nine. He shot his first duck at seven, and at the same time he was ready to learn how to clean it. I let him help a little bit, but I don’t really trust him with a knife just yet. I keep a good eye on him.”
The Rouse family supports Hunters for the Hungry, a nonprofit that provides meat for poor families in communities across America. “It’s about supporting the food banks,” said Donny. “A lot of hunters have a freezer full of meat and can’t take on any more. So this is a great opportunity to drop off your animals at a local meat market, let them harvest it at no charge, and then it gets donated. It’s just a great thing for everyone that enjoys hunting, and for the people who need some food on their table.”
They are also devoted to protecting the long-term health and sustainability of wildlife populations. “I’m really big on conservation, really big on habitat,” Donny said. For their own deer-hunting property, the Rouse family partnered with a Mississippi State University program to ensure they were responsibly thinning the herd and providing the right food for them. “We also do camera surveys, and make sure that everyone has pictures of the deer we are supposed to harvest any given year, and the ones we should not. You don’t get in the stand without those pictures. We want the herd as healthy and as big as possible.” It adds a little stress to the hunters, he said, “but it’s the responsible thing to do.”
His father added, “We manage pretty heavy. We take care of our animals. We hunt them, but we hunt them in a way that’s defined by the biologists. We provide the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries & Parks with all the deer jaws so they can age them, test them, check their health and determine if they need any other kind of protein or such.” Ultimately, he said, hunting is not just about harvesting deer. “I believe we’re helping preserve the tradition and the animals, and keeping them healthy.”
It’s hard to find a member of the Rouse family who doesn’t have a good hunting story. Anthony’s grandchildren have very fond memories of their grandfather at the camp.
“Paw was definitely the one doing the cooking that evening,” Blake told me. “Sometimes he’d grill, sometimes he’d make a gumbo — but he was the cook. He’d always have a Rouses cake as well. When I was a boy, that was always one of the things I was looking forward to when we got back: a little breakfast, and a little sweet with milk. It definitely hit the spot after an early-morning duck hunt.”
His grandfather also made sure to bring plenty cans of Mug Root Beer, a favorite of the boys. “At night, there was always a fire, and all the cousins would take turns shooting at the root beer cans with BB guns, and hanging out.” In his later years, Anthony would join them at the camp, but didn’t usually hunt. “He definitely made it a point to attend our first duck hunts, though,” said Blake. “We all shared the same first shotgun. My Uncle Donald still has it, and he’s sharing it with his grandsons now: a bolt-action .410 shotgun. And, man, being how small I was, I don’t know how I did it. It felt like a cannon to me.” His grandfather would get behind them, and help them line up for that first shot. “He wouldn’t let us miss! That’s definitely a memory I’ll always have: Paw helping us make our first shot at a duck.”
In Blake’s memories, holidays are inseparable from those trips to the camp. “Honestly, I probably had more fun on our family duck hunts than I did at the actual family get-togethers for the holidays. If I could talk to my younger self, I’d tell him to enjoy that as much as you can, because, man, those duck hunting trips were some of the best times from my childhood.”
Chris Acosta, the Center Store Director of Rouses Markets, also has such fond memories. “Many times, I can remember, we would all be in our hunting gear at the Thanksgiving table. It was just a well-entrenched part of our lives,” he said. “I got some good quality time with my grandfather, growing up, having him sitting in the stand with me. Usually, he would get up early and cook a big breakfast for everybody. We’d go make a hunt, and he would hang back. We would sit around the table eating when we got back, and tell stories about what we saw.”
The rules at the camp could be a little different from the rules at home. “I can literally see, right now, my grandfather wearing a backward hat driving a boat. I always get a chuckle remembering that. If it had been me wearing a backward hat around him, he definitely would have told me something — but it was cool for him to do it in the boat!”
Nick Acosta, the company’s Senior Director of Pricing Analytics, has the same memory. “The boys growing up, when we were at the camp, we could get away with things that we probably couldn’t get away with at the house,” he said with a laugh.
Those hunts are still synonymous with good meals. Their grandfather was famous for his sauce piquant. Nick is famous for his deer sausage. “I’ve got a grinder at my house,” he said. “I normally grind deer with Boston butt that I’ve bought whole and deboned.” He tries to do a 50/50 mix between deer and pork. “For seasoning, I use the Rouses Cajun Seasoning we have at the stores. You just grind it, mix it all up together, and you pass it through the grinder with a casing.” It takes practice and technique, though. “You’ve got to have pressure on it, but not too much or the casing will bust.”
Those sorts of multi-generational bonds and traditions never fade, said Donald. “I enjoy just being out there now more than I enjoy hunting. What matters to me is seeing the grandkids learning how to hunt, learning how to eat the animals. They clean their own animals. Those kinds of things are important to me.”
Though they all work hard at the stores, they still keep an eye on the forecast during the different hunting seasons. You never know when an impromptu trip to the camp might happen. “You just got to watch the weather, play to win, and you got to be out there,” said Donny. “You can’t shoot them inside watching TV or playing on an iPad!”
And for Blake, that same feeling from his childhood has never faded. “Paw’s not around anymore, but I still look forward to the day, when I get a phone call from my Uncle Donald,” he said. “Are you ready?”
