As a priest, many mornings of Father David Rozas’s life are spent in his natural habitat, the church, but as a born and bred resident of the Sportsman’s Paradise, he can also be found in places some of his parishioners may be surprised to find him.
Père Rozas, as he is more commonly known in the area and at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, said, “Sometimes the only time people ever see us (priests) is behind the altar. I’ve been very fortunate that people are very open and invite me to their houses or hunting or whatever, and I get to meet them and be with them and just get to share life with them.”
On the opening day of squirrel season, Oct. 3, Rozas traded his vestments for camouflage and mosquito repellent and shared his morning with a fellow hunter.
“We need recreation to be recreated,” Rozas said. “The Lord Jesus Christ would go, be quiet and pray, we have to go, be quiet and pray. I pray at home. I prayed my morning prayers before I came, and then while I was in the woods being quiet, I started praying the rosary. I go hunting as a good steward of creation because we have to maintain creation — myself, the land and the animals.”
Two days prior to the trip, Rozas traveled over to Chataignier in Evangeline Parish to the hunting spot, a piece of family property, to scout the area. Rozas said he located a squirrel nest as well as several areas with pecan cuttings. Rozas also said the property had acorn-producing trees, but he found very few acorn cuttings on his expedition.
Rozas’s father, Kent Rozas, grew up in Chataignier, and Rozas said he and his family visited Chataignier often when he was a child.
“I actually shot my first squirrel in my grandparents back yard, in the tree line,” Rozas said. “One day, my dad took me with that little 20 gauge single shot youth model that my brother had used, too. We were walking the tree line, and of course, it (the squirrel) tried to hide, right? My dad did the branch trick and threw it around back, and he (the squirrel) came around — poof. We brought it back to the house and laid it down on the counter, and I thought, ‘Wow, what a big ole squirrel, my big ole prize.’”
Rozas said he has had a gun or bow in his hands since he was old enough to have one, and now that he is back from seminary, he is starting to hunt at the property regularly again.
“I walk the tree lines, just like my daddy used to do,” Rozas said. “He would tell me the stories about taking his little BB gun and walking the tree lines for hours. His mom would have to call him back. She would have to flash the floodlights (at the house) because it was too dark, and he was way up in the back fields.”
He continued, “One of the things my dad taught me, ever since I had a BB gun in my hand, was safety. Make sure you are being safe. Along with that was don’t point (a gun) at what you are not going to shoot. Don’t shoot what you are not going to eat. Don’t waste. It’s a respect for life, for not only ourselves, you know, you don’t want to shoot your brother or someone, but he also taught me respect for life in general.”
In addition to learning about hunting from his father, Rozas also gets hunting advice from his older brother.
“My older brother is 10 years older than me, so we did not get to hunt much together as children,” Rozas said. “He lives two door down from my parents now. He’s teaching me things he knows, and we’re hunting together more.”
When Rozas was a child, his fellow hunters — and anglers — were his cousins who were closer in age.
On the opening day of the 2020 squirrel season, Rozas and his guest arrived at the property just before 6 a.m. so that they could use the cover of darkness to get in to their hunting spots before the 6:33 a.m. sunrise shooting time. Rozas and his guest positioned themselves back to back a distance apart with Rozas facing the front of the property and his guest facing the back of the property. Temperatures that morning were in the mid-50s, and the moon was glowing brightly in the western sky. There was even a slight breeze, giving the squirrels cover to move through the trees.
The sunrise began to glow on the horizon, and the occasional shot from other hunters could be heard in the distance. Around 8 a.m. Rozas’s guest spotted the first squirrel of the day — a darting shadow in a tree about 75 yards off in the back left corner of the property. Around 8:15 a.m., a squirrel made its way from the same corner and towards the guest, and the animal was followed by another squirrel. The guest fired two shots, missing the first squirrel before taking aim at the second and getting the first squirrel of the day. The guest returned to her seat and waited for the first squirrel to show its face again. The squirrel remained hidden for about 20 minutes before giving up its hiding spot and making a bee line through the trees to the back of the property where a nest was located. Rozas and his guest tracked the squirrel to the back of the property, but after 15 minutes of searching, they decided to pack it in for the day.
When it comes to hunting, Rozas said he enjoys the recreation, stewardship and being quiet in creation that are associated with the sport.
“We go the woods, we hunt and at the same time, we give, whether we go hunting and give someone else the better spot or we go hunting and we let somebody have the meat, like giving it to the poor,” Rozas said. “That’s an act of charity. We are using what we have and then we help someone.”
He continued, “It’s more than, ‘I go to hunt and be in the woods and just talk to God.’ That’s good. At the same time, we need the Eucharist. We need the sacraments, and we need to be together as the body of Christ. So we take all of that that we have done at work, on the hunt, on the ball field and then we bring that back on Sunday at Holy Mass, and that’s what the bread and the wine represent. We are bringing up what we did during the week and then we are prepared with the Liturgy of the Word with the reading of the scriptures. We bring our gifts, the Lord consecrates it and makes it himself in what only looks like bread and wine and gives himself back to us so we can go and give more life into the world and share more of his freedom and joy and use creation, use all of this, for the glory of God.”
Rozas said that being quiet in creation is one of his best parts of the hunt.
“One of my favorite things to do is to hear the world wake up,” Rozas said.
He continued, “One of the important points of the going away time is that we are so busy, and we don’t have to be busy. We have to make time for quiet. We live time living on a surface level, but we have to make time that we can go deep and find, see where our true focus is. What am I really wanting in life? Am I really focused on being filled with God’s life or am I just focused on the running and running and running?”
In addition to squirrel hunting, Rozas said he enjoys any kind of hunting he can do with a bow and arrow. Rozas said the first animal he harvested with a bow was a raccoon, and he has also harvested deer, sparrows and a rail with a bow.
“It becomes an art,” Rozas said. “It’s like a tool that has become part of you, and you have to be able to use it. That’s why I really like a bow and arrow, especially a recurve bow. You really have to be in control of your body. It’s actually really taught me to slow down a lot and to really just focus.”
One of the bows Rozas uses is his dad’s 40 pound fiberglass recurve, and with it, he carries a quiver he and his mom made when he killed his first bird — a King clapper rail — with a bow. His dad even taught him how to tan the skin, and Rozas was able to preserve the rail’s feathers and display them.
Rozas has also used a BB gun or shotgun to harvest ducks, squirrels, snipe, rails, woodcock, blackbirds and rabbits, and he has hunted at Sherburne Wildlife Management Area, his dad’s crawfish and rice farm and a family deer lease near Melville.
“I like using pumps, single shots and bows because those force me to focus which helps me also in the spiritual life,” Rozas added.
Rozas’s passion for hunting may not come as a surprise to those who follow him on social media, and he often uses archery and spiritually videos and posts to share his experience of God and archery.
Rozas asked that public pray for him to be able to serve others better, and he promised to keep others in prayer. Père may be contacted at www.Facebook.com/PaterRozas, www.instagram.com/pater.rozas, and www.Twitter.com/PaterRozas.
