Shotguns and duck hunting are ingrained in the bayou culture of Cut Off, La., so when pumper Chad Boudreaux – owner of Joe’s Septic Contractors and Joe’s Environmental – conceived a fundraiser to help struggling children in his community, he basically yelled “Pull!” and then swung and fired.

And to ensure the event’s participants kept smiling in the process – as if anyone wouldn’t have fun shooting clay birds – Boudreaux also gave the fundraiser a name that makes everyone grin while thinking of his company: “Shooting Da Crap.”

Boudreaux holds the sporting clays shooting competition annually on the company’s 40-acre property in Cut Off, a town of nearly 6,000 about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans. This year’s event was held Feb. 28. Open to four-person shooting teams, the competition has drawn more participants every year.

Boudreaux and his wife, Trixy, were inspired to launch the fundraiser after discovering their son Colt, now 7, needed therapy for a speech disorder called speech apraxia. Colt visits the Center for Pediatric Therapy in Thibodaux, La., four days each week, where he and the other patients from newborns to adolescents receive individual and group therapy.

A HELPING HAND

“Not everyone can afford the kind of special therapy the center provides, so our fundraiser pays for scholarships for kids who would never get this help otherwise,” Boudreaux says. “It helps five to 10 kids per year with scholarships. We hear from families who tell us it’s making a big difference in their kids’ lives. That’s always great to hear.”

The 2014 event attracted 160 shooters and their guests, who combined to raise nearly $50,000. In addition, the fundraiser features raffles and an auction, and donates to the “Give Kids the World” charity, which sends terminally ill children to Orlando, Fla. While there, the kids and their families visit the area’s theme parks and stay at the charity’s village, a 70-acre resort with over 144 villas. Since opening in 1989, the village has accommodated over 130,000 families from all 50 states and 75 countries.

Likewise, Cut Off and surrounding communities have long supported Joe’s Septic Contractors and Joe’s Environmental. Boudreaux says without that support from Cut Off – and nearby Houma, Thibodaux and Bayou Cane – his family’s business wouldn’t have survived the past six decades.

Boudreaux’s dad started the business in 1965, and Joe’s Septic Contractors thrives today under Boudreaux’s ownership as a multifaceted company that serves southern Louisiana’s communities and the Gulf Coast’s oil and gas industry.

The company provides everything from basic portable restrooms to specialized vacuum trucks for pumping offshore tanks, vessels or treatment plants. In fact, to service this hard-working region, Joe’s Septic Contractors operates 21 work trucks, with builders including Vacutrux Limited, Satellite Industries, Dyna-Vac Equipment, KeeVac Industries and Progress Tank. Portable sanitation equipment is varied and provided by Armal, Five Peaks, Wells Cargo, PolyPortables Inc., Alpha Mobile Solutions, McKee Technologies, Rich Specialty Trailers and Advanced Containment Systems.

USES PORTABLE RESTROOMS

Even with wide-ranging responsibilities, Boudreaux makes time to run the “Shooting Da Crap” competition and fundraisers. And he requires participants to make serious financial commitments. A basic four-person team membership costs $500, and Boudreaux also sells platinum memberships for $5,000 and silver memberships for $2,500 to companies that sponsor teams.

“It’s not hard to find shooters and sponsors when they hear where their money goes,” Boudreaux says. “And if they ever visit the Center for Pediatric Therapy or the ‘Give Kids the World’ village in Orlando, they feel really good about it. They’re helping a lot of kids who need all the help they can get.”

As you might guess, the “Shooting Da Crap” competition isn’t held on your typical sporting clays course. Boudreaux’s good humor and marketing skills ensure no one forgets his company’s role in the event. All but one of the course’s 10 shooting stations feature a gutted-out portable restroom modified to include a shooting window “out back” and side windows so shooters can spot the clay targets when they’re launched by two nearby throwers.

The 10th shooting station is even more memorable. It’s a commode fastened to a wharf overlooking a canal, and shooters must “sit on the throne” when shooting at clay targets flying over the water.

“They get a kick out of it when they walk out there to shoot,” Boudreaux says. “People down here start hunting and fishing as soon as they start walking. Hunting is part of everyone’s heritage. They just laugh, sit down and go with the flow. Most of them are duck hunters, so they’re used to sitting on a bucket in a blind and shooting.”

SHOOTING SPORTS

Of course, putting 40 teams through a 10-station course takes planning, coordination and help from about 85 volunteers, some of whom stay on the main grounds to staff booths, serve food and run raffles. Boudreaux divides the teams into two flights and sends one flight out at 8 a.m. and the other at 11 a.m. It takes the 20 teams in each flight about two-and-a-half to three hours to shoot their way through the 10 stations.

Two experienced throwers at each station launch the clay birds from separate, unknown locations to simulate a hunting scenario. Shooters must bring their own shotgun, shells and hearing protection, and a golf cart for navigating the course. Shooters under 16 can compete, but only if accompanied by an adult and with proof they passed a hunter-education program.

Boudreaux says the fundraiser meshes well with the region’s culture because most residents grew up hunting in nearby woods, marshes and bayous. “Duck hunting is huge around here,” he says. “I started fishing with my dad when I was about 5, and like everyone else, I’ve been duck hunting almost as long. It’s not as good as it used to be, but we still go a lot. I didn’t start deer hunting until I was 30. We have a deer camp over in Mississippi about three hours away. I go every chance I get later in the fall. If we aren’t hunting in the fall, we’re probably in New Orleans watching football. We have season tickets for the Saints’ games.”

EVERYONE PITCHES IN

Even so, like all business owners of robust companies, Boudreaux goes nowhere without his cellphone. “My phone is on 24/7,” he says. “I’m in the office every day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the phone never stops ringing. We’re in the septic business and we cater to the oilfields. When they need us, we have to be there. I’m just fortunate to have good people in the office who can run the business while I’m not there. When they need to talk to me, I have to be there for them.”

He sees the same kind of devotion in those who help at the sporting clays fundraiser. “We’re very blessed with the volunteers we get,” he says. “The people in these small communities really come together for each other.”