My niece Kristen usually comes to the farm to deer hunt each year. She and her boyfriend Leo invited us to come to Florida to hunt alligators with them. My nephew Dave and I travelled down to central Florida to see what gator hunting is all about. We flew into Melbourne and met Kristen and Leo at Aunt Karen's house. Leo has a newly reconditioned airboat and we hunted the first night near Melbourne on the St John River. Kristen took a 9 1/2' alligator near this spot about a year ago.
Here's the crew Leo, Kristen, me and Dave with Leo's airboat just prior to heading out. As Dave and I learned, you hunt gators at night. The first step is to find them by shining bright lights. The gators eyes glow red and you try to sneak in close to them, judge the size, determine if it's big enough, and then you cast a big treble hook at them and try to snag them.
This is a close up of the weighted trebble hook. It's about 3" across and you toss it out there to try and snag the gator.
We elected Dave to take the first gator. It's alot more difficult than you'd expect to cast that big heavy hook with any accuracy. And the gators tend to hang out on the edges of the channel where there's lots of things other than gators to catch. In this picture Dave is in a death struggle with a tree that he snagged. Notice the ear muffs that he's wearing due to the noise from the aircraft engine on the airboat.
Here's Dave and Leo doing battle with some more Florida flora that Dave was able to catch.
We hunted until after 3:00am but were not able to ever hook up with a gator. It was a beautiful night and it was fun to be out on the air boat. The gators seemed a little skittish in this area and it was tough to get in very close to them. Finally we called it a night because Leo had a 1 1/2 hour drive home...and then he was going to work in the morning! Ironman.
We went to bed at about 5:00 and slept until 10:30 or 11:00. Then we enjoyed the pool, dock and river at Aunt Karen's house. We had similiar luck fishing as at gator hunting.
In the afternoon, we drove down to Palm City to Kristen and Leo's house. Kristen elected not to hunt Friday night since she was going to work on Saturday. We planned to hunt a different area with Leo's Dad and brother. This area is near Clewiston in the Lake Okechobee area. It is known as the STA (Stormwater Treatment Authority). It is a huge marsh of cat-tails and hydrilla that was constructed to naturally remove fertilizer from runoff water before it flows into the Everglades.
No power boats are allowed in this area so we hunted out of a johnboat. Leo had taken a 10'5" alligator in this area a couple weeks ago. After Leo got home from work and caught a quick nap, we drove 2 hours over to Clewiston and met Leo's Dad and brother at a BBQ place for dinner. Over dinner we learned that Leo's brother, Jetson, had borrowed a compound bow. He planned to get his gator by shooting the gator with an arrow that has a line attached. We were all a little skeptical but were willing to try anything.
We drove out to the STA, picked a canal that looked promising, manually lifted the boat down to the water, sprayed ourselves down with tons of DEET (the bugs were thick), and we launched. A flashlight shot down the canal lit up about 25 pairs of red gator eyes lurking out in the dark. We rowed out toward the first gator, Jetson looked at it and said "it looks big enough", he pulled the pretty powder blue bow and let an arrow fly - I think that we were all shocked when the arrow hit the target and he had a gator on the line. It was pretty exciting for awhile as the gator went to the bottom and tried to get in the weeds. The little reel on the bow definitely wasn't up to the job of horsing a gator around. So we kind of just followed the gator around for awhile, tried to keep the line from fouling, and tried to keep the gator from going under a rock or in the weeds. Eventually, Dave got the rod out with the treble hook and got hold of the gator with that too. The gator definitely didn't appreciate that much and after a couple of attempts, we got him near the surface along the boat.
I don't remember whether we got the noose on him next or whether Leo hit him with the bangstick first. But in any event, he took a 44 magnum shell in the brain and he got lasso'ed with a rope. Apparently, gators are famous for continuing to fight and snap even after being shot in the head. So, the next step was to lift the head up and get duct tape around the snout.
Eventually, we got the gator heaved into the boat and rowed him into shore. We dragged him up to the truck and Leo severed his spine at the base of his skull with a knife "to be sure". We threw him in the truck and then headed back out to get another one.
We tried for the next 5 hours or so and were not able to hook up with another gator. We had two chances at a really big gator and I thru the hook long and fouled it in the hydrilla (seaweed). On the third try, he was out in the middle of the channel and I threw the hook long. I reeled it in and made contact. The gator took off and started stripping line off the reel. For some reason, he then just released. We made numerous attempts at numerous gators without success. Eventually it got late and we decided to call it a night. We went back to the truck and took a few photos of the trophy.
He measured 8' and still seemed to be twitching 5 hours after loading him in the truck.
Next we hauled him to a gator processor and dropped him off in the freezer. The proprietor came out to meet us at 5am and he chatted with us. He told us how he felt about his neighbor's dogs (he has a silenced 22 caliber for when they bark too much) and he talked to us about his 3,000 babies (gators that he's raising). Needless to say, he was an interesting central Florida personality.
Then we headed off for the 2 hour drive into the sunrise.
On Saturday night, Leo, Kristen, Dave and I tried again at the STA. We saw lots of gators, cast lots of times, and just never hooked up. Once again we drove back into the sunrise and this time, Kristen went straight from gator-hunting into work. Kristen and Leo were great hosts and guides. We had quite an experience and hope to do it again. Our guides gave us lots of opportunities - maybe we will be more successful if we try it again sometime.
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