Now I’m a fairly calm person in a crisis most times. Mt preparedness background has me planning for bad events all of the time. Plan for the worst, Hope for the best, has been my mantra for decades.

But none of my training had ever prepared me for a gator at the side of the boat that was more than half the length of what we were standing on. As he surfaced for a GOOD solid breath of air, we all froze seeing just how large this beast was.

Remember, we are in a 17 foot boat. This gator was well past the halfway mark by at least a foot or two…by the time this registered, I said what we all were thinking.

“Oh shit!”

That broke the moment, and the gator dove again, this time seeming to realize what was at stake. As Greg fought the renewed gators, I asked Josh why he didn’t shoot it.

“He’s BIG!”

“Right! What do we do?”

And here is the part that made me a little queasy. I read somewhere that the mind works at almost the speed of light. I’m pretty sure mine hit Warp 10, as I heard Josh say,

“We’ve only done this one other time!”

In the span of about two seconds, her is what went through my head: Thoughts of gator death rolls with me in his jaws flashed through my mind. Then, the realization that I swim for a living, Josh is a dentist, and Greg works on pools, I have the advantage. I can out swim them! Then the fact that the waters we were in are TEEMING with gators. And I had NO clue how to get back to the boat ramp.

Then I said it again,

“Shit!”

Then I calmed down. Greg said to get another hook ready. A large hook was pulled out,and I provided some of my trusty paracord. I tied it off with a Uni Knot and it was then used to snag the gator while he lay on the bottom below the boat. Once he was pulled to the surface, he rolled several times, sealing his fate as the rope tangled him up.

Josh then took the bangstick and slammed him several time in the head until it finally went off. Only it didn’t do anything other than make the gator made and start thrashing again. A point blank .357 on he head just pissed him off! I was a bit freaked out by that…

Then Josh stepped up with his compound and placed two arrows into the body cavity, and the show was over for Mr. Gator. The head was gaffed, pulled up, and the mouth taped off. Then the spine was severed with a sharp knife. As the life drained out of its eyes, we realized we had accomplished our goal. And we all lived! Well, all but the gator.

The rest was work. Pulling the gator onto the boat, loading the boat onto the trailer, driving the gator to the processor, then washing, washing washing. Ourselves, the boat, then ourselves again. Gators really STINK! (And dragging the gator into the walk-in freezer FULL of other gators gave me the creeps again…what is some first-timer failed to dispatch one of these guys?)

The final measurement was 10 foot, 1 inch. The processor offers $30 per foot on gators over 10. They also will trade the hide for processing the meat, or the meat for processing the hide. Or you can have both. Their seems to be a market for every bit of the gator, not just the tail.

Here he is on the boat as we got back to land:

Did I embellish a bit? Probably. But it WAS exciting, the gator did make us freeze when we realized how big he was, and he did end up being a lot larger than we thought at first. And after it was all said and done, I drove home, still pumped up on adrenaline. I arrived home at 6pm, having had the adventure of a lifetime on little more than 3 hours sleep.

—————————————————————————-

Other than the excitement of the gator hunting itself, one memory stands out more than others. AT one point, while sitting in the predawn darkness, wit hall lights out, I heard this high pitched whine, and asked how close we were to the highway. I was told about 15 miles, and asked why.

“Aren’t those tires I hear whining in the background?”

“Nope, those are mosquitoes.”

“Shit!”

I said that a lot that day….

Here are more pictures.

Peace,
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