Adjusting Florida's Gator Hunting Application System

Some folks want to blame Swamp People, but I think things were trending this way anyhow. Florida Gator Hunting has really jumped in popularity over the last five years. The hunts are exciting. They don’t interfere with other hunting pursuits. And up until recently, they’ve been pretty accessible. Now the FWC may have a burgeoning gator problem on their hands. Not one where they have to remove a reptile from a pool or dislodge a poodle from a gator’s gums, but with their hunting program.

Perception is reality to a mob. After the 1^st round of drawings went down a few weeks ago, you could hear the torches flaring and the grinding of honed pitchfork tines. All kinds of wild accusations were flying about from the unsuccessful, from accusing the FWC of favoring non-resident applicants because they pay more for their permit - $1022 to $272 for residents – to suggesting gator guides are gaming the system by submitting applications for all friends and family members fit for a late-night gator chase. 

Indeed these are pretty reckless claims without proof. And this year has been tougher because demand has increased while the number of tags was diminished because of drought conditions. Anecdotal evidence an effective argument does not make, but I do have frustrated friends who have not been drawn in years of applying, and I suspect others do, as well. If these folks are applying for tough-to-draw lakes and zones year-in, year-out, then reason stands that the odds are never in their favor.

My method of applying is about the same as the NFL Draft. Everyone gets five picks per application – I try to apply for the top-shelf talent first and second. The third and fourth picks are reserved for bigger lakes with more tags, and the final is left for the less desirable licenses, like my fourth-season Polk County tag I paid for the other day.

But a few changes could really help assuage much of the clamor associated with this process and give everyone - well, almost everyone - a better shot at yanking a prized permit.

1. Institute a preference point system. I’d like to see points awarded to unsuccessful applicants weighted on whether, let’s just say, a person struck out on their first 3 picks. Assign 3 preference points for the 1^st pick, 2 for a second pick, and 1 for a third rounder. Over time this will allow folks to eventually pull that coveted pond nearby with only two permits. They already use preference points for other quota hunts in the state – it couldn’t be that difficult to get it going for gators.

2. Designate a certain number of tags for residents and non-residents. As it stands now, I have the same odds of drawing a permit for a local lake as someone from Arkansas does. Nothing against non-residents and no xenophobia here, but there’s a real problem when Florida residents can’t access a local resource because of out-of-towners, even if this is only an imagined problem. This model is used in many areas in the West for desirable big game tags, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be employed here. Maybe split the privilege 70/30 in favor of residents.

3. Adjust the Phase II application time. Not everyone was excited about going to a random draw system a few years back, but it was a relic. They continue to operate under a 1^st-come, 1^st-serve design for Round 2, but it starts at 10:00 am. Now, I paid for my tag so I’m ineligible anyhow, but I can tell you exactly where I’m gonna be at ten tomorrow – work. Maybe move it up to 6pm or so.

Look, it’s never going to be perfect, but the FWC does a pretty good job of listening to stakeholders and making sure all available permits are divvied amongst the crowd. Not everyone will draw a tag, and, believe it or not, gators are a limited resource. This is not an extermination program, rather a recreational one.

Gator hunting is great sport; there just needs to be a few wrinkles ironed out in the application process. But, hey, even if you don’t get pulled, you can always buy a trapper’s agent tag and participate in a hunt in which someone else drew the CITES tags and right to pay the 300 bones.

Or a $1000…*%&@! Out-of-Towners.

(Ideas? Suggestions? Let's hear it!)

The Gator Mount

Never figured to be in the market for an alligator head - mostly because, until recently, I never appreciated the trophy value of such an item. If so desired, they are easy to purchase from just about any South Florida truck stop or curio store. It’s like with bobwhite. If I want a mounted quail, I’ll buy the table with a covey under glass from Cabelas and be done with it. A gator head is a gator head. Big deal.

Well, that was dumb thinking. Taxidermy is about preserving memories, and that trophy gator from August was quite the experience. Still, even with the gator boated, I had no illusions of a mount. That decision was aroused out of desperation.

See, I cleaned that gator myself without benefit of a hoist, fork lift, or walk-in cooler. The other hunters had to be at work, and since I held the tag, it was my burden to bear. Think about this before setting off after your own leviathan. The intelligent option was to take it to a processor, but being cheap as the day is long, this wasn’t an appealing option. Plus, I figured I could handle it on my own.

Problem was – and I hadn’t really thought it through beforehand – that gator wasn’t coming out of that boat after the three of us had miraculously rolled him in. I’d have to carve it where it sat. So, I towed gator and vessel out to my folks’ place. Since they live on a few acres out of town, I figured I’d come up with an idea of what to do with it there. Plus, I needed Mom to take pictures.

Since this is a family website, I’ll spare the disgusting details of dressing a stinky 600-pound monster in the August heat. It was an ordeal. After I’d cooler-ed the tail, I was left with this immovable gator carcass and nowhere to go with it. Mom and Dad have a bass pond in the front, but – well, they still have to live there, and if it floated up...yikes. I wasn't about to sweat further burying it. Their property borders Lakeland Highlands Scrub Preserve; I could pitch it over the fence. All ideas were muted anyhow by that pesky problem of getting it out of the boat – lift with the knees, Mom! No, I’d need a team of oxen and a system of ropes and pulleys for these tasks.

Maybe it was the onset of heat stroke, but an idea germinated. The time had arrived to push frugalness aside; I may have to buy my way out of this mess. Let me call the taxidermist. Maybe he’ll have a place to dump the body if I agree to have the head mounted.

I dialed up George Norwood in Plant City to see if he taxidermized alligators. He quoted me $11 an inch. I asked how much of the gator he required. He replied to just bring what I wanted mounted. I asked again, and he picked up on what I was intimating. George laughed and said he’d charge more to dispose the mess than mount the head.

Long story short, I ended up finding a place to unload the gator – it took three of us risking serious hernias, Mom included, to roll the gator back out of the boat and down into a sand pit on private land. But on the ride out there I was calculating and rationalizing.

That’s not a bad price. It IS a trophy animal. Who knows when I may draw a tag again or find an animal that size?

I froze the head – cut off behind the jowls for that extra size effect - and the next day took off to Mr. Norwood’s. I didn’t have anything particular in mind. I knew I didn’t want any teeth replaced. Several of the front ones were chipped and broken like the smile of an old bulldog. Also the eyes. Poor eye color or setting devastates a mount, to me. A lot of gator mounts have these lime-green eyes like they’d been swimming near a nuke plant. I wanted something darker and more sinister. Beyond that, the bangstick hole would have to be patched.

I was surprised to get the phone call last week that the project was completed - with deer season not yet in full swing, he had plenty of time to work on it. I’m very pleased. The hide along the jaws is pretty firmly attached. It’s not like caping a deer where you can easily skin it off and tan. The whole head had to be submerged in a foul-smelling pickling solution. Before this, Mr. Norwood had to cut out as much meat in the jowls as possible. Once it was removed from the pickling solution and dried, insulation was packed into the back of the head and secured with wooden slats. This was then sealed with a black epoxy compound.

Anyway, the mount looks great. My only regret is I didn’t have more of it mounted. The head is certainly impressive, but that alone doesn’t represent the girth of the animal. That’s gonna have to remain a memory.

So it is now proudly displayed in the kitchen, lording over the pantry and scaring the bejesus out of the unaware who come in the side door. Couldn’t be happier. Everyday I walk in and stare at the beast and remember what a great hunt that was.

The Trophy Gator

“Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.” – Cordell Hull

Down in a cove on the southwest corner of the lake, the gator moseyed towards shore. A beast, we didn’t figure we could cut him off with the trolling motor. But the surface drive would have definitely spooked him. We had to try – this gator had given us the slip on a couple other occasions, and the situation had grown personal.

Luck appeared to be in our favor. He ceased swimming and bathed in the open. Still, a gator this size could make it to weeds and cattails along the bank in a handful of tails swishes. I manned the motor, hoping to maneuver into a position where we’d block him from reaching the lakeshore where he’d be safe from snatch hooks. At least if he sank in the open, we could seek out his bubble trail. But, the best scenario was for him to stay surfaced - just had to get close enough to pitch the large treble hook.

We reached the brink of range as the gator started feeling the pressure and slowly resumed his cruise towards land, his gnarly head poking above the lake’s horizon leaving an inverted V of a wake to mark his trail. Cole was given the go ahead. This was no fire-for-effect situation – the gator would surely spook once the hook hit the water. It was just a matter of getting the hook and line over his back, reeling quickly and digging a prong deep into his hide.

Cole’s attempt had the distance of a worthy try, but not the accuracy. The three-pronged snatch plopped in front of the gator, missing by several feet. A tannic-stained wave of water erupted as he beat his tail and disappeared once again into the depths of the mucky lake.

Trophy animals – regardless of species – attain their status through the years. A trophy alligator, especially, is a worthy prize. One, they live for decades, surviving numerous assaults like the one described above, to say nothing of the violent relationships with other gators and predators in their youth. I would not depict them as crafty, as one would call a big buck whitetail, but they are certainly of a different mindset than their younger counterparts. Bull gators are often all too visible on lakes and rivers but have the capability to vanish in surprisingly shallow depths, the normal tricks plied to dig out the younger guys rendered ineffective.

And, like other trophies, a combination of hunter effort must usually overlap with an environmental or physiological change that exposes vulnerability in the animal. Take whitetails again. While a great many big bucks are taken outside of the rut, the majority are laid low when they shrug off their normal wary instinct to chase does. The problem with gators is the hunting season does not coincide with their breeding cycle. We desperately needed such an event to get the drop on this bad boy or we’d spend more time in fruitless pursuit, educating him even further.

We returned to the lake the next morning. I had drawn second phase tags for a popular Central Florida lake. By this point in the season, no doubt, the gator, and his hunted brethren, had endured a pestilence of hunters. A trophy specimen mixed with intense hunting activity only distances the odds of triumph. But he was firmly implanted in our minds. I’d never taken a truly large gator and was only lukewarm about taking a meat gator. This morning was sloppy, though. Winds coming from the advancing Hurricane Irene created a chop across the lake, making it awfully difficult to spot heads on the surface. It appeared that a repeat shot at this guy was slim to none.

So, Harris drove us across the lake - opposite the haunt of our villain - to hunt along a shoreline protected from the wind. Wimpy gators – 5-7-footers – popped up and down, but none were of any interest. Then I spotted a barge of a lizard floating in the middle of the lake.

Trophy judging gators is difficult. There are a whole lot of medium-sized reptiles out there that are 8-9 feet long that are big by reasonable standards and represent fine catches, but are not the leviathans of nightmares and campfire stories. And I know hunters probably help gators grow a few feet, too, when carrying a warm tag in their pocket as the nights drag on and on.

But, as the saying goes in trophy hunting, the big ones look big, and this one was a warhorse. This gator displayed his veteran status, as well. He submerged before we got close enough to even think about picking up a rod. I helmed the trolling motor until we neared where he went down and sat back to wait for him to show himself, careful not to kick gear around the boat and create startling noises and vibrations.

Thirty minutes passed and nothing. Good ideas were fleeting, with little hunting time left. We decided to circle the lake in hopes of spotting any action, but the waves thwarted us.

As we started back to the ramp the wind mercifully eased. We noticed an abundance of dead shad floating on the surface. The evening before, a huge thunderstorm dumped several inches of rain on the area. The influx of cool rainwater sank to the bottom of the lake releasing decomposing vegetation that removed dissolved oxygen from the water. Unable to breathe, the fish suffocated. Shad are particularly vulnerable to this in the shallows. We noticed one runt gator on the surface enjoying this feast.

That’s when I noticed our Man back in the cove where he had given us the slip the day before. He was surrounded by dead shad.

This time he allowed us to get fairly close before sounding just out of casting range. But unlike before, he surfaced quickly, hanging in that general area and not beating tail to shore. The shad buffet kept his attention fixed. His vulnerability was exposed.

This didn’t mean he was completely off his grind. The gator went back down as the anchor was lowered. We got a bead on where he was and prepared to wait him out, hearts absolutely racing. When he did resurface ten minutes later, he was off our port side and quickly sank after a quick breath. The gator wasn’t any closer to shore, but given any more time, it was a cinch he could make it there, no sweat. The decision was made to do a little prospecting with the snatch lines.

The gator betrayed no bubbles or other sign, but the snatch hooks were tossed with educated guesses. It was a long shot, but our only hope at this juncture. Time and opportunities were burning. Harris hung something on his third or fourth cast. Near a shoreline with cypress and oaks, it was a safe bet he’d hooked a large, waterlogged treetrunk. Indeed, it was coming up far too easy. We stood on the bow of the boat peering into the muddy water, hoping it was gator.

That warty head surfacing at our toes is a moment that cannot be forgotten. We all jumped back startled and scrambled to find gear with sharp points attached. Those yellow eyes, set so far apart, glanced up over us briefly before thrashing into a tug of war. I grabbed my new rod rigged with triple treble hooks and frantically tried to set another line to him as Harris tried to keep tension on the gator without snapping the line or rod. A gator that size would not be real impressed with one angler, and his thick skin could easily toss the hook. After several attempts – nearly fouling the original line more than once – I struck hide.

The old boy made several runs – not the high spirited streaks younger gators will do; just a constant freight train charge. A harpoon line was a necessity to try to gain control over him as our drags moaned, reluctantly giving up line. He could easily have pulled us into the debris around shore, or that powerful tail could rub through the braided with his scaly hide. I handed my rod off and prepared the harpoon. Finally, enough line was retrieved and a few pumps on the rods brought the gator towards the surface along the portside gunnel. I tried twice to sink the point into whatever leather I could hit but without success. Eventually, I drove the harpoon head in his massive tail, not the ideal spot, but it was what I could do.

I prepared another harpoon line when the gator rolled. The harpoon point and all hooks came loose and he was free. Harris immediately grabbed another rod and began pitching it at the gator, who realized he had an opportunity to reach safety but seemed discombobulated by the action. He whirled close to shore as I rushed to untangle the other lines. Finally, Harris – this hunt would have failed without him – hooked up.

Again, we couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a tree. Harris was unable to budge him. I went ahead and snagged whatever it was with another line and reeled. The line came tight and rod bent over to the water. Whatever it was wasn’t budging.

Thoughts of failure crept in. Almost certainly we were fighting a cypress stump. The object gave no ground. It was like trying to pull a screw straight out of a bolt without turning lefty-loosey first. We kept the pressure on, though. My back began aching and my arms shook from fatigue, sweat blurred my eyes. After what seemed like an hour – but more like 5 or 10 minutes – I felt a quiver on my line and knew we had him again.

He didn’t fight like he had before. The gator was clearly exhausted. Harris and I decided to go ahead and heave him to the surface. That wide, landing strip of a back, resembling tank tread but constructed of blown semi-truck tire, peaked out of the water before rolling over and displaying a dark yellowish underside flecked with scars, leeches and mottled patches of hide.

This time, we put two harpoons in relatively easy despite our remaining reserves of collective strength hovering in the red. The fight had led us into the cattails and aquatic plants along shore, but with four lines in him now, Harris used the trolling motor to free us from this tangle and tried to use the momentum of the boat to bring his head up for the bangstick.

It worked but only briefly. I failed on my first chance, his dome rising and falling without a shot. The anxiety had built to a head; I could not afford to let another attempt slip by. Over the course of several hunts and by the grace of good fortune, he was right where we needed him. But it was not over yet - a gator that size wouldn’t require much more than a solid breath or two and the fight in him would return. I was not confident how much further our luck would stretch.

My first shot was a touch off-center. The gator quickly dove and thrashed. I reloaded. Again, Harris pulled him onto a plane, and I quickly tapped another .44 in his skull. The struggle slacked. The trick now was to get him onshore without losing him. There was no way to get him in the boat on open water.

Harris held the harpoon lines and trolled the short distance back to the ramp. The huge gator was all but expired as we rolled onto the mud. I carefully crawled out of the boat, trying to avoid his tail - if he was to thrash, he’d snap my legs - and put another shot in the sweet spot. It was then we knew it was all over and the celebration began.

The alligator was a real monster. I’m not sure how we rolled him in the boat, but the gravity of what we had done finally hit us. We knew he was big but not like this. The gator taped 10 feet 8 inches. More impressive than the length was the girth. He was a massive bull with the fattest jowls I have seen on an alligator. His claws resembled those of a grizzly, and his hide was scarred from years of fighting the nature of Central Florida. I loathe making such assertions without the proper instruments, but I’m guessing he weighed somewhere in the 600-700 pound range.

As I said, taking a trophy animal is something special. It requires effort and luck and unforeseeable circumstances to help bring one to bag. On an animal like this, you feel the accomplishment from the congratulations of friends to the soreness in your back and arms, and the adrenaline that lingers through the rest of the week. And I’d be severely remiss if I did not give Harris his due; he guided the trip and hooked the gator. It’s as much his prize as mine, if not more so. I just happened to pull the tag and fire a few shots.

Though I am still a novice in the gator hunting ranks, it is safe to say, trophy-wise, years will pass before this Old Boy is matched. And if Time offers up no adequate comparisons, that will be fine, too.

This experience could never be topped.