Gator Hunting

At 9 p.m. off exit 192 on I-10, Samuel and Doug met Phillip and and his son, Chad, to go Gator Hunting on Lake Talquin. Although Phillip is a medical doctor who teaches other doctors about pharmacology (drugs), he goes on Friday nights gator hunting as a licensed trapper. At the house of the head trapper he works under, they have huge walk in coolers were we saw and smelled an assortment of gator heads, skin and meat along with an equally weird assortment of deer heads. One of the large gator heads belonged to the 10' 6" foot gator he had caught the week before. The largest he has caught was 13' 8"!



We used a flat bottom boat outfitted for gator hunting with a deck and brace for the person with the harpoon to stand on in the bow. The harpoon was a long metal pole with a dart stuck on the end. The object of the hunt was to get close enough to the gator to jab the in the dart which was attached to a cable and rope. We moved about mainly with a trolling motor but also used a "Go Devil" (weird contraption that is good for shallow water).



We saw a lot of gators. Most of them two small to catch. The big beautiful moon was at first red and then orange before rising and becoming white. It and the choppy lake water made the gator hunting more difficult because we couldn't sneak up on them. Although we saw an 8' gator, we never could get close enough. We ended up catching a 6' and an almost 5'. The smaller one, Phillip harpooned "on the run" as we chased it down with the "Go Devil" at full throttle. Phillip also harpooned about a 3' Gar which turned out to only to be a handful but also very stinky!

We got home about 4 a.m. Saturday morning, but it was a lot of fun and maybe next time we will get the "big" one.