Alligators 2012

My partner and I finished our alligator season yesterday. The first day we caught 21 gators. The biggest was over 11 feet long. It was a good season and we had a lot of fun. This was the 33 season I have hunted gators.



11 gator




Big Head




Nice gator


http://i135.photobucket.com/al...000001E8E35A670D.mp4

Super Go Devil

I see you kept your trigger finger out of his mouth.....dead may not be dead.

Have never been bitten, but have come close. You are right dead is not always dead, a couple of years ago I shot a seven foot gator and placed the tag in the tail. It was on the deck of the boat, dead, or so I thought. It quickly crawled off the deck, in the water, swam off, and was never seen again. Loss the gator and the tag.

Damn the luck, lost your tag as well. That reminds me of the Foxworthy story about the "dead" beaver biting the guys nipple off. er on the side of caution..
Very nice Croc-agators though.

Mike, where is your TV crew?
Those PVC poles for placing the bait and hooking them for the eventual shot?
That looks like work.

Big lizard! (after providing your last education on the subject)
Congrats.
No wonder you feel at home in the tall grass chasing Buffalo.

No TV crew!! I will leave that to "Swamp People".

We use the poles to stake out some lines. I prefer a tree but in the marsh it is seldom an option.

Several years back I got tired of cutting poles every year and made up some 15' long poles from PVC. Should last at least 10 years.

Staking out a line. We used chicken for bait that year. We normally use beef melt (spleen).



This little gator grabbed the bait but did not take the hook. The line hung up and did not fall properly.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...74C7E88C85.mp4

This video was taken when Marc first started hunting with me.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...76A2C49859.mp4




This was a big gator from 2010. It was nearly twelve feet long.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...79A6353E9A.mp4

Amazing stuff thanks.

mike how many tags do you get and how long is the season, and do you usually take all your quota? having seen crocs come back to life after they were definitely dead i am very untrusting when it comes to sharing the back of a cruiser with one !! so i wouldnt be as calm as you are sharing a boat with a heap of alligators one of my friends got bitten by a dead one , some thing to do with good looking clients daughters ,and this is what you can do with a dead croc when taking photos i dont think he is on line at the moment but he will know who i am talking about

Well Done Mike!

We take a few in Texas during September in the core counties. The land manager for the place in the picture below finally applied for tags. The count indicated approximately 140 gators in two relatively small lakes bordering the Brazos River. I believe they were granted a pathetic 7 tags .... Since I had been encouraging them to get tags and take advantage of the opportunity for years, they let me have one of the tags. Certainly not an 11 footer, but it made a full 8 ft. Used a chunk of pig lung, which floats even with a large hook and wire leader. Threw it out as far as I could, then used a popping cork on a spinning rod to coax the gator to it. Once I was convinced he had swallowed it, set the hook and the fight was on!

Shakey,

That must have been a blast. An eight foot alligator is powerful.

Well done!!!

Spike,

We receive about 35 to 40 tags per year. The season last approximately 30 days in Louisiana.

A couple of years ago a buddy of mine was bitten by a gator that came back to life. Not life threatening but required a trip to the hospital.

Great hunt and congrats, still looking for my Mr Big but got till 11-1, so still plenty time