2013 Annual Florida Family Gator Hunt

[IndianaBowman]

Fasten you seat belts and get ready for a fun filled Florida family gator hunt.

2013 would be the 6th consecutive year for alligator hunting in Florida. This year I was very excited to find out if we would be lucky in the random draw tag lottery. I was really hopeful that we could draw a couple good tags as I had a very special group of bowhunters lined up for this year. My oldest daughter Emily hunted with me last year and did everything perfect but my buddy Jeff Holchin and I seemed to be able to mess it up for her. We lost two nice gators while trying to land them after she made great shots with a 50# Bear Grizzly recurve. So this year she was on a redemption hunt. The next hunter would be my son Jeff, who has taken two gators in the past but was going again this year because his wife (married for a little more than a year) wanted to give it a try. That brings us to Harmony (Jeff's wife). She is quite the sport and a real trooper. She doesn't come from a background of hunting or fishing, but we've been breaking her in. What makes her even more impressive this year is that she was gator hunting with us while 7 1/2 months pregnant with my first grandson. To round out the 4th hunter we have Daniel Holchin the 17 year old son of my great friend Jeff. Daniel hunted with my son Tyler and I back in 2008 and while he had many opportunities we were just rookies and he didn't get a gator. So this was another redemption hunt for him. This would be a special hunt for he and Jeff as Daniel will be flying the coup soon as he graduates from HS and moves on to college.

Now we just needed to draw the tags!

[Stone Knife]

This should be good  

[IndianaBowman]

You have to apply for the tags in May and you don't find out until the first of June if you've drawn any or not. We had all six of us apply and only two of us drew tags. We are pretty selective in our tags and this year we got our first choice tags. So we were all set for a fun filled gator hunt. Each tag/permit allows for the taking of two alligators and this means we had enough tags for the 4 gator hunters.

My daughter Emily who lives in Manhattan, NY is a 1st grade teacher and she would be coming to Upstate NY where I live to help me make the VERY long 24 hour drive to Okeechobee, FL. My son Jeff and his wife Harmony would fly from Salt Lake City, Utah to Orlando where Jeff and Daniel would pick them up on their way down from Taylorsville, NC.

Emily and I departed Albany, NY at about 2 PM on Tuesday August 13th. Emily is a good driver, but a big truck and a long boat did give her a little trouble last year as she tried to drive it over the pump protecting pipes at a gas station. Popped a tire, bent the rim, and bent the axle. New tire, rim, and axle and we were on the road again for this year.  

Emily did a great job and didn't hit a thing.
 

That doesn't mean we didn't have a little bit of trouble. After passing the iconic "South Of The Border", my trailer tire decided to give up the ghost.  

 

After a quick stop at a tire store to buy two new radial trailer tires we were on the road again and pulled into our home sweet home for the next 5 days at my parents place in Okeechobee.

 

[IndianaBowman]

We drove down early to scout for gators and we immediately hit the water. Emily is a great boat driver as well.
 

Here she is on one of the many South Florida canals. The area is full of canals used to provide water to the many orange groves and cattle ranches.
 

In order to get to some unpressured areas we crossed under some low bridges. This keeps many of the larger boats out and all of the airboats.
 

Emily and I did find a lot of these.
 

 

[IndianaBowman]

There were many gators cruising around and we were pretty excited for the others to get to Florida and start hunting.
 

This is about a 9 foot gator that is right next to the side of the boat. You can make a gator grunting sound and they will swim to the boat. My daughter Jen shot a 10' gator at the whopping distance of 3 feet!

 

Emily and I were pretty beat so we went home and crawled into bed for some much needed rest. This was the view from my bedroom window.

 

Our rest didn't last too long as we were in Florida and when in Florida you bass fish!  We got up before daylight on Thursday to bass fish and were greeted by this beautiful sunrise.

 

This was going to be a very long day as Thursday was the first day of gator season and we would be hunting all night (you can hunt from 5 PM until 10 AM).

[IndianaBowman]

The fishing was pretty darn good! Last year Emily caught a giant bass over 9 pounds and this year she whooped up on us again. Here are just a few of the fish Emily caught.

 

 

 

 

She was kind enough to let me catch a couple as well and this was a pretty good one!

 

[IndianaBowman]

After the first night of hunting Jeff's son Daniel was pretty excited to give some fishing a try as well and he was on a quest to catch his biggest bass ever.  He was successful. Here's a couple of the fish he caught.

 

 

[IndianaBowman]

After a pretty good morning of fishing and a lot of time preparing for the nights hunt Emily and I launched the boat and waited for Jeffrey, Harmony, Jeff and Daniel to arrive. They were meeting us at the launch ramp. Jeff and Daniel drove all night from NC and Jeff and Harmony were up at 4 AM to catch an early flight. They were going to be some tired puppys before the sun comes up on Friday.

Emily had a great time last year and was very excited for the hunt to begin. Here she is in my boat and ready to go. We got the nice comfy chair for my very pregnant daughter-in-law!

 

This is Emily holding the bow she would be using. It's a Monte Dunaway custom at 57#s.

 

This is a picture of Emily in her hunting garb. Some say the mosquitos can be bad at night, but I don't seem to be bothered by them.

 

[IndianaBowman]

Well, it's getting late here in NY and I was up very early for a bass fishing tournament. It is a team tournament series and my partner and I finished 2nd today and clinched the season championship...so it was a good day.  But I am tired.  I won't leave you hanging all the way. Here's one of my favorite pictures of the hunt. It is my son on the last day of hunting with the 4th and last gator taken. Some very exciting hunting to come.. That gator weighed more than he does and he was barely breathing hard after a pretty long hike back to the boat.. a really fun story about why we were out of the boat...

 

[steadman]

Awesome Terry!! Looks like a lot of fun!!

[South MS Bowhunter]

Wow looks to be a really fun family outing, I feel left out   :rolleyes:  Great pictures and also love the picture of your son and his gator!

[Ricker]

Wow. What a trip!  Cannot wait to hear the rest of the story.

[Benjy]

Terry, I would love some "schooling" on this statement "This is about a 9 foot gator that is right next to the side of the boat. You can make a gator grunting sound and they will swim to the boat. My daughter Jen shot a 10' gator at the whopping distance of 3 feet!"

I figured out a way to use the slide on a bowfishing arrow on my "gator" arrows. I think we need to exchange some secrets!

Benjy

[VictoryHunter]

 This is great! Thanks for sharing. I hope to do this hunt with my wife soon!

[glenbo]

That sure looks like a successful adventure to me. Great story and photos Terry

[Dick Langer]

Can't wait to hear the rest of the story Terry, brings back some very fond memories !!!!!!!!!!!!

[BDann]

Awesome!

[IndianaBowman]

The first night was "Ladies Night". Our thought was to try and get Harmony a gator first so that if she got too tired (from being VERY pregnant) that we could take her back to the truck and she could go home and get some rest. Well, our plan did work out pretty well, except there was no way Harmony was going to leave us and quit gator hunting.  

Jeffrey, Harmony, and Jeff and Daniel arrived shortly after legal hunting time (Jeff got lost) and we traveled about 10 miles up a canal to reach a spot where Emily and I saw a lot of gators and knew that one would likely be around and offer Harmony a good shot opportunity. The gator did not dissapoint and we pulled up to the gator with some good daylight still in the sky. Fortunately, the gator was near a water flow structure and didn't seem too concerned with us at about 5 yards away. Harmony has really never shot a bow before and actually missed on the first two tries. No problem, a gator grunt here and there and it seemed to stay close. Harmony finally got an arrow in it and the fight was on. As you can see from the photo of Emily holding a bow above that we use the "Davis Rig". It is just a soda bottle filled with expanding insulation stuck into a walking cane tip mounted to the bow. I use 250# PowerPro fishing line to attach to the arrow. Anyway, you will not stop a gator with 250# thin line and that was the case hear as well. What we do is to gingerly pull the gator close and then harpoon it with another sharp tip with a really heavy line attached. We pulled the gator up next to the boat and Harmony stabbed the big gator with as much power as she could must and it just bounced off the hard back scutes of the gator. No fear her husband to the rescue. He grabbed onto the harpoon with her (what a team) and the two of them got a good hit and the rope was attached. Some more fighting ensued and then we pulled it up next to the boat where I grabbed it by the snout. He didn't like it too much and did a death roll and pulled loose. We fought it to the boat again and I grabbed again and this time was able to hold until Jeffrey added reinforcements. Harmony then taped the mouth shut and administered the final pithing. We are bow hunters and do not use a bangstick. We just wrassle them gators into submission and kill them with our pocket knife. Pithing is just scrambling the spinal cord and brain with a knife just at the base of the skull. It is a very quick and humane method to kill a large reptile. Anyway, Harmony had her gator even before dark.

It was a very nice 8 1/2' gator that will be some great eating and she is really looking forward to a gator skin purse.

 

Here is Harmony and her doting husband Jeff.

 

Beautiful sunset on her wonderful hunt.

 


Harmony works for a dental office and Jeff is studying to become a dentist so they wanted to checking out the teeth.

 

This is how you grab them.

 

Off to church now. More to come later. Emily is up next....

[IndianaBowman]

It wasn't 10 minutes after we finished with all the pictures of Harmony and her gator that Emily had a big gator on. We fought it for a long time but was unable to get it stopped before it buried into a big weed matt. We could see the line going into the matt but couldn't budge the gator. I asked Jeff H to follow the line down and see if he could feel the gator. To his credit he reached right into the dark tannin colored water. The gator was too deep so we decided to try to horse it out. No such luck and the line pulled out. Emily was disappointed and thought the results of last year might repeat. Remember Jeff and I lost two of her good gators last year. Fortunately about 10 minutes later Emily had arrowed another alligator. It wasn't as big as the first one, but she wasn't being picky. She hit it back a little and when we would pull it up next to the boat the back end would be all we could reach so I grabbed it by the tail and back leg and tried to reach around for his head. He wasn't too keen on that idea and twisted back and tried to bite me. Jeff said "they seem to know where their discomfort is coming from and they don't like it". Fortunately the gator missed and it didn't deter me from trying again. My grabbing the gator had the same result this time except Daniel said the gator only missed me by an inch. I think it was more like 2 or 3 inches. Emily simply said "it's probably good mom didn't come!"  Anyway, I was finally able to grab the gator and Emily did the mouth taping and pithing. These girls aren't afraid to get their hands dirty.

Here's Emily and her very good 7' alligator.

 

He she is with it on her lap. The smile says it all.

 

Here is Emily with her very proud Papa!

 

One of the requirements of gator hunting is that you must attach a CITES tag immediately after harvest. Jeff was the lucky guy to draw the tag for the area we were hunting and I asked him for the tag.  Well... here's a picture of the situation and Jeff's explanation of what happened.

 

"I will explain that photo of the lost/floating license. Terry and I will make a presentation at the 2014 PBS Banquet in Cincinnati on gator hunting. Terry will be the expert that has this thing totally figured out; I will be his sidekick who has figured out how to screw up as many chances to kill a gator as possible! I have a pretty good supply of "don't do this" items from the previous two gator hunts with Terry, but just to be sure, I found several new items this year. One good one was to misplace the gator tags in my house over the summer and have to turn the house upside-down the day before I left for Florida, until I found them in a laundry basket in a corner of my home. Oops. But even better was to decide to place the $1000 gator tags, which can not be replaced if lost, in my left pocket during that first night's hunt. Surely they would be safe there, right? Except when we had the second gator in the boat and Terry asked for a tag, I discovered an empty pocket. A very detailed search of every inch of the boat revealed no gator tags. Oops. Turns out that earlier in the night, when I reached into a thick matt of weeds to feel for an alligator, I had laid down on the bow of the boat and reached way into the water, and the license must had slipped out then. My saving grace, and escape from a mutiny/beating from the boat crew, was that I had placed the gator tags in a ziplok baggie and the bag was found floating in the weeds at the edge of the canal. We only wasted an hour "hunting" my gator tags! Double oops."

[IndianaBowman]

After being really lucky and blessed to find the lost tags our hunt resumed. We hunted really hard for the rest of the night and into the morning. Jeff and Daniel both had many shots, a few hits, a couple sticks that we just couldn't get in, and many misses. These gators are harder to hit that it would seem. Jeff and Daniel were both on the bow with me one time and a nice 9 or 10' gator was swimming at about 6 yards off the front of the boat. I told them to get ready and to shoot when I put the light on the gator. Like clockwork they both released when the light hit the gator. Let's just say the light was the only thing that hit the gator. Jeff's shot was to the right and Daniel's was to the left. If formed a perfect "X" marks the spot over the gator on where they should've shot. I simply just laughed out loud. It was just too funny. Anyway, these guys hunted hard all night. Daniel was really impressed with the stamina of the girls and said "I've never been around girls that will endure so much and work so hard without ever complaining".

Here's a picture of Daniel toward the end of the 1st night's hunt. I think he was a little tired.

 

Here's Jeff and I as the sun was coming up. He made it a little bit longer.

 

However, it wasn't too much longer and I was the last man standing.

 

These hunts can be very physically exhausting. Here's what Jeff H had to say: "One warning about these gator hunts if you happen to go with Terry: don't expect much rest or sleep. I left NC early thursday morning and it took 14 hours to get to the boat ramp where we began hunting. After 14 straight hours on the same canal, we finished the first night's hunt. Then we had another 3-4 hours cleaning up, getting the first 2 gators taken care of, eating breakfast, showers, etc. Then we all got 3-4 hours of sleep and repeated the process! Five of us were dragging but not Terry! The man simply does not need much sleep and has a nearly endless supply of energy. Amazing!"