Want to harvest a giant alligator? Well, now you can by getting tags from the state.
Each year, as club president of a hunting lease I share with several friends, I am required to record and report to the land company we lease from deer harvest information.In such, there are calls I get that I fondly refer to as “fish-and-game reports” and then there are “the calls” — those reports featuring something really big.
By the sound in Phil’s voice, I knew this wasn’t going to be our usual “I got one to report” deer conversations.
“John, you know that little short dammed-off location in the back of 2-9 canal?”
Sensing Phil was clearly excited about something, I knew I was going to have to wait him out and listen, as he developed the panorama and scene.
“Yeah, I know where you’re talking about,” I replied.
“Well, I pulled a little aluminum flat boat over the bank and paddled toward the back where I wanted to put up a stand. I scouted along the bank and there was a lot of sign back there, but it’s too far to walk in the morning — where with a little boat you could ease in there nice and quiet.”
I cut him off with a quick, “Yeah, uh-huh,” just to let him know I was listening.
“John, I saw the biggest alligator of my life! I mean, I’ve got a head from a 12-footer a guy gave me that I had mounted, and he is at least that big or bigger. He’s got to be 12 or 13 feet long.
“I turned around and went back. Man, I got to thinking, if I had an accident one morning before daylight and fell over in the water, I’m not going to make it to the bank. I’m gone.”
I knew Phil wasn’t exaggerating either. I too had paddled the length of the closed-off location canal the previous year with the same thing in mind.
When I first saw the big marshland behemoth, it was due to the fearful shriek of a white egret interrupting what otherwise was only the quiet splash from the purposeful stroke of my paddle. As its wings worked to rapidly lift its stick frame from the edge of the bank, the monster lunged from the depths of the deep canal missing its white quarry by inches.
Like something viewers watch on the Discovery Channel from the safety of their homes, this was the dark continent of Africa — Louisiana style.
The beast put on a display that was reminiscent of those of his reptilian cousins across the ocean, and I got to see it up close.
“I’ve seen him, Phil,” I said. “I’m going to see if I can put a tag on him come this fall.”
Recently, when a friend of mine stopped by my office, we got around to discussing alligators.
“Boy, I sure wish I had me some tags,” he said. “I like all that.”
“There are lots of tags available,” I said. “You just have to be willing to process the paperwork for a lottery draw or put in a bid for some.”
I wasn’t trying to be glib, and perhaps I may have over-simplified the opportunities. But the fact remains there are tags available that the general public has access to.
Many sportsmen think nothing of putting up several hundred dollars for lottery hunts with hopes of drawing a tag out west for mule deer, elk or antelope. What’s more, unlike other forms of outdoor recreation sportsman have access to, Louisiana alligator hunting does tend to be a more specialized interest.
But for the sportsman willing to do his homework, opportunity abounds for taking a trophy gator.
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Alligator Program Manager Noel Kinler estimates there are 3,500 tags available on approximately a half million acres of public land.
“There are offices in Ferriday, Minden, Pineville and Tioga in North Louisiana that administrate a lottery harvest on a number of lakes ranging in size of a few hundred acres to several thousand,” he said.
Additionally, Kinler mentioned other administrative areas included Dewey Wills, Pearl River, Manchac and Grassy Lake wildlife management areas. The tags for these areas are available to the public on a high-bid basis for a 3-year period.
“There are also opportunities available on national wildlife refuges as well,” Kinler said. “Sabine, Cameron Prairie and Lacassine in Cameron Parish work on a lottery system and are awarded on a three-year basis. The NWR designates the amount paid for the tags, which is on the order of something like 40 percent. They can be contacted for the exact amount.”
Another option for sportsmen interested in hunting alligators is via guide services. Gary Nunez is a guide with a proven track record for harvesting big alligators. With 25-years of outfitting experience, Nunez has guided clients from Arkansas, California, Idaho, New York and Texas. His international clients hale from Canada and Norway.
“The Pearl River Wildlife Management Area is 38,000 acres in size,” he said. “I’ve (hunted) this area for 12 to 15 years now. I also contract some areas around Shell Beach.
“There are a lot of big ones back in the swamps. To get to some of those areas, we’ll run 50 miles — making it a 100-mile round trip. Each year we catch quite a few of them.”
For Nunez, the 2005 season was a complete loss because of Hurricane Katrina.
“Last year was pretty bad, and we didn’t make a hunt,” he said. “There were so many trees down; I didn’t want to ruin what equipment I had. There were caskets. Out of respect for people they were rescuing, I just stayed out of the swamp.”
This year, Nunez plans to return to Pearl River WMA, and has already booked clients from Arkansas and North Dakota.
“I’ve got to run around real slow,” he said. “There were always sinkers and logs to worry about, but now there is lots of extra debris.”
According to Kinler, other tags available to the general public can be obtained through the Department of Natural Resources and school boards.
“The DNR manages various state lands in Vermilion, St. Martin, Iberia and Iberville parishes through the Office of State Lands, and every 16th section in a township is designated for school board use,” he said. “Some sections differ from parish to parish, where the tags are offered together with other hunting such as deer, or separately.”
Tactically, there are a number of methods for taking alligators. The traditional technique is hanging a 12/0 hook and line baited with chicken on a pole suspended above the water with a clothespin. Spotting and stalking is also popular, where the use of a high-powered rifle or bow and arrow is used.
A Stephensville fisherman told me he uses floating corks. Since he fishes primarily swamps with few bayous, he will tie his line to the base of a small diameter tree and place the hook and bait on the cork. He consistently harvests big gators.
One method Nunez likes his sport hunters to do is to have them try catching a big alligator with a rod and reel.
“I can toss a weighted treble hook with a surf cast rod 50-feet fairly accurately,” he said. “I’ll use a Penn reel with 50-pound-test line, and get them to cast it over the back of a big gator we spotted and reel it in, snagging him. You have to keep the pressure on him and let him tire out. But it’s a lot of fun catching one with a rod and reel.”
When looking for big gators to put your tag on, you will want to spend time scouting the banks of the area you drew out for. The observant hunter will look for slides. These slides are places alligators frequent and have worn the grass off the bank climbing up and down to catch a few rays of sun.
Check out these locations, and look for his paw print. If the size of his print is close to or larger than your hand, you’re looking at a potential location to bait a line. In addition to slides, look for places where the grass that leads back into the marsh is flattened by a large gator.
“We have a lot of wild rice in our area, and you can see where the rice is laying down,” Nunez said. “Sometimes the gator is so big, it looks like a 4-foot-wide flat-bottomed boat went through it.”
Big alligators are shy and tend to avoid places where there is frequent boat traffic. Sportsmen who want to tag large gators should look for out-of-the-way places such as deep dead-end canals, isolated marsh ponds and bayous with lily jams. There is always a hole or two where the lilies open up. And more often than not, there is a large alligator close by.
Wide, crooked bayous that are deep in the middle often are shallow as much as 50 feet from the bank, making them difficult to fish. The alligators are there; you see them.
When this occurs, take a 5-foot-long, 2 1/2-inch-diameter dried willow stob with a point at one end, and secure your line to it. Shove the stob deep into the sand below the mud line where it’s shallow.
Using your long (16-foot minimum) bait pole, stab it in the shallow mud flat where the bait hangs over the drop off. The trick is to use a piece of stiff copper wire twisted onto the pole to hold excess line. Big alligators come up out of the deep and patrol along the edge of the drop off in search of prey at night along the mud flats.
When judging a trophy alligator, the rule of thumb is to estimate the distance from the tip of his nose to his eyes. If he is approximately 10 feet long, the distance will be dangerously close to 10 inches. It’s not an exact science, but it works.
Phil’s secluded dead-end canal was slick calm. The smoke rose off the water and danced in the fresh morning air only to disappear.
Louisiana September mornings are like this on the bayou. You drift along in the cool air, occasionally stealing wild muscadine grapes from a vine you spied — the gators can wait. Simple moments like these don’t last very long, and I selfishly take advantage of them with no regret.
The day before, I meticulously placed 10 lines in the location, but never saw the behemoth. But I knew he was there, and so were some of his smaller entourage.
When you’re so far from town and the engine of your boat is off, nature’s silence somehow speaks to you. I knew they could see me.
It’s a good thing they’re not very bright creatures because it was quite obvious what my intent was.
The following morning, I could see that nearly every line was pulled. Several were stretched out into the deepest part of the canal. Out of the ten, three still held a bait suspended 12 inches above the water.
The first two lines I checked were tangled in the cut grass along the canal banks edge and didn’t hold an alligator.
“Little alligators,” I spoke out loud. “Go get your daddy.”
I hated wasting time and effort re-baiting, knowing full well the little suckers would pull them down again, but you never know.
The next line held a respectable 6-footer, and the next line a 7-footer. Things were beginning to look up, I thought to myself.
A large gar fish was on the next line; all I could figure was the line must have slipped out of the clothespin and semi-submerged my bait in the water.
I was elated to pull in a 9-footer next, but suppressed it, as I wasn’t satisfied. I was down to my last line in the location.
I had attached this one to a 4-inch willow tree branch that extended out over the water from the bank’s edge. Sets like these tend to look more natural, and gators hang out beneath these branches hoping to ambush a resting bird. As I grabbed a hold of the line, the water exploded from the bank’s edge beneath the lilies. The line slid across my hand.
“That’s going to hurt in the morning,” I thought to myself.
The gator turned out to be 10 feet, 7 inches long, and was literally massive in size. Alligators are like humans in that they come in all shapes and sizes. He wasn’t the longest I ever caught, but perhaps was the biggest.
