All the while a 7-foot-long alligator had his lower right leg in a vise-like grip, Keith Price of New Iberia was worried about the safety of his 9-year-old grandson who went deer hunting with him late that afternoon on Oct. 20.
Price, widely known by bowhunters and competitive archers in the South-Central region of the state during his 25-year career in the archery business, found himself in danger immediately after dropping down from the double ladder stand on his lease in St. Mary Parish. The sun was setting, and it was getting darker by the moment.
“I told Owen to go ahead and climb down,” Price said, recalling the hunter vs. wild animal confrontation with young Owen Edwards, also of New Iberia. “He hits the ground. I came down behind him.
“I took a couple steps down, then heard some noise in the palmettos in the flooded area of the (nearby) ditch. I said, ‘Owen, you threw something in those palmettos?’ He said, ‘No, Paw.’ I heard it again.”
The 67-year-old outdoorsman at first thought it might have been a possum or armadillo. Wrong. It was an alligator moving in for supper and likely targeting the first boots on the ground, Owen’s. Unbeknownst to Price, he got between them.
“I thought it (possum or armadillo) would go away. I saw a flash of white,” Price said about what he now realizes was the inside of an alligator’s open mouth. “When I went to kick at it, I didn’t think it was an alligator, but it was and he grabbed onto my right leg. That’s pretty much when the party started. I’m trying to kick him with my left foot.”
Fighting the gator
Owen asked aloud what all the commotion was about. Price’s two headlights were in his backpack because he doesn’t step down the double ladder stand with one on.
“I said, “An alligator’s got me.’ I told him to stay back,” he said.
During the first frantic moments of the skirmish, Price mentioned getting a crossbow out. Later, Price admitted he was glad the boy was unable to untie the rope because “he might have shot me in the butt.”
He continued to counterattack the alligator.
“When I could catch my balance, I would kick him with my left leg,” Price said. “I ended up throwing my backpack at him, also. I think with those neoprene boots on, after I kicked him five or six times, he finally let go of my leg.”
A brief standoff ensued.
“He was just standing there, hissing,” Price said.
Then the alligator was gone into the darkness, probably back to the flooded ditch along the palmettos that ring the clearing around that deer stand.
Price, admittedly shaken, was relieved. Start to finish, the encounter lasted less than two minutes.
“Oh, yeah, it took a while to calm down,” he said. “I got my backpack and got two headlights out of it and said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’”
An unforgettable night
After a short hike to his pickup truck, Owen shined a light on his grandfather’s lower right leg. There were teeth marks on his shin, which was bruised, and the back of the neoprene boot over his calf was ripped by the alligator’s teeth.
“Thank God there was no real damage and thank God he didn’t get Owen. He would have snapped his leg,” Price said, knowing all too well had the reptile succeeded in biting Owen, it would have dragged the small boy to the ditch. If that had happened, the boy’s grandpa said he “would have gone in there with a pocketknife.”
Price and his grandson told the story to his daughter, Cassie Edwards, Owen’s mother, when he brought the boy home.
First, Cassie asked her son if they saw any deer.
“Owen said, ‘No, mom. No deer. But Paw got bit by an alligator.”
Owen’s father, Nick Edwards, who was in a meeting, was alerted.
“I got a text that they got in a run-in with a ‘gator. I sat up pretty quick. I tell you, it scared the crap out of me,” he said, noting he was relieved no one was hurt.
“I texted back, ‘OK. Good. That’s what counts,’” he said. “As a parent, it freaked me out. (But) considering who he was with, I have no doubt he would have been all right.”
Owen said, “I was scared at first. Once we left, I was feeling a lot better. I felt good that Paw didn’t get eaten.”
