The quest for a Giant American Alligator
It’s hot, swelteringly hot, it is still and humid, it’s the first week April, windless and already in the ’80s and it’s not even 10 am. The surface of the lake before us is like glass, gar are rolling in the morning light and the air is thick with anticipation. Ahead of me is my companion, guide, and mentor all in one Steve Barclay (aka GarGuy). Sweat runs down his forehead his eyes focused and forward as we approach the lake. The lake is the remnant of a long-abandoned gravel pit excavated in the 1950s situated in the Trinity River bottom. Part of the demise of the pit was a spring that was struck while digging it which once unattended filled it with water becoming home to all manner of life from the floodwaters of the Trinity River. For nearly 60 years bass, carp, crappie, beaver, nutria, gar, and alligator have called this lake home and the abundance of forage and relative seclusion has become an oasis for reclusive mature alligators. We continue the mornings first stalk with a disciplined and well-planned approach, we flanked the lake going well over a mile out of our way to approach the water from the perfect wind direction, taking controlled steps, keeping cover between us and the area the big gator liked to sun itself in. No sooner than we had set our feet to begin glassing the shore our attention is immediately drawn to the nearby shallows. A stream of bubbles can be seen as a large underwater mass moves away from the shoreline breaking sticks and limbs as it goes, it is an alligator, a big alligator. Clearly alerted to our approach it had spooked, this is not good but I have to get set to shoot should this be the giant we have been chasing. Not knowing immediately if it was the gator we were after I throw my gun on the tripod and settle in for a shot attempting to anticipate where it will surface, the gators head comes up, he is in range, Steve sees the alligator and acknowledges it. We know this gator, he is mature bull, 10-11ft and in any other scenario we are taking this shot but it is not the gator we have been after, we know the giant is still holding to the lake and it would be a compromise to shoot this one now. All that said we take a moment to admire the mature animal, having both experienced the pang of passing the proverbial “bird in the hand” in past hunts we remind ourselves that we are after a true giant. Eventually, I take the gun off of it and we begin a stalk up the shoreline, the first approach of the day is a bust and it stings, we gave that alligator no reason to bust us yet it had.
There is a heavy and unspoken tension in the air, frustration is setting in, with scouting trips included we are half a dozen trips into this seasons hunt for this giant and like so many hunts the most challenging component is maintaining a positive attitude when confronted with adversity. Despite two successful pre-season scouting trips the big gator winded us on the very first morning of the season and the sightings and activity had decreased with each subsequent hunt. Whereas some alligators will actually show themselves out of curiosity or their perception of a meal opportunity this giant alligator is easily 50-60 years old and it demonstrates none of these forgiving behaviors, a lifetime of reclusive habits and extraordinary circumstances have allowed this alligator to reach this level of maturity and it is cutting us no slack. We are grinding, we are chasing a ghost, questioning everything. Then as if by some silent merciful decree from nature the wind makes a gentle shift to the west-northwest. Steve notes this and the fact that it is creating a unique scenario that will put us right on top of the area that the giant gator likes to sun in.
Normally the prevailing winds would make it impossible to approach this key shoreline and we have in prior attempts been forced to try and stalk the adjacent shore glassing through an intolerable tangle of flooded trees and brush leaving highly compromised shot opportunities and or forcing us to wind the gator in our vain attempts to improve our shot angle. The shoreline is a mass of giant willows underpinned with snags all cast across an unnatural topography of the perimeter of the long-abandoned gravel pit, we don’t know if we will be able to see anything once we go into it but the window of opportunity was limited and we proceed into the thicket. We are years into this hunt, that’s right, years, and I can’t help but feel this is a critical shift in the momentum in our quest for this giant alligator.
Leading up to this moment I like most who read this story grew up hunting and fishing and like most the game we are most familiar with is a function of what we pursued and where we pursued it. All this is to say that in the first 20+ years of hunting or fishing I had never encountered an alligator in the wild, not even in passing. I had long been fascinated by these dinosaur-like animals, as a species, they are 150 million years old and can live to be over 60 years old. While my early years found me largely outside of the traditional habitat of alligators my late 20s and early 30s found me now living in College Station with increased hunting and fishing adventures drawing me further and further east. No longer were the ponds and creeks I hunted and fished tame, an ancient stoic predator shared these waters and careful thought and consideration were made before one took a dog on a duck hunt or you simply jumped into a creek to look for arrowheads. I had entered the realm of the alligator and after a few encounters, I was quickly consumed with a deep desire to hunt one of the true giants.
After years of DIY alligator hunts, I had found reasonable success but had never taken anything mature or over 8ft. So I did my research which led me to Steve Barclay, aka Garguy. I found his website and sent him an email to introduce myself and let him know I was serious about wanting to bag a giant alligator. We exchanged messages and he put me on standby but the spring rains soon flooded the Trinity river bottom so we punted the adventure to 2016. In a short measure, the 2016 season arrives and Steve and I meet up, though our daily lives and place of upbringing are very different we hit it off. Steve has a wealth of knowledge from his experiences hunting the rivers and backwaters of East Texas and I didn’t want to be denied any aspect of it, I had no desire to pull up to giant gator and to be told to pull a trigger, I wanted to hunt for a giant and I wanted to learn everything I could about the habitat and the animal in the process. So on that first 2016 meeting, Steve explains he has seen a giant alligator and that we would be glassing oxbow lakes, creeks, and an old gravel pit as the large gator bounces between these various habitats. Ironically on our very first stalk, Steve has me 30 yards from a bona fide 9-10ft alligator I knew we were not looking at a true giant but after 5 or 6 years of my own adventures, we were looking at the largest gator I had ever personally encountered while hunting. He pulls me off that gator, he acknowledges it is big but it is not the one, unfortunately, that would be the highlight of the gator hunt for that year as cool weather set in and the gator activity slowed to a crawl. On a positive note I got to see numerous types of habitat, we even at one point found the gators den in the old gravel pit and right at the opening of it was an ominous footprint in the mud, an alien print as big as a man’s hand showing that the gator had last gone into the den. The 2016 adventure was a bust for alligator but Steve convinced me to pursue alligator gar as they were active and I wrote about that adventure in and of itself (https://discussions.texasbowhunter.c...d.php?t=592698)
Following our first attempt at an alligator Steve and I became fast friends, our shared passion for mature whitetail bucks and my budding fascination with artifacts led to many incredible adventures in the years to follow. We chased giant deer in South and East Texas, we dug a couple of thousand artifacts in camps across SE Texas, and Steve and his father mentored me in the history and techniques used to hunt the national forest. Between 2017 and 2019 Steve and I made a few more visits to the river bottom trying to pattern the giant alligator again. The winter and spring rains had so drastically disrupted the normal cycle of life that we had little success. We would always see alligators and Steve even got a glimpse of a large gator once or twice but never with any consistency and I had honestly given up hope that we would ever see the giant alligator again. I had accepted that I had missed the window in time when the giant alligators could still be harvested and hunted in the Trinity river bottom. Then in the third week of March this spring Steve calls me. I answer, he is coming through loud and clear and there is a distinct excitement in his voice, “Justin I was down at the old gravel pit with my nephew David today and I saw your alligator.” I am confused, I ask if he means the 9-10fter we saw years before, surely, surely he didn’t see the giant that we found the footprint of at the den in the gravel pit. “No Justin, not the 9 or 10footer, THE GIANT is in the gravel pit.” Needless to say, I got excited, I had put this dream to rest, buried it but in an instant, I am filled with excitement. We make plans to go scout the following week, the season is still two weeks away and we hang up the call. I am eager to see the alligator and I am very eager to see the exact terrain where I will shoot, I am obsessive about preparing and practicing with as true of a scenario as possible in advance of a hunt. The following week finds us at the gravel pit standing in chest-high vines and chigger laden grass. Unlike the prior two years, the Trinity River is still within its banks, there is a sense of normality in the river bottom and there are gators in every corner of the old gravel pit. We immediately spot a very large alligator on an island, our view is blocked by brush but to me it is big but not a giant. Steve leads me further along a peninsula that sticks out into the lake and a few steps later we are interrupted by a violent thrashing of water, we had obviously upset a large gator along the steep shoreline but didn’t see it. We proceed until we get to a vantage point where we see another alligator out of the water sunning on an island, in the corner of my vision is there is something large but I write it off as a log. Steve confirms that I see the gator on the island then tells me to focus on the large log to the right of the gator, the log is the head of the giant. It is shocking, the gator on the island is every bit of 7 or 8ft long and the head of the gator next to it dwarfs it. The giant lives, the giant is real, the giant is here… after years of chasing a ghost, it is back in the gravel pit and appears to be comfortable. We take a moment to soak in the sight of the alligator then agree the best thing we can do is to leave the lake alone for the next 10 days while we wait or season to approach.
The season opener was a bust, the big gator winds us and as described the multiple hunts to follow prove to be difficult, the wind and weather do not cooperate and the giant is alerted to our presence early on. All this brings us back to the present stalk to the previously inaccessible shoreline. We ease into the woods, the first several approaches to the water are frustrating we have a limited view and we are not seeing any alligators with the view provided. This makes for a complicated circumstance because your natural reaction is to push closer to the water however the worst thing you could do is get too close to the alligator and spook him at close range, this could be significant enough to potentially displace him from the lake or change his pattern in a way that you might eventually think it is no longer there to be hunted. All of this is weighing on us, whatever uplifting quality the wind change has provided is quickly being deflated. At the third ridge we crested we took a moment to glass for several minutes it actually afforded a decent view, unfortunately, we once again saw nothing and I was giving a clear indication that I was ready to continue down the shore when Steve takes several stealthy steps towards the water on a shaded point enabling him to see an area that had been close to us the whole time but was blocked from our view on the higher elevation. He looks out then immediately waves his hand at me, the message is crystal clear, in a soft but serious tone he says your gator is right there, it’s the giant, no questions. I set the tripod and not 70 yards out is an enormous head, the head of the giant. Whereas in so many other encounters Steve and I would oscillate over if it was the correct alligator Steve is convicted in his opinion that this is it, this is the giant. I put my gun on the tripod, I settle into the scope and I have a shot lane but the alligator is sitting too low in the water, yes I could take the shot but the low shot angle and a 1-inch margin of success or failure particularly on an animal of this caliber tells me not to shoot. Steve is of the same opinion if the gator raises up even one inch my odds of success more than double so we wait…and we wait…and we wait. Pretty soon I am no longer standing I have gradually moved to a seated position lowering my tripod moving into a clear shot position trying to improve my rest position. It is now after 11 am the sun is glaring and two things are obvious 1- this gator has no idea we are on the bank, the wind is holding 2- this gator is completely settled into a position resting on the bottom, not floating, capturing all the sun it wants likely in a semi-sleep state after the warm full moon night we had just come off of. Steve and I are in agreement, this gator will eventually move but when that will be and what direction that will be are not necessarily going to be in our favor.
At this point we have to take a chance, I lean over to Steve and he has a smile on his face because he already knows what I am going to ask him before I ask it. On previous hunts, Steve would mouth call making pig squeals around ponds and sloughs and like clockwork alligators would appear out of thin air eagerly trying to locate the opportunity for a meal and at this point, it was worth a try. Steve lights up the calling, making several long distressed squeals and rolling a couple of rocks into the water, within seconds the alligator slowly sinks into the water, it does this with eerie stealth that leaves no ripple or wave in the water. There is a moment of intense mystery, is it coming to us, did we run it off, where is it, then it appears, the giant alligator has effortlessly moved to its right about 5 yards into deeper water to conceal its intentions and is now facing us at an angle and scanning the shore most importantly its head is now 2 inches higher in the water Steve and I confer it’s time to take the shot. I inhale, align my site to the right of the eye just at the water line and touch off the trigger. The shot is true, there is no explosion of water that would suggest I shot too low causing the bullet to lose energy, there isn’t a large splash above the gator suggesting I shot high, everything about the shot demonstrated that the gator took the full force of the 160-grain A-Frame swift 7mm rem mag. Steve watched the shot through his binoculars and calls out that the gator rolled then settled, the bubbles are flowing up and not moving, I almost think I can see a yellow glow in the coffee-stained water but we have no time to waste, we have to hookup the airboat and get in the water and get to the gator, time is our enemy.
We launch the airboat and make our way towards the alligator. Steve’s gaze is locked ahead as he triangulates the position of our approach. Not 20 minutes before we had been perched in the shadows of the giant vine laden willow trees along the bank of the water. Steve breaks the intense silence by suggesting I pick up the bowfishing rig rather than my rifle. “Justin I believe the gator is dead, your shot looked good but an animal this big will keep moving even after you kill them and one swing of its tail could push it into deep waters, it’s probably best you anchor it with the bow rig.” At this point I do not question him, the suspense is unbelievable. We had just spent the last hour motionless on the bank in a one-sided stare down with a giant alligator and now we were about to find out if a hunt that began with a sighting of this exact alligator YEARS before was coming to its conclusion. Steve points to a pile of partially submerged brush then to the bank and says to me if the alligator went down he should be right in between those two locations. Having the benefit of my Costa Del Mar polarized sunglasses on at the moment I point to where he directed my attention and I tell him I can see something yellow down I the water, he smiles and he says calmly that’s your alligator, I am still skeptical having seen apparently dead alligators vanish into thin air in years past on my own adventures, I am asking if he is sure, he just smiles again and says that’s him buddy, stay calm and anchor him with the bowfishing rig.” In the blink of an eye, we are on top of the yellow mass in the water, I can’t make out and details other than part of the tail, the mass in the water is big, really, really big. I release an arrow and manage to miss the entire object, it's deeper and larger than anticipated. I wind the arrow in and reload it, this time correcting my shot angle shooting a second time, I release, it’s a solid hit, the object doesn’t move but it’s clear I connected as bubbles stir and the arrows line won’t pull up. Steve takes the line connected to the arrow and I take a large piece of reed cane with a hay hook tied to it and reach down and connect with the alien object in the water. Even at this moment, I am more serious than excited, the final moments of the hunt had been intense, I had in past hunts seen the full body of the alligator but the final hunt only involved seeing the head of the gator. It had been alone on this encounter so there was no immediate comparison to make and while I inherently trusted my guides assessment that this was indeed a giant alligator furthermore the giant we had been after all these years I hadn’t allowed myself to fully process the size or excitement because it was not yet in hand. I am snapped out of my trance as Steve explains the need for me to hook the gator in the head and that with two points of contact we can get a rope on it. I lean over the boat and pull up on the yellow mass in the coffee-stained water below me, slowly the object becomes visible, a leg, claws, the head, the teeth…like 1000 volts of electricity the detail completes the image and 2ft from me is the most shockingly enormous animal I have ever encountered in the wild.
Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what was on the end of the pole in front of me.
To touch this animal who had resided only partially in reality for years, who I had given up hope of ever encountering or killing, to touch this dinosaur, this is the alligator of a lifetime and he is bigger and more overwhelming than I could have ever imagined. I yell at Steve “Steve this is unreal, this is a mega-gator, this is an absolute giant.” Steve laughs, “a mega-gator huh, well I told you it was at least 9’ I hope I didn’t let you down” the sarcasm is thicker than molasses on a cold morning. In the celebration and intensity of the moment, the hay hook slips from the gator and it rolls releasing the last pocket of air it was holding and instantly becomes too heavy to hold with just the arrow line. For lack of a better term I freak out, my giant is slipping back into the depths, the gator twitches, just nerves but in my mind the beast is returning to the black abyss from whence it came, having teased us with its mythical proportions. Steve stays calm, he reminds me that he is why we put an arrow in it. He says now the real work begins, he wasn’t kidding and with much effort, we do manage to eventually load the alligator and get it to land.
This story is the last chapter of this multi-year quest for a giant alligator, though not weighed it is by any reasonable biological estimate in excess of 700lbs, it measured roughly 12’4” long and no picture can ever do justice to it. Perhaps more so than with any animal I have ever hunted or fished for I am left with a feeling of intense reverence for this ancient creature, this is not to be mistaken with having reservations about having hunted him, never have I hunted a more intelligent and aware animal, worthy is almost an inadequate term. Lastly, this story is an attempt to share a very personal quest that above all else marked the beginning of an incredible friendship that spurred countless adventures in the years between first meeting my guide and friend Steve and this moment of incredible success. I love Steve like a father, a brother, and a friend, his entire family has taken me in like one of their own and I am honored that they would share their faith and their knowledge of the woods with me, I proudly carry that passion for life and the woods forward like the fire that it is. Thank you, good buddy, it has been an unbelievable adventure, the marrow of life. -JMW
Video of us loading the gator https://youtu.be/dh7vlKu_dlc
Video of celebration once loaded https://youtu.be/TBo-70hSPrY
There is a heavy and unspoken tension in the air, frustration is setting in, with scouting trips included we are half a dozen trips into this seasons hunt for this giant and like so many hunts the most challenging component is maintaining a positive attitude when confronted with adversity. Despite two successful pre-season scouting trips the big gator winded us on the very first morning of the season and the sightings and activity had decreased with each subsequent hunt. Whereas some alligators will actually show themselves out of curiosity or their perception of a meal opportunity this giant alligator is easily 50-60 years old and it demonstrates none of these forgiving behaviors, a lifetime of reclusive habits and extraordinary circumstances have allowed this alligator to reach this level of maturity and it is cutting us no slack. We are grinding, we are chasing a ghost, questioning everything. Then as if by some silent merciful decree from nature the wind makes a gentle shift to the west-northwest. Steve notes this and the fact that it is creating a unique scenario that will put us right on top of the area that the giant gator likes to sun in.
Normally the prevailing winds would make it impossible to approach this key shoreline and we have in prior attempts been forced to try and stalk the adjacent shore glassing through an intolerable tangle of flooded trees and brush leaving highly compromised shot opportunities and or forcing us to wind the gator in our vain attempts to improve our shot angle. The shoreline is a mass of giant willows underpinned with snags all cast across an unnatural topography of the perimeter of the long-abandoned gravel pit, we don’t know if we will be able to see anything once we go into it but the window of opportunity was limited and we proceed into the thicket. We are years into this hunt, that’s right, years, and I can’t help but feel this is a critical shift in the momentum in our quest for this giant alligator.
Leading up to this moment I like most who read this story grew up hunting and fishing and like most the game we are most familiar with is a function of what we pursued and where we pursued it. All this is to say that in the first 20+ years of hunting or fishing I had never encountered an alligator in the wild, not even in passing. I had long been fascinated by these dinosaur-like animals, as a species, they are 150 million years old and can live to be over 60 years old. While my early years found me largely outside of the traditional habitat of alligators my late 20s and early 30s found me now living in College Station with increased hunting and fishing adventures drawing me further and further east. No longer were the ponds and creeks I hunted and fished tame, an ancient stoic predator shared these waters and careful thought and consideration were made before one took a dog on a duck hunt or you simply jumped into a creek to look for arrowheads. I had entered the realm of the alligator and after a few encounters, I was quickly consumed with a deep desire to hunt one of the true giants.
After years of DIY alligator hunts, I had found reasonable success but had never taken anything mature or over 8ft. So I did my research which led me to Steve Barclay, aka Garguy. I found his website and sent him an email to introduce myself and let him know I was serious about wanting to bag a giant alligator. We exchanged messages and he put me on standby but the spring rains soon flooded the Trinity river bottom so we punted the adventure to 2016. In a short measure, the 2016 season arrives and Steve and I meet up, though our daily lives and place of upbringing are very different we hit it off. Steve has a wealth of knowledge from his experiences hunting the rivers and backwaters of East Texas and I didn’t want to be denied any aspect of it, I had no desire to pull up to giant gator and to be told to pull a trigger, I wanted to hunt for a giant and I wanted to learn everything I could about the habitat and the animal in the process. So on that first 2016 meeting, Steve explains he has seen a giant alligator and that we would be glassing oxbow lakes, creeks, and an old gravel pit as the large gator bounces between these various habitats. Ironically on our very first stalk, Steve has me 30 yards from a bona fide 9-10ft alligator I knew we were not looking at a true giant but after 5 or 6 years of my own adventures, we were looking at the largest gator I had ever personally encountered while hunting. He pulls me off that gator, he acknowledges it is big but it is not the one, unfortunately, that would be the highlight of the gator hunt for that year as cool weather set in and the gator activity slowed to a crawl. On a positive note I got to see numerous types of habitat, we even at one point found the gators den in the old gravel pit and right at the opening of it was an ominous footprint in the mud, an alien print as big as a man’s hand showing that the gator had last gone into the den. The 2016 adventure was a bust for alligator but Steve convinced me to pursue alligator gar as they were active and I wrote about that adventure in and of itself (https://discussions.texasbowhunter.c...d.php?t=592698)
Following our first attempt at an alligator Steve and I became fast friends, our shared passion for mature whitetail bucks and my budding fascination with artifacts led to many incredible adventures in the years to follow. We chased giant deer in South and East Texas, we dug a couple of thousand artifacts in camps across SE Texas, and Steve and his father mentored me in the history and techniques used to hunt the national forest. Between 2017 and 2019 Steve and I made a few more visits to the river bottom trying to pattern the giant alligator again. The winter and spring rains had so drastically disrupted the normal cycle of life that we had little success. We would always see alligators and Steve even got a glimpse of a large gator once or twice but never with any consistency and I had honestly given up hope that we would ever see the giant alligator again. I had accepted that I had missed the window in time when the giant alligators could still be harvested and hunted in the Trinity river bottom. Then in the third week of March this spring Steve calls me. I answer, he is coming through loud and clear and there is a distinct excitement in his voice, “Justin I was down at the old gravel pit with my nephew David today and I saw your alligator.” I am confused, I ask if he means the 9-10fter we saw years before, surely, surely he didn’t see the giant that we found the footprint of at the den in the gravel pit. “No Justin, not the 9 or 10footer, THE GIANT is in the gravel pit.” Needless to say, I got excited, I had put this dream to rest, buried it but in an instant, I am filled with excitement. We make plans to go scout the following week, the season is still two weeks away and we hang up the call. I am eager to see the alligator and I am very eager to see the exact terrain where I will shoot, I am obsessive about preparing and practicing with as true of a scenario as possible in advance of a hunt. The following week finds us at the gravel pit standing in chest-high vines and chigger laden grass. Unlike the prior two years, the Trinity River is still within its banks, there is a sense of normality in the river bottom and there are gators in every corner of the old gravel pit. We immediately spot a very large alligator on an island, our view is blocked by brush but to me it is big but not a giant. Steve leads me further along a peninsula that sticks out into the lake and a few steps later we are interrupted by a violent thrashing of water, we had obviously upset a large gator along the steep shoreline but didn’t see it. We proceed until we get to a vantage point where we see another alligator out of the water sunning on an island, in the corner of my vision is there is something large but I write it off as a log. Steve confirms that I see the gator on the island then tells me to focus on the large log to the right of the gator, the log is the head of the giant. It is shocking, the gator on the island is every bit of 7 or 8ft long and the head of the gator next to it dwarfs it. The giant lives, the giant is real, the giant is here… after years of chasing a ghost, it is back in the gravel pit and appears to be comfortable. We take a moment to soak in the sight of the alligator then agree the best thing we can do is to leave the lake alone for the next 10 days while we wait or season to approach.
The season opener was a bust, the big gator winds us and as described the multiple hunts to follow prove to be difficult, the wind and weather do not cooperate and the giant is alerted to our presence early on. All this brings us back to the present stalk to the previously inaccessible shoreline. We ease into the woods, the first several approaches to the water are frustrating we have a limited view and we are not seeing any alligators with the view provided. This makes for a complicated circumstance because your natural reaction is to push closer to the water however the worst thing you could do is get too close to the alligator and spook him at close range, this could be significant enough to potentially displace him from the lake or change his pattern in a way that you might eventually think it is no longer there to be hunted. All of this is weighing on us, whatever uplifting quality the wind change has provided is quickly being deflated. At the third ridge we crested we took a moment to glass for several minutes it actually afforded a decent view, unfortunately, we once again saw nothing and I was giving a clear indication that I was ready to continue down the shore when Steve takes several stealthy steps towards the water on a shaded point enabling him to see an area that had been close to us the whole time but was blocked from our view on the higher elevation. He looks out then immediately waves his hand at me, the message is crystal clear, in a soft but serious tone he says your gator is right there, it’s the giant, no questions. I set the tripod and not 70 yards out is an enormous head, the head of the giant. Whereas in so many other encounters Steve and I would oscillate over if it was the correct alligator Steve is convicted in his opinion that this is it, this is the giant. I put my gun on the tripod, I settle into the scope and I have a shot lane but the alligator is sitting too low in the water, yes I could take the shot but the low shot angle and a 1-inch margin of success or failure particularly on an animal of this caliber tells me not to shoot. Steve is of the same opinion if the gator raises up even one inch my odds of success more than double so we wait…and we wait…and we wait. Pretty soon I am no longer standing I have gradually moved to a seated position lowering my tripod moving into a clear shot position trying to improve my rest position. It is now after 11 am the sun is glaring and two things are obvious 1- this gator has no idea we are on the bank, the wind is holding 2- this gator is completely settled into a position resting on the bottom, not floating, capturing all the sun it wants likely in a semi-sleep state after the warm full moon night we had just come off of. Steve and I are in agreement, this gator will eventually move but when that will be and what direction that will be are not necessarily going to be in our favor.
At this point we have to take a chance, I lean over to Steve and he has a smile on his face because he already knows what I am going to ask him before I ask it. On previous hunts, Steve would mouth call making pig squeals around ponds and sloughs and like clockwork alligators would appear out of thin air eagerly trying to locate the opportunity for a meal and at this point, it was worth a try. Steve lights up the calling, making several long distressed squeals and rolling a couple of rocks into the water, within seconds the alligator slowly sinks into the water, it does this with eerie stealth that leaves no ripple or wave in the water. There is a moment of intense mystery, is it coming to us, did we run it off, where is it, then it appears, the giant alligator has effortlessly moved to its right about 5 yards into deeper water to conceal its intentions and is now facing us at an angle and scanning the shore most importantly its head is now 2 inches higher in the water Steve and I confer it’s time to take the shot. I inhale, align my site to the right of the eye just at the water line and touch off the trigger. The shot is true, there is no explosion of water that would suggest I shot too low causing the bullet to lose energy, there isn’t a large splash above the gator suggesting I shot high, everything about the shot demonstrated that the gator took the full force of the 160-grain A-Frame swift 7mm rem mag. Steve watched the shot through his binoculars and calls out that the gator rolled then settled, the bubbles are flowing up and not moving, I almost think I can see a yellow glow in the coffee-stained water but we have no time to waste, we have to hookup the airboat and get in the water and get to the gator, time is our enemy.
We launch the airboat and make our way towards the alligator. Steve’s gaze is locked ahead as he triangulates the position of our approach. Not 20 minutes before we had been perched in the shadows of the giant vine laden willow trees along the bank of the water. Steve breaks the intense silence by suggesting I pick up the bowfishing rig rather than my rifle. “Justin I believe the gator is dead, your shot looked good but an animal this big will keep moving even after you kill them and one swing of its tail could push it into deep waters, it’s probably best you anchor it with the bow rig.” At this point I do not question him, the suspense is unbelievable. We had just spent the last hour motionless on the bank in a one-sided stare down with a giant alligator and now we were about to find out if a hunt that began with a sighting of this exact alligator YEARS before was coming to its conclusion. Steve points to a pile of partially submerged brush then to the bank and says to me if the alligator went down he should be right in between those two locations. Having the benefit of my Costa Del Mar polarized sunglasses on at the moment I point to where he directed my attention and I tell him I can see something yellow down I the water, he smiles and he says calmly that’s your alligator, I am still skeptical having seen apparently dead alligators vanish into thin air in years past on my own adventures, I am asking if he is sure, he just smiles again and says that’s him buddy, stay calm and anchor him with the bowfishing rig.” In the blink of an eye, we are on top of the yellow mass in the water, I can’t make out and details other than part of the tail, the mass in the water is big, really, really big. I release an arrow and manage to miss the entire object, it's deeper and larger than anticipated. I wind the arrow in and reload it, this time correcting my shot angle shooting a second time, I release, it’s a solid hit, the object doesn’t move but it’s clear I connected as bubbles stir and the arrows line won’t pull up. Steve takes the line connected to the arrow and I take a large piece of reed cane with a hay hook tied to it and reach down and connect with the alien object in the water. Even at this moment, I am more serious than excited, the final moments of the hunt had been intense, I had in past hunts seen the full body of the alligator but the final hunt only involved seeing the head of the gator. It had been alone on this encounter so there was no immediate comparison to make and while I inherently trusted my guides assessment that this was indeed a giant alligator furthermore the giant we had been after all these years I hadn’t allowed myself to fully process the size or excitement because it was not yet in hand. I am snapped out of my trance as Steve explains the need for me to hook the gator in the head and that with two points of contact we can get a rope on it. I lean over the boat and pull up on the yellow mass in the coffee-stained water below me, slowly the object becomes visible, a leg, claws, the head, the teeth…like 1000 volts of electricity the detail completes the image and 2ft from me is the most shockingly enormous animal I have ever encountered in the wild.
Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what was on the end of the pole in front of me.
To touch this animal who had resided only partially in reality for years, who I had given up hope of ever encountering or killing, to touch this dinosaur, this is the alligator of a lifetime and he is bigger and more overwhelming than I could have ever imagined. I yell at Steve “Steve this is unreal, this is a mega-gator, this is an absolute giant.” Steve laughs, “a mega-gator huh, well I told you it was at least 9’ I hope I didn’t let you down” the sarcasm is thicker than molasses on a cold morning. In the celebration and intensity of the moment, the hay hook slips from the gator and it rolls releasing the last pocket of air it was holding and instantly becomes too heavy to hold with just the arrow line. For lack of a better term I freak out, my giant is slipping back into the depths, the gator twitches, just nerves but in my mind the beast is returning to the black abyss from whence it came, having teased us with its mythical proportions. Steve stays calm, he reminds me that he is why we put an arrow in it. He says now the real work begins, he wasn’t kidding and with much effort, we do manage to eventually load the alligator and get it to land.
This story is the last chapter of this multi-year quest for a giant alligator, though not weighed it is by any reasonable biological estimate in excess of 700lbs, it measured roughly 12’4” long and no picture can ever do justice to it. Perhaps more so than with any animal I have ever hunted or fished for I am left with a feeling of intense reverence for this ancient creature, this is not to be mistaken with having reservations about having hunted him, never have I hunted a more intelligent and aware animal, worthy is almost an inadequate term. Lastly, this story is an attempt to share a very personal quest that above all else marked the beginning of an incredible friendship that spurred countless adventures in the years between first meeting my guide and friend Steve and this moment of incredible success. I love Steve like a father, a brother, and a friend, his entire family has taken me in like one of their own and I am honored that they would share their faith and their knowledge of the woods with me, I proudly carry that passion for life and the woods forward like the fire that it is. Thank you, good buddy, it has been an unbelievable adventure, the marrow of life. -JMW
Video of us loading the gator https://youtu.be/dh7vlKu_dlc
Video of celebration once loaded https://youtu.be/TBo-70hSPrY
Attached Files
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