I was hunting for a giant gator in the Atchafalaya River Basin, the largest freshwater swamp in the United States, with guides Mike and Clint. The first day started out nice with mostly sunny skies, but it soon turned cloudy with a 30% chance of rain. Alligators are the most active when it is sunny and dry. As we cruised in the boat from one channel to the next, I enjoyed the beauty of a wide variety of trees, briars, and aquatic vegetation, but we were not seeing many of the “Swamp Dragons.”
All of a sudden, the boat started slowing down and Mike said, “Get the gun out. There’s our gator!” The next thing I knew, we were getting out of the boat and struggling to fight our way through a jungle of entangled bushes, fallen trees, briars, and thorny blackberry vines. We finally spotted the big gator about 30 yards away. I found a solid rest, and Mike told me to take my time and shoot a couple inches behind the gator’s eye. I lined up the crosshairs behind the big gator’s eyes just at the waterline and gently squeezed the trigger on Mike’s .270. The water splashed, and the gator was gone in an instant. There was no sign of a tail roll. I had missed.
It was a close shot, one I shouldn’t have missed, but I did and was pretty embarrassed. Mike was patient with me and told me to sit down, relax, and hopefully the gator would come back. That’s when the rain started. It poured buckets of cold water on us as we hunkered down under the trees and bushes, waiting for the gator.
Clint was in the small open-aired boat several hundred yards away, watching with binoculars. He came back and motioned for us to go downstream about 300 hundred yards or so. We clambered through the thick vegetation as fast as we could. Mike saw a gator but soon determined it was the wrong one. It was about nine feet long, and the one we were after was a big 12-footer. We were working our way back to where we originally had been when Mike stopped abruptly and pointed out the head of the gator we were looking for. Amazingly, it had come back to almost its original position.
I wiggled around in the mud to a spot where I had a clear shooting lane of the gator’s head. There was only an inch or two showing above the waterline. We didn’t dare move any closer for fear that the large reptile would see us. Resting my elbow on my right knee, I was able to get a good rest. Feeling comfortable for a shot, I gently squeezed the trigger. The gator made one big splash and was gone again, just as before. Over the next several hours, we played cat and mouse with the big gator and had one more shot at him with the same result. The last time we saw the big boy, it was close to dark and he was headed for the other side of the river.
The ride back to the dock in an open-aired boat with the torrential rain was pretty brutal. The major storm that had been building all week in the Gulf of Mexico had now hit the southern Louisiana area in full force with thunderstorms and heavy rain. We discussed the situation with the abnormal weather and decided it would be best for me to go home and then come back in a week or so after the weather improved.
I returned to Louisiana a week later, this time with my own gun, a CZ .243 outfitted with a Trijicon scope that was sighted dead on at 25 yards. During my first three days, I saw over 100 alligators, but none met my expectations. My guides were extremely patient with me and did everything they could to fulfill my hopes of tagging a mega gator.
On the fourth day, “Mr. Big” showed himself. Clint and I got out of the boat and made our way up the muddy bank to a point overlooking where we had just seen the gator. We sat down in the brush and waited. About 30 minutes later, Clint whispered, “Do you see him?” The big gator had poked his nose out of the water about 100 yards further down the river, too far to make an accurate shot. After studying the gator for several minutes, Clint motioned for me to follow and we quietly made our way through the thick vegetation.
We made it about 50 yards closer, but there were too many branches in the way and still no place for me to get a clear shot. Backtracking into the brush, we worked our way another 20 yards to a small opening. I stayed back in the trees while Clint carefully worked his way towards the shoreline where he could look downriver to see if the gator was still there. A few tense minutes later, he motioned for me to follow. Getting down on my hands and knees, I crawled to the river’s edge.
There were fallen tree limbs and debris everywhere, making it very difficult to see the gator in the shadows of the entangled deadfall. For several minutes, I studied the top of the camouflaged gator’s head. Only his nose, eyes, and a small portion of his back were visible. His head was turned slightly away from me, making it very difficult to see the small indentation in his head marking the spot where I should shoot. I reached for my gun, placed my elbow on my right knee, and tried to find the small crease behind the gator’s eye. The illuminated dot from my Trijicon scope really helped me find the tiny mark where the brain was. I gently pulled the trigger, and the shot felt good. The big gator rolled and then sunk with his feet in the air. My own gun had made the difference; I had made the shot. Within a couple minutes, Mike was back with the boat to pick us up.
Clint grabbed the big treble hook and started dragging it across the bottom where the gator went down, but he kept snagging limbs. I was getting worried that the gator may have just been wounded and would be lost in the strong current. Clint continued to throw the treble hook, each time working his way further out into the river. My nerves were becoming more frazzled by the minute. Suddenly, the big hook hit something big that moved. Clint got a smile on his face as he dragged the heavy line closer to the boat and the outline of a huge gator started to materialize. With the help of some great guides, I had just successfully harvested a genuine mega gator, a monster 12 1/2-footer that weighed an estimated 700 pounds.
Hunting big alligators under fair chase conditions by spot and stalk method was much more interesting, exciting, and challenging than I had imagined. Big gators are very cunning and elusive, and your shooting has to be very precise. Weather, which I learned first-hand, is also a huge factor in your success.
An interesting fact to know is that you judge a gator or crocodile by the distance between his nose and eyes. Generally speaking, if the distance is 10 inches, the gator should be about 10 feet long; if the distance is 12 inches, the gator should be about 12 feet long; and so forth.
For a couple days, I went “fishing” for gators while some of the guys were filling their harvest quotas. Hooks with either pieces of chicken or fish were tied to a tree limb or another type of anchor and then the bait was either checked later in the day or the next morning. The larger gators were caught by tying the bait higher from the water line because the bigger they are, the higher they can jump. Once a gator was hooked, the hunter would slowly pull the gator up to the boat and then shoot it in the head with a small caliber rifle. The guys I went with tried to target five to seven-foot alligators because the skin is softer, fetching a better price.
I found the wildlife and natural beauty of the swamp area of Louisiana particularly beautiful and fascinating. It was an experience I thoroughly enjoyed.
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