Gator From Sat Night

Well my pops scored a gator tag in the 3rd phase of the draw in an area we've never hunted before, so we went to give it a shot. It's a bunch of canals with levees so it's a little different from what we're used to hunting. We left the 18 ft gator boat at the house and took my little 14' jon to dump in the canal if we had to. We got there a little after dark and saw a few around 6'.

We spotted a good one down a canal and my brother snuck down the levee with his red flashlight and made a nice shot with the bow...good thing he had 50' of line attached because the gator went crazy after the hit. There was so much floating hycienth around so there was no way we would land this thing from the shore, so we dumped the boat in and began the maze to try and get another line in him. It took at least an hour sorting through all the vegetation and we got close and saw the big clump moving. He went to take off and I saw him roll and took a shot with the harpoon. It felt like a good hit, and good thing it was, because he headed on a bulldog run straight for some thick bushes. We were able to put some good pressure on him, but he still drug the boat and all over in the bushes. We got him tired down and realize we forgot the bangstick in the truck! So we had to give him some slack and make a dash to the truck. After that, the ol man put a good shot on him and it was lights out. We drug him back to the shore and he taped out right at 9'. He was fat; both my hands couldn't fit around the base of his tail, and he must've just eaten something because he stuck like a dead raccoon. We looked around a little more but everyone was pretty whipped after the 2 hour fight so we packed it in. It was a nice night with plenty of mosquitos to go around!

Pics to come, have to get them off the phone

 

My brother with his personal best with the bow




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We took him to the processor...whatever he ate stunk too bad for me to be around just loading/unloading from the truck, much less cleaning for a few hours!