An All-Day Guide to Hunting Florida Gators

As the boat pulled away from the riverbank, leaving two men behind to fend for themselves for a while, I thought to myself that we’d flown too close to the sun and now feared our gators might melt.

This all began with an early morning hunt during the second phase of the 2023 Statewide Alligator Harvest Program on an Alligator Harvest Unit (AHU) whose name I won’t be divulging because, hey, there’s stiff competition for a limited number of permits. As such, when you draw one there’s pressure to fill the two accompanying CITES tags when the opportunity arises.

Luckily, we’d beaten the odds that season, securing two permits for the same unit for a total of four tags. We went to work quickly, clipping the first tag into the tail of an 11-foot stud shortly after daybreak, running him several miles back to a ramp and dropping him into the truck bed of a waiting alligator meat processor to whom the gator was sold. The mercury was rising, but our crew was riding high, so we elected to spend the day on the river to see if we could punch the remaining tags.

Punch them we did, locating a honey hole of sorts and rounding out the trip with the final three measuring 8, 9, and 10 feet. During all the action, the heat became an issue, not only for those of us heaving these rascals out of the water, but for the condition of the first two gators while we wrestled in the third. Time was of the essence to cool them down to prevent spoilage, and when the limited ice onboard melted, cupping tannic river water on them was the course of last resort.

Well, almost the last resort. Ditching the guys became necessary. With gear, four grown men and three grown gators stowed aboard the vessel, the bow barreled through the water—forging miles upstream pushed by a 40-horsepower surface-drive to once again meet the processor in a timely manner had become impossible.

The scutes on the back of 8-footer were wiggling loose. The boys volunteered to abandon ship to jettison the extra weight, and we were finally able to jump the boat on a plane and deliver the gators before all was lost.

ALL DAY HUNTING

This exact scenario was a fear amongst some people when FWC opened 24-hour gator hunting in 2022. Prior to then, gator hunting wrapped by 10 a.m. and resumed at 5 p.m. The change occurred through a simple request from sportsmen seeking more time to hunt, a reasonable rule adjustment when weighing the difficulty in acquiring permits with maximizing the flexibility needed to fill the tags. This change also rendered moot questions regarding the legality of snagging a gator prior to 10 a.m. and landing it after that time.

Truthfully, there was no real good sporting or management reason to restrict the hunting hours. With a set number of permits, FWC establishes a maximum number of animals that can be removed from an AHU that is re-evaluated each year. At the most, it would theoretically improve success rates among permit holders, but the additional time wouldn’t strain any resources like if you opened deer hunting at night.

And though two seasons isn’t long enough for effective program evaluation, I reached out to FWC inquiring if there was any noticeable increase in these rates since the new rules took effect. Lauren Claerbout, the Public Information Officer of the Division of Hunting and Game Management responded that there had been “no meaningful increase.”

Whether these rates improve remains to be seen. Florida gator hunting is traditionally a nighttime event for good reasons. By then, the afternoon summer thunderstorms have petered out, the winds have died and the air is relatively cooler. The gators are more active, and if not for the bugs and the next-day-at-work effects of pulling an all-nighter, illuminating red gator eyes on a starlit black lake is nearly a perfect adventure.

Nonetheless, sometimes you gotta make hay when the sun shines, as the saying goes. Daylight gator hunting isn’t as forgiving as chasing them at night. The gators are typically retreating to their hidey holes as the heat takes control. Q-Beams are swapped out for binoculars. Beyond that, more boaters tend to be on the water, which disrupts hunts. And, again, the heat.

Still, I’m grateful for the extra hours, but be prepared—that treasured alligator meat will quickly spoil under the warm conditions of the hunting season. Even during late muggy nights, proper care is required to prevent ruin.

In its Guide to Alligator Hunting in Florida, FWC recommends cooling the animal to 45 degrees within four hours of harvest.

To do so, the agency offers the following suggestions:

1. As soon as the harvested alligator is in the boat and properly tagged, begin cooling it by covering the carcass with wet material such as blankets or burlap sacks. Moving blankets are an effective and inexpensive option.
2. Keep the material wet until you reach a refrigerator or can apply bags of ice.
3. As soon as possible, completely cover the carcass with bags of ice.
4. Take the carcass directly to a processor or other facility where refrigeration is available.

A lesson learned for us, I suppose. In our defense, we tagged these gators with a fairly smooth triple play, meaning we didn’t bag one then drive around for several hours seeking another. We simply didn’t account for how far we’d wandered from home and didn’t have blankets or covers on board.

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As always when gator hunting, be careful not to bite off more than you can chew.

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