By GABE JORDAN
gabe.jordan@gaflnews.com
FLINT RIVER — A Cataula man and three friends nearly got more than they bargained for when an alligator hunt here near Campers Haven turned into a four-hour ordeal with a 680-pound monster that has been confirmed as the new state record.
Shane Wilson said the night of Sept. 12 will be one he never forgets, and he’ll soon have the head of a 13-foot, 7-inch alligator on a wall in his Columbus-area home to prove it.
Wilson, a self-professed “die-hard duck hunter” won the alligator-hunting lottery this fall in more ways than one. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Wildlife Division, which regulates hunting in the state, chose Wilson’s name when drawing quota permits for the alligator season that began Sept. 6 and ends today.
Wilson won the lottery when he received his permit and tag in the mail, but he didn’t think it would lead to him taking a place in Georgia’s hunting record books.
“This was the first gator hunt I’ve ever been on in my life,” Wilson said. “I had been around gators a lot on duck hunts and I’m always, along with my hunting partners, up for new experiences.”
The experience of hunting alligators in Georgia is without question a unique one. Regulations allow hunters to take only one alligator a season, and the reptiles must be at least 48 inches long and can be hunted only with hand-held ropes or snares, snatch hooks, harpoons, gigs or arrows with a restraining line attached. Legal alligators must be dispatched immediately upon capture by using a handgun or bangstick, or by severing the spinal cord with a sharp implement, according to information provided by the DNR.
Wilson and his party were armed with harpoons designed to be thrown by hand and large-caliber handguns. They started out shortly after nightfall in two 16-foot boats in the northern reaches of Lake Blackshear.
Using spotlights to find their prey, Wilson and his friends moved up into the Flint River channel and were having little luck in the beginning.
“We saw a lot of small gators, and when we saw gators that were of legal size, we couldn’t get closer than 100 feet to them,” Wilson said. “We were starting to get discouraged because the bigger gators were acting shy, and we were just about ready to call it a night when the guys in the lead boat told me they saw a set of eyes near the bank.”
Wilson’s contingent decided to abandon the spotlights and use flashlights in hopes that the dimmer light would not spook the older alligators. As they approached the area where the hunters in the lead boat saw the eyes, Wilson said his boat-mate, Randy Pounds of Butler, began arguing that what the others saw was no more than a log.
Shortly after Pounds made his comments about a “log,” Wilson said he realized he was roughly six yards away from a sizable alligator. He readied his harpoon, threw at his target, and soon knew he had gotten hold of a granddaddy.
“We stuck him and he thrashed his tail so hard he just about turned our boat over,” Wilson said. “The guys in the other boat came up and I told them I had just stuck a dinosaur, and they all said, ‘yeah, right’.
“When they pulled up alongside us the gator went to growling and hissing and letting us know he was just about as mad as he could be,” Wilson said. “That had everybody pulling their legs inside the boats and making sure they still had all their body parts.”
Wilson said he was taught the key to bringing in an alligator once the harpoon is in is to use a buoy and tie the harpoon’s rope to the boat. That way the alligator is eventually tired out by pulling the boat whenever it tries to escape.
Wilson said, due to the enormous weight of the alligator, he and Pounds were never able to tie off the rope to the boat, and they eventually had to use a second harpoon. The rope attached to the second harpoon got tangled on a stump, which slowed the alligator considerably, Wilson said, and allowed his party to dispatch the gator with gunfire.
But that was no easy task with an alligator of this size.
“We opened up on him from about seven yards with a 9 mm and a .40 caliber, and he went to the bottom,” Wilson said. “After we caught our breath we were able to begin to pull him up with the rope and we thought maybe we had him.”
They were wrong. As Pounds began to loop rope around one of the alligator’s rear feet, the gator turned his head and hissed with jaws open wide. Pounds quickly dropped the rope and the foot and moved away, and Wilson said he was able to squeeze off one round into the alligator’s snout.
“Then we pretty much emptied our clips into him,” Wilson said. “He moved away a little and hid under some hydrilla and thrashed around and just about rolled our boat over again, and we emptied another round of clips into him.”
As Wilson and Pounds, with the help of Greg Foster of Columbus and Robby Watson of Bonaire in the second boat, pulled the trophy up to the surface again, Wilson said he put three rounds in the alligator’s head, and he was then certain the fight was over.
“He literally sounded like a bull,” Wilson said. “I’ll never forget the sound of the air leaving his body for the last time.”
After Wilson and his friends secured the alligator’s body and returned to Campers Haven, he gladly bought everyone breakfast and the hunting party then measured the alligator with the help of DNR rangers.
“He measured 163.5 inches, and Greg Waters out of the Fitzgerald office told us that was the new state record,” Wilson said. A spokesperson with DNR said Waters is the department’s alligator specialist.
Wilson said processors were able to take 100 pounds of meat out of the alligator’s tail, and he is waiting for the skin to be tanned into leather and the head to be mounted by a taxidermist.
“I’ve been giving away gator meat left and right,” Wilson said. “And this definitely won’t be my last alligator hunt.”
