I’m sure that if you google top things to do or places to go for your anniversary, alligator hunting is not at the top of the list, or even on the list at all.  For Shaun and me, we could think of no better thing to do, however.  We had had a gentleman who came to our house with the easement company to explain that they were going to have shredders and mowers on our property clearing the pipeline easement that runs in front of our house and down one side of the property.  He was talking through how it was going to go and assuring us that they would pay attention to our horses and cattle and make sure that our gates were closed. As we were talking to him, he told us the story and showed us pictures of a 10ft alligator he and his wife had just harvested as standby hunters on a Texas Parks and Wildlife hunt. He was incredibly excited and had even typed up the story which he let us read. 

That was it for us, we figured if these two 60ish year olds could go unprepared with no bait or anything and set their line out with rented kayaks that we could improve on their preparedness and do it too!  He took us to the website and helped us find the drawn hunts page and the information about showing up to put in for the standby drawing if you weren’t drawn prior to the hunt. We read and re-read his story, watched every episode of Swamp People that was available at the time just in case any of that was actually like reality, and did a ton of research and read forums. 

We ordered large hooks and paracord from eBay and practiced setting the line out.  While my dad was visiting from Georgia, we returned home from a fishing expedition at the Trinity River to discover a message left on our answering machine.  A guy from TPWD had tried to call us about a drawn hunt we had put in for. I returned his phone call and much to our delight, learned that we had been drawn for the alligator hunt on September 15 and 16^th, no need to go down on standby we were already in!  He said our letter had been returned as undeliverable, but a quick search of our customer info showed the same address, so he was doing his last due diligence to inform us.  We also discovered during our conversation that we had both gone to Stephen F Austin State University for forestry and wildlife management and bonded over different amazing assignments and professors as well as crazy assignments from professors.  Lumberjacks are instant family in the same way Aggies are even if they’ve never met! He was familiar with the area we were going to be hunting and told us how the hunt would go and where to request to get to hunt based on where he had seen a lot of gators!

When I got off the phone Shaun and I were literally giddy almost to the point of jumping up and down with excitement.  My dad, on the other hand, was not nearly as sure.  As it turned out, most of the family wasn’t as fired up about us going alligator hunting as we were. Shaun’s dad, of course, was elated for us but he had been in the trenches hog hunting with us for years at this point and he never shies away from something just because it might be dangerous and would never encourage us to.  Be prepared and ready, be afraid even, but do it even if you’re scared!  My mom volunteered to watch the kids overnight and bring them down the morning of the hunt when the lines had been set out all night over the water so they could be there to see us come in with a gator if we got one.

About a week or so before the hunt, we bought some small whole chickens and left them in a bucket with a lid on it and some other juices and things that when left in the sun for that length of time would be pretty rank.  It was, we had gotten to where you could smell it before you reached the bucket!  We rented one of the winterized cabins and brought our air mattress and set up camp, launched our little river boat, and went out to do a little scouting. An older pair of gentlemen saw us as we headed out to scout, and we told them it was to be our first time and how we had prepared.  They were veteran alligator hunters and shared some tips with us.  When we came back in from scouting it seemed they were waiting on us and debating whether or not to go looking for us.  They’d been worried about us and upon our arrival, insisted that we come back to their camp to eat dinner.  There was no telling them no, and no reason to either.  I’m not sure how we ate some sort of alligator soup that night, I didn’t ask questions about it other than what spices he used because it was delicious, he only explained what part of the alligator it had come from and how to cut it up and prepare the crock pot.  They were only too happy to share a meal with us and exchange hunting stories and when I shared several hog hunting stories of my own, they visibly relaxed and determined audibly to us that we were going to be alright. We thanked them profusely for the dinner and fellowship and returned to our cabin for the morning’s orientation and release to hunt!

After we were called in to show our licenses and be assigned hunt compartments or areas to hunt which we got to choose, we actually got the area that my fellow alumni suggested, all the hunters sat through orientation and demonstrations so we would all know what to do and how to do it to keep us safe as well as legal. Shaun and I grabbed our bamboo poles and headed out!  We set two lines in two separate areas as we each had a tag and came back in to wait. Since we were close to the ramp and staging area we saw a hunter come in with a gator that afternoon and went to investigate.  We ended up making friends with him and told him where we had put our lines, he was familiar with the area and thought we had good spots.  The next morning, he met us at the boat ramp and told us and the biologist that he passed one of our lines on the way in and that it was down.  At the biologist’s suggestion he volunteered to follow us to our line and observe and only help if we were in a bind.  I’m not sure if this was out of an abundance of caution for first timers or because I’m a girl or that I was wearing my life jacket and flip flops or what, but I was grateful for someone watching out for us.

As we reached the line, we could see the grass on the bank was pretty torn up and the water around was muddy.  When Shaun grabbed the line and slowly began pulling it in fist over fist into the boat, he felt something huge and heavy on the other end.  Slowly he pulled the alligator until his head broke the surface of the water as I readied the .410 shotgun standing beside him.  In hindsight, my flip flop clad foot being propped on the side of the boat that the alligator was being pulled up on was probably not the safest choice but fortunately I didn’t lose any toes and as his head broke the surface and he began thrashing and fighting to get away, I put it down and we redoubled our efforts.  Shaun pulled him back up again as I readied the gun and when his head slightly breached the water the second time, I took aim directly behind his skull and squeezed. Instantly the alligator stilled and water splashed up around us from the shot.  Our hunter friends in the boat observing us whooped and hollered, clapped, and congratulated us telling us it certainly did not look like our first gator!  Shaun and I tapped his mouth out of an abundance of caution and pulled him into the boat as well as retrieved our pole.

When we got back to the biologist check station at the boat ramp, we were grinning from ear to ear and all three of our kiddos were standing their being tightly held onto by my mother looking on with huge eyes and maybe a little admiration for their parents.  We drug him out and the biologist took his measurements and tagged him, he was an 8 foot 9in bull, and we sent him over to the skinners who were there in case anyone needed their services but let us watch and help too!

Our second line had been empty, so we had reset it on the way in with the first alligator.  It was time to head back out and check it.  Since we had only set it up a couple hours ago, when we tried to go find the area looking for the white line hanging, we couldn’t find it.  After trolling around for a few minutes, we thought, what if the line has fallen or we have a second alligator and began looking for the pole instead.  We quickly located it and slowly drifted in. Shaun grabbed the line to see if it had just fallen or if we had something on it.  To our surprise, as he began pulling in the line and it got tight, a very fresh and active alligator tugged back against him as he tried to get it closer to the boat.  This guy was a fighter and drug our boat around a bit as Shaun fought him in.  Like the last gator, I began loading and readying the shotgun, when Shaun got the alligator close to the boat and his head breached the surface of the water, it was on me to shoot.  In my excitement and fidgeting, I accidentally separated the receiver of the gun from the buttstock.  It’s a very old gun and I knew if you torqued it a certain way that would happen. It wasn’t unsafe, just inconvenient.  I began apologizing profusely and remember Shaun, who was fighting a very live and very fresh 9 foot 8 inch bull alligator, responded in the calmest and kindest voice, “its ok babe, he’s not going anywhere, just get ready and I’ll pull him up again.”  His calmness in the middle of that battle was so comforting and reassuring to me! I quickly slipped the gun back together and got into position to shoot as he again pulled the alligator up.  Just like the first one early that morning, the alligator instantly stilled, water rained down around us, and we grinned and high fived….and maybe kissed because, hey, it was our actual anniversary, and then pulled him in to head to the check station where our kiddos were again waiting.

Since this hunt, we have tweaked a few things, but each of our kiddos has been able to harvest at least one alligator from either being drawn for this hunt or going down on standby.  Our daughter harvested a 10-foot 10-inch one in a whirlwind of a standby drawing some years later.  We have made so many memories hunting alligators together as well as so many friends.  Shaun and I were even drawn to hunt another location near the Texas coast some years later which ended up on our actual anniversary date again and we basically had a remake of the first trip and made another lifelong friend! To say that alligator hunting holds a special place in our hearts would be an understatement!