BRADENTON HERALD (Florida) 26 August 07 Outdoorsmen find alligators sometimes not as large as they seem (Nick Walter)
Kissimmee River: There's one. Way ahead.
As we idle through a clinging humidity, with a chorus of croaks rising from the mangroves - an audience of frogs - I can see the eyes glow white, sometimes red.
Rachel Johnson's spotlight illuminates the eye.
"It's a monster," says an always optimistic Brad Johnson, the leader of our gator hunt, from the wheel of the 24-foot Carolina Skiff.
I'm standing on the stern, holding a flashlight. Beside me, wielding the harpoon, is "Beetle." His real name is Benjamin Bedell, but when gator hunting, I'd rather have a guy named Beetle.
"Get ready, Beetle," I kept saying. Really, I just felt cool calling someone "Beetle."
Our boat is within 30 yards of the shiny eyes.
"Turn the light off," Johnson tells Rachel, his 12-year-old daughter.
The world is black, except for an array of stars in the clear sky and a half-moon that's almost red.
"Nick, turn yours on."
I flip the switch on the small flashlight and direct the beam through the flat, straight river, and on the eye. I cannot lose track of it.
We approach some mangroves, and Beetle and I peer through the lily pads only to see a 2-foot gator.
"It's small," I shout.
The motor grinds in reverse, but we drift into the bushes.
I snap my head to the left and see a thick, coiled snake, maybe 10 feet away, blast into the water.
"Maybe we should stay out of the bushes," I say.
This is about how the night went - a lot of eyes, many of which disappeared under the water, or turned out to be below our standards.
We approached at least 50 gators. The eyes looked the same, no matter the gator's size. Many were no more than two feet. Johnson struck one that was about seven or eight feet, but the harpoon's tip did not stick.
"It felt like hitting a baseball with a broken bat," Johnson said.
We left at 4:30 a.m., having not bagged a gator. Many were simply too small. This is the first time Johnson had been gator hunting with a harpoon.
Johnson went out again the next night, without me, and brought two 6-foot gators to the boat in back-to-back fashion at midnight.
The secrets to his success? Lowering expectations, for one. Many of the gators were about two feet longer than they appeared in the water.
And, Johnson rigged the harpoon differently.
"The point on there had a couple pieces of tape that held it in place," Johnson said. "But what you want to do is just have it barely sitting loosely so that when you do harpoon it, the point stays with the gator."
There were nine in the boat the second night. That included Johnson's wife Elaine and daughter Rachel, Chad Tanner and his uncle Bill Cooper, from Tampa, and Beetle, all of whom were present the first night when we had two boats.
Johnson bagged the first gator the second night.
Chalk the second gator up to Beetle. After he harpooned it, Johnson put a snare on the gator, which got caught up in the harpoon line.
Johnson said all nine were on one side of the boat, admiring the gator. The gator clamped onto the gunnel, and everyone scattered to the opposite side.
Everyone except Johnson.
"That's when I put the club to him," Johnson said.
After killing the gators in a prompt, humane manner, a game warden approached the gator-chasing company and checked their licenses and safety equipment. They were all clear.
And they avenged being skunked the first night, when the goal was a 10-footer.
"It was like hunting a trophy animal that was not there," Johnson said. "I ended up saying, 'OK. We're gonna stick a gator.' "
Outdoorsmen find alligators sometimes not as large as they seem