STUART NEWS (Florida) 24 October 10 Statewide alligator hunt offers thrills (Tara E. McLaughlin, Naples Daily News)
For the Clantons of Fort Pierce, alligator hunting is a family affair.
Brothers Lewis and Joey Clanton serve as alligator hunting guides, but it’s their mother, Peggy Clanton, 64, the fear-inducing reptiles really need to worry about.
On the opening night of this year’s hunt season, the grandmother of six needed just four shots to connect with two quality gators — both more than 10 feet long.
“Joey put us right onto a good alligator about 30 minutes after we were allowed to start hunting,” said Peggy, who was also joined by husband Lewis Clanton Sr. and a family friend Warren Millard.
Clanton was drawn for one of 5,625 permits issued in a lottery by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission across 67 state hunting sites, this one on the waters of the Stick Marsh, a rectangular-shaped 6,700-acre manmade reservoir that sits on the Indian River-Brevard County line. The Stick Marsh is a coveted draw for gator hunters seeking a trophy. A few years ago, Lewis Clanton Jr. led a hunter to a 13-footer.
Alligator biologists estimate there are 1.3 million alligators living in Florida. The FWC is tasked with managing the protected but no longer endangered animal. Since each permit allows for the take of two alligators, the state has allowed for 11,250 alligators to be removed from the Florida wilds. In most years, only about 65 percent of the allotted harvest for hunters is actually reached.
Joey Clanton praised his mother’s bowmanship, but boasted that she had an even better start to the gator hunt season a few years back. One night on the Stick Marsh she actually killed her two gators with her good aim, hitting both in the small sweet spot in the back of the head.
Other area lakes prove to be good areas early in the hunt, before gators start getting wise to the sounds of air boats and the shine of spot lights across glassy waters.
Vero Beach hunters Steve Spangler and tagholder D.J. Erwin bagged an 11-footer out of Blue Cypress Lake in western Indian River County during the hunt’s second week.
“We didn’t get ours until about 2:30 a.m., when it seemed like most of the other boats out there left. It got quiet and the gators started moving around,” Spangler said.
“We saw this one come off the edge about 50-60 feet ahead of our boat and I cast a large, weighted treble hook over the top of its body.”
The gator “grabbed” bottom setting up a vertical tug of war for Spangler and Erwin.
“As we pulled him up I thought I felt his head bumping the bottom of the boat,” Spangler said.
“It wasn’t until I got the boat out of the water that I saw three big gator bites in my hull’s gel coat.”
Armed with a fishing rod and three-pronged treble hook, a 9-foot harpoon and .44-caliber Magnum ammunition, Bruce Essen and Ernie Preshard, both of Fort Myers, shoved off the banks of Lake Trafford in Immokalee on their first run in the 2010 gator hunting season. The two men have hunted all manner of animals in the United States and Africa, but there’s something special about the gator.
“The thing with alligators is you get really close to the animal,” Essen said. “You feel that connection to him on the line. It sort of connects fishing and hunting.”
Essen, an attorney, and Preshard, an AT&T project manager, have hunted together for 10 years and pulled permits in the state lottery affording each a chance to tag two animals.
As Preshard maneuvered the 18-foot bay boat, Essen stood with a high-powered spotlight scanning the rippling water for the tell-tale sign of gator — red eyes reflecting as bright as bicycle reflectors in car headlights.
Alligators can be seen, like floating logs, swimming all over Lake Trafford.
At just about 2 square miles, the Collier County lake has the highest density of alligators in the state, according to Conservation Commission officials.
This year’s survey and scientific modeling suggest about 2,500 adult alligators 6 feet or larger reside there. That’s about 1,250 animals per square mile. Contrast that with Lake Okeechobee at 730 square miles and 19,130 gators, or about 26 gators per square mile.
Only about 3 percent of the adult gators can be hunted from Lake Trafford, while in Okeechobee, that ratio climbs to 15 percent.
There were plenty of gators for Essen and Preshard.
The boat, with its hiccuping motor, edged toward several, but each time Essen cast his line the animals slipped silently below the surface.
Midnight approached and the alligator eyes appeared more frequently.
“Which one do you want to go for?” Preshard asked.
“This one’s closer,” Essen whispered.
“No, look!” Preshard pointed.
Essen grabbed a sturdy fishing pole adorned with a three-pronged treble hook. He cast it over an alligator’s back and reeled in the line. A sudden jerk of the pole set the hook in the alligator’s hide. But after a minute of struggle, the gator slipped away.
This was the third week of the season that runs from Aug. 15 through Nov. 1. After the first week, the animals sense danger and spook easily, the hunters said.
The men pondered what they’d do with the hides. Years ago, when skins went for $40 or $50 a foot, hunters often sold the animals, making more than they invested in the hunt. Hunting permits for Florida residents cost $272; nonresidents shell out $1,022.
But in the recession, hides are barely selling and more hunters are opting to keep the animals for themselves.
Preshard planned to have a pair of boots made for his wife. Essen wasn’t sure. He has a half-dozen tanned hides rolled up in a drawer at home waiting for the economy to pick up before he decides.
Just after midnight the action picked up and Essen hooked another gator.
The catch and kill was over in five minutes.
Immediately upon killing an alligator, hunters must insert a so-called CITES tag in its tail, giving the animal an identification number that will stay with the skin until it becomes a tanned hide.
CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, is an international treaty to protect certain animal populations from being affected by international trade.
Hunting and development diminished gator populations and in 1967 the gator was listed as endangered. Populations recovered, and in the 1980s it was taken off the list, but the gator still is regulated by state and federal laws because it is similar in appearance to the crocodile, which still are on the endangered list.
As Essen tagged his gator, Preshard spotted and hooked another animal.
Within 20 minutes, the boat was crowded with two approximately 8-foot gators and two winded men.
As the two joked about whose gator was longer, they were serious when talking about the role of hunting in maintaining a balanced ecosystem.
“Without proper management, you are going to have an overabundance of animals and a shortage of food,” Essen said. “We really do believe we participate in management and conservation.”
And that’s how the state sees it. Florida began its hunting program in 1988 as a way to maintain numbers similar to those before the hunt began, to limit dangerous interactions with humans yet allow people to enjoy the sport, said Steve Stiegler, coordinator for the statewide alligator hunt.
But one animal rights group believes the hunt is no way to maintain a balanced ecosystem.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals opposes the killing of alligators either for their commercial value or population control.
“In an ecosystem that isn’t being tampered with, the problem fixes itself,” spokeswoman Ashley Byrne said. “When you have these animals being hunted and these so-called population control initiatives, which are just excuses for hunting more animals, animals are killed and it clears out a space for more animals to move in.”
Statewide alligator hunt offers thrills