by Mark McDonald
Wildlife Biologist and Professional Trapper
Large alligators (those over seven feet) have absolutely no natural enemies other than other larger male alligators or man. Old, male, large alligators are cannibalistic and can destroy a population of alligators under 8-feet long very rapidly. I caught one large male that had a belly full of 172 baby alligators eight-to-18 inches long. There was another large male (13.5 feet) I trapped after he had killed and eaten a nine-foot, 250-pound male and ate all but the skull.
A regulated, controlled hunt will actually help increase alligator population, and with smaller alligators and higher populations the safety for humans increases. Nearly all alligator deaths and attacks to humans nationwide have been by older, large, male alligators. When the larger alligators are taken out by controlled hunts, it increases the overall population density and increases human safety.
I know some of you are thinking “But they will grow bigger.” Let me tell you that most alligators at maturity are under eight feet for females and ten feet for males. Some of those mature alligators are between 50 and 100-years-old. Alligators grow very slowly.
An alligator is the only reptile with a cerebral cortex compartment in its brain. That means it has a memory, the ability to memorize, plan, and plot an attack over months. It can rationalize. Alligators are efficient hunters and killers and are one of the remaining dinosaur creatures still on earth.
Those bumps on their back are designed for speed and accuracy in the water in the same way a golf ball is designed with small bumps and dents. Those bumps also serve as solar panels and energy storage panels. When you see that alligator sunning on a log or on the banks, it is absorbing energy much like a solar panel and storing it.
In the winter, all reptiles’ and snakes’ body temperatures slow, and in cold weather stops, movement of snakes, lizards and alligators.
During a flood stage — even in 20-degree weather where we lose many snakes in floodplains to drowning deaths — not an alligator is lost. Do you know why? Even in zero-degree weather he can reverse the cold blood and use his thermal storage banks to warm his body, come out of hibernation, change water depths, and relocate to safer areas where he doesn’t drown. No other reptiles can do that!
When the water temperature is below 58 degrees, the alligator does not eat or attack anything for months on end. Usually from about October 1st through March 30th, an alligator cannot digest or eat, and will not hunt anything — only sun itself occasionally. That’s when the uneducated public thinks they have a “tame” alligator. There is no such thing as a “tame” alligator, only habituated predators that have lost their fear of man and become opportunist to habituated feeding. That “tame” alligator has no affectionate feeling toward you, and if you fail to bring food or it’s empty-bellied while your child or pet swims, it can — and will — attack them.
Controlled hunting, not feeding, will train that animal to avoid humans. I caught one 12.5-foot, 800-pound alligator that had been hunted for 30 years in a two-acre pond. It was trapped at, snagged at, netted at, and shot at almost 24-hours-a-day for years in a subdivision park in Atlanta, Texas. The pond had a chain-link fence around it. He never left. No one saw him for over three years with game wardens, law enforcement, and volunteer firemen taking turns trying to spotlight him. Every summer or so he’d kill someone’s dog and only eat twice a year. After everyone failed for 30 years to find, catch, or kill the gator, I was called in to remove him.
amazed. There was no cover, no lilies, no cattails, no holes in the bank, no fallen trees to hide in. Since an alligator must surface every seven-to-eight hours in the summer to refill his air tank, I thought, “This will be easy. I will wait for him to surface and noose him on the bottom when he submerges again.”
Three shifts and three days later, he never surfaced. The most logical thing was he had left the area earlier and we were hunting an empty pond.
Then I told my wife “This is at least a 50-year-old alligator that’s been outsmarting hunters for 30 years. I think I know what he’s doing.”
The pond was an old gravel pit. Two-thirds of it was under six feet deep, and one-third was 30 feet deep. The old alligator was going into the 42-degree, spring fed, 30-foot-deep thermocline, and slowing his metabolism so he could hold out longer underwater without breathing. He was purposely going into a cold state to hide and survive longer.
So I took a pole and ran him out of the deep water, and separated him into the shallow water by a long net. He knew what a net was and wouldn’t cross it. Within eight hours of hot water he surfaced for air and went back down to lie still on the bottom. I noosed him in six feet of water with a black bear snare, a pole, and 100 feet of nylon rope.
The battle
was on!
My wife was paddling my 10-foot Jon boat, and I was holding the rope. He finally pulled us around close enough to the bank. I jumped out and ran ashore, trying to find a tree to tie-to close enough for the rope to reach. I had a tug-of-war going on, and when he was in deep water, I was winning. When he was in the shallows he was pulling me back to the pond. At 2 a.m. with all the splashing and pulling, my wife (still in the boat) got excited and called 911 for help from the local game warden. She yelled on the phone “He’s got him! He’s got him! Mark isn’t strong enough – he needs help now!”
All local law enforcement, wardens, and volunteer fire departments showed up (some in their pajamas) real quick. By then I had him tied to a tree and they said, “Mark are you bit? Are you alright?”
I said, “She meant I got him, not he got me, but thank you fellas for coming out ‘cause it’s hard for me to load this 12.5-foot, 800-pound alligator alive in the Honda van by myself.”
We all had a good laugh and they helped me load him in the van so I could sell him alive to an alligator farm.
After hundreds of alligators captured alive and usually loaded in the heat without help, I retired from professional alligator hunting at the age of 65. I loaded too many alligators alive up to 1,380 pounds and 15 feet long by myself and was afraid of dying of heat stroke if I kept doing it. I still occasionally (for free) help certain game wardens relocate larger gators to safer locations or farms if requested, but I did not renew my nuisance license to be on call 24/7.
