This year's alligator hunt was a BLAST!! We left for Pascagoula on Friday afternoon. We arrived at about 4 p.m. and met up with my parents at Tucei's Fish Camp. After going to check in at Ward Bayou, we had dinner at Big R's in Pascagoula...if you're ever down that way, don't waste your time at that place...not at all what we expected! Anyway, I know you're all just dying to hear the details of our catch....
We got on the water at about 7 p.m. and headed North of the fish camp towards I-10. It only took us about 6 minutes to spot a gator that looked to be a pretty good size. The gator was swimming in open water, which is a good sign that it's a large one. We motored as close to it as we could and then killed the engine. The gator went down as we turned the motor off but don't worry, my dad employed the "blind cast" techinque...this means that you cast at the area where you last saw the gator and drag your hook back through the water and hope to catch something. In just a few seconds my dad looks at the rest of us and says "I think I got something"...he wasn't sure if he was actually hooked on a live animal or some sort of trash under the water. He slowly reeled in his line until we reached the spot where it was obviously hooked on something. Mark had the bright idea to drop another hook in the water to see if whatever we were hooked on would react...it did. The gator took off again and the line whizzed out of the reel. Again, we reeled in the line and got close to the monster again. At this point we noticed that the boat was moving in circles. When the gator begins to move like this, it means that he is disoriented...that's good for us. We eventually got him to come up to the surface and secured him with a snare only to realize that we were missing our gun. It was still in the truck. There are other ways to dispatch a gator, but a gun is our preferred method. We toyed with the idea of taping the mouth up and just riding back to camp with a live gator...I voted to call some buddies that were still at the fish camp when we were leaving and ask if they had a gun we could borrow. They came to the rescue and the gator was in our boat and we were back at camp at 8:30.
We got the gun from the truck and set out to find our second gator. As a part of the hunt, you are allowed one gator over 7' and one that must be longer than 4' but less than 7'. Again, it only took us a few minutes to see one we wanted. Mark hooked up with the second gator and after fighting it for about 15-20 minutes, we had him in the boat too. We filled both of our tags in 3 hours!!! We then went to "check them in" and get some final measurements.
Both gators turned out to be female. The larger one was 9' 1 5/8" long and weighed 196.5 lbs. The smaller one was 6'2" and weighed 50.5 lbs. The larger one was just 2 3/8 inches short of the state record for a female gator and just 3.5 lbs. lighter.
We had a wonderful time with my parents and Mark's dad. I really hope that we get to do it again next year!!
The larger gator.
The smaller one.
Team Hosford, yes, we have an official team!!
