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HUNT 2

This is a 2-day hunt but since we are running it midnight to midnight it will appear as 4 different hunts.

Streaming Video of the rest of this scene on

We followed the float for a bit until it stopped. I reached down to grab the buoy. With the float now in the boat, I pulled up the slack until I felt dead weight at the end. Tiger and Mike gave me instructions and reminded me not to wrap the cord around my hand. The gator made a run but soon stopped. We held on for a long time, tugging the cord, but there was no more movement at the end of the line. Tiger rigged up a pole and poked toward the end of the cord. The gator bumped the pole but then it stopped. They kept pulling on the cord and poking the bottom with the pole but nothing happened. They pulled very hard and it became evident that the gator had found a stump and 'rolled' - wrapping the cord around a stump. They pulled very hard and it came loose. The gator had snapped 650 lb test braided cord. We were disappointed but moved to find another reptile.

Streaming Video of this miss on

We spotted an eye down by a marsh and moved in quietly. As we got closer it was a smaller gator, around the same size as Matt's. That was OK by me that he was small, the hunt is not over at the first gator so I got my bow ready as Mike snuck in on him. I missed terribly.

It was now deep into the night and we had been chasing gators all over the lake. But we hit a run of very spooky gators so no real opportunities until it was after 3 AM. We spotted a pretty decent gator, probably around 8 feet long. Mike took a very long time moving in behind him and the chase seemed to take at least an hour. My son Matt was long asleep in the back of the boat as I waited intently for us to gain on the gator. It was probably 4 AM when I could see the shot was going to happen. We motored up behind him and Mike made a distress call which turned the gator at a good angle. I pulled back my recurve and hammered the gator in his side.

Streaming Video of this 8 foot hit, then disappearing

Tiger asked me to hold onto the float this time so the gator didn't run for the bottom. This particular area had deep water and the entire lake we are hunting in is loaded with submerged stumps and trees. I couldn't hold on. When the gator made a run I had to let it go. When I did that we watched the float go right to the bottom of the lake and out of sight. We never saw it again.

Until sunrise we camped on that gator, expecting him to surface for air or watch that float appear. But it never did. We finally had to give up. Matt was sound asleep and the three of us were wore out and exhausted. This was a first for them. They had lost 'a' gator before to stumps but never two. And they never saw a float disappear like this one did. It was like it was filled with lead! But it wasn't, the most we could assume was that the gator found some stumps and blow downs and when he swam under them it pulled the float down and the stumps held it there. Or he may have rolled and wrapped the cord around debris and pulled the arrow out. We'll never know.

We drove back to the dock as pink light broke on the horizon. It was quite a night. At least Matt got his gator. That made the trip a total success for me despite my misfortune. Tonight we'll try it again.