Bowhunting.Net
Bowhunting
For Alligator 2006
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Bowhunting.Net
Bowhunting
For Alligator 2006
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|
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| Alligator
Bowhunts and on the spot pictures -- by Robert Hoague
2006
Bowhunt For Florida Alligator
Day 3 - Hunting Hard ... When we pulled away from the boat ramp 8 sets of alligator eyes lit up in our spotlight. Some were in the open water and a few were along the edges of the green water plant jungle that lined the shoreline. The open water eyes disappeared when we 80 to 100 yards from the gator. We got up on one of the gators in the green stuff. A small one.
We kept seeing them as we began working our way around the lake. Here is one swimming along slowly, head out of the water and body under the surface, in typical alligator fashion.
Right here I'm fixed up. Got my AMS Bowfishing yellow float and Slotted Retriever rigged with 640# test line -- an Innerloc Hybrid MAX bowfishing arrow tipped with a 3 barbed Gator Grapple. Today I added the AMS Wave Rest to my bow and practiced shooting the beefy fish arrows for an hour. I'm a lot more comfortable with them now. My 62 pound BowTech shoots these heavy arrows sledgehammer hard.
The pictures will make you think we got up on all the gators we saw, but that was not the case. By far the majority went underwater before we got to them. But we kept going. Here is one that wasn't concerned about us a bit. \ Almost all the alligators we saw in open water went down before we got to them. Except for this one.
It turned out he had a big fish in his jaws.
Our gator in the picture below is hiding in the green water plants. You can see his shout and a bit of his body.
This gator thought he was hidden. All of him is under the plants floating on the surface of the water, and just the tip of his top jaw is in view.. the Notice the Water bug?
Looking through the fern like plants we see an 8 footer, a good sized gator. I thought about this one very hard but let the opportunity go.
Something we saw several times was baby alligators. They are called "hatchlings" and are about 6-8 inches at birth. The ones we saw were between 8 and 10 inches so they were very young. After birth, the hatchling alligators form groups called "pods" and we saw several pods of two to four dozen to a pod. This lake has a lot of gators already and there are plenty more coming up. It is no wonder that the once declared extinct Florida alligator currently has an estimated population as high as 2 million.
Here is a close up of one of the baby alligators. Although the mother alligator stays close to them and protects them the pods are preyed on by by raccoons, otters, herons, snakes, fish, snapping turtles, as well as other alligators. Only half of them make it to one year old, and about one in twenty will live to be an adult, which is a 6 foot gator that is 10 to 12 years old. They live 30 to 40 years in the wild.
Alligators primarily food is fish but they also eat crabs, frogs, turtles, snakes, birds, raccoons, otters, deer, and smaller alligators. Their colorings are perfect for murky water camouflage.
We worked the lake hard and although we got up on mature 6-8 footers the really big boys wouldn't let us get close to them. At 2:45am we started looking for another 7 to 8 footer to give him a little archery lesson. We found one... |
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