Alligator Hunting In Martin County, Florida
Because when you live in Florida, that's what you do, right?
In 2017 I was fortunate to draw two gator tags in the Florida statewide alligator hunting lottery. Apparently, the odds of getting drawn are not that high, so I was thrilled to get the package in the mail saying that I had been given two tags to hunt in Martin County. This was my first time applying for and actually going gator hunting, so I was super excited, but I was also a bit anxious because I knew nothing about it. Little did I know what I was getting into.
As I began to do research about how to hunt gators, where to find them, the many rules & laws to follow, and more importantly, how not to get eaten, I realized that I was really in over my head. I wasn’t just going on another walk in the woods with a gun or sitting in a tree stand hunting deer or hogs like I regularly do. No, hunting gators is markedly different in every sense of the meaning. For example, being that gators are mostly found in water so obviously you need a boat, but the equipment to hunt them is completely different than my usual tools. Sure, you can use a bow to hunt them, but one of the preferred ways to hunt gators is to tie a weighted 12/0 treble hook onto a sturdy fishing pole rigged with some heavy-duty braid line, boat around in the dark with a spot light looking for the reflection of the gator’s eyes, sneak up on them and then try to snag them with the hook. You then fight them closer to the boat to try harpoon them, for security, before eventually tiring them out and dispatching them with a bang stick. For those who don’t know, a bang stick is a metal rod with a bullet held inside a specialized tip. When that tip pressed against a target, it causes the bullet to ‘fire’ but instead of firing the bullet out of the casing, it causes the gas pressure to propel the flat tip of the bang stick with the pressure of the bullet behind it. When a bang stick is used on the back of the gator’s head between the base of the skull and the spine, it kills them instantly and more importantly, humanely.
Seeing that this was going to be a fairly meticulous and dangerous endeavor, my wife insisted that I go along with a guide for the hunt. Taking offense to this suggestion, I told her that I could figure it out, but inevitably I caved in. I just didn’t have the equipment or the money to go buy everything that I wouldn’t likely use all the time. Furthermore, seeing that our baby had just been born a few months ago, part of the deal allowing me to go on this hunt was that my wife would get a handmade gator purse from the hide if I were successful. I’m not ashamed to admit this also became a major factor in us deciding to hire a guide: to improve our chances of getting a gator, and a custom-made gator skin purse as a result.
As I began to research outfitters to take me out gator hunting, I became extremely overwhelmed with having so many options. Each guide boasted years of experience, and some even “guaranteed” the hunt which seemed attractive, but any hunter knows that nobody can really guarantee a hunt unless there’s some behind the scene shenanigans involved. After days of searching, a name popped up on my online search that caught my attention. The name of the company was called Under the Son Outfitters. Quickly noticing the spelling of the word “son,” I figured that wasn’t a type-o and decided to see if they were in fact brothers in Christ so I sent them an email asking about more information about their services. The next day, the owner, Richard Meachum, gave me a call to discuss and answer any questions. He was super friendly and I could tell right away that he knew what he was talking about regarding his experience hunting. More importantly though, my guess was true that he was in fact a brother in Christ, and he made it no secret of it either. What was meant to be a few minute question and answer call turned out to be a 20-minute chat about our walk with Christ and about hunting. That was all I needed to pick a date, send him in my deposit, and book the hunt and I did so the following week.
What seemed like forever, our hunting day finally arrived. At 4pm I pulled up to Port Mayaca where I met up with Richard and his buddy Jason, who was one of his assistant guides. Both guys were super friendly as Richard was on the phone and I could see that they were just as excited for the hunt as I was. Enthusiasm is a big consideration when finding the right guide, along with a great personality, and genuine friendliness. These guys definitely fit the bill.
We began to load up the boat with all our supplies at 5am, but it took us a little longer than usual, mostly due to the insect activity. By that, I mean mosquito’s as thick as clouds of smoke. I’ve never seen mosquito’s so thick in my life. In fact, Jason, who was from Indiana, had a swarm of them following him around that he couldn’t take a breath without swallowing a handful of them. It was quite entertaining for me obviously, until the mosquitoes found a similar interest in me. This was not so entertaining anymore.
As we headed up the St. Lucie Canal, we began to scan the horizon for gators. It was impressive to see how far a way you could see their eyes reflecting on the surface of the water. While we were seeing plenty of eyes, Richard and Jason could both tell that they were pretty small gators. For reference, distance between the tip of their mouths/noses to their eyes in inches generally indicates how long they are in feet. For example, a five-inch distance between tip to eyes would be a 5-foot gator. Most of the gators we were observed were this size or less and though that may seem like a good size gator, but the current world record is about 15 feet, so we were looking for something closer to that size. Unfortunately, we never saw anything close to 15 feet, that’s part of hunting I guess.
9am rolled around and we began to start working our way back to the dock, because hunting gators is only allowed between 5pm and 10am. We all thought we were done for the day, until Richard spotted what looked to be a decent size gator. As we crept up on him we spooked a much larger gator that was resting on the bank just to our right. As the larger gator darted into the water Richard threw a hail mary cast to where he thought the gator was heading and hooked it! I couldn’t believe that cast! He handed off the line to me while I stood in awe of this gator just peeling line off my reel like I’d never seen any fish do. I’ve grown up fishing and have had my share of fights with some significantly large fish, but this just blew my mind. Reeling was out of the question, as I might bust the reel gears, so I just let him run.
Jason quickly pulled the trolling motor and getting the regular motor in the water so we could back down on the gator and recover some of that lost line. Over the next thirty minutes, I would get back some line and then loose some more. It felt like every time I would get 5 feet of line, I’d lose 10 feet. My forearms were swelling up from all the rotations it felt like they were practically numb. I kept having to readjust my grip to get a good hold because I was having trouble holding on to the handle of the reel. Throw in the rush of the adrenaline, and my whole body was shaking from excitement.
We eventually began to close in on the gator and Richard readied the harpoon. I handed off the pole in return for the harpoon and Richard slowly and carefully worked the gator up to the boat.
“Whatever you do, don’t hit him on the head with the harpoon.” Richard said. “Aim for his back or his side and drive that thing into him as hard as you can!”
I readied the harpoon and as the water began to well up from pulling up the gator, his head came out of the water and all of us just jumped at the size of how big he was! It had to have easily been a ten-foot gator. As I waited for him to present his back or side, I wound up lifting the harpoon above and behind my head and then took the shot, pushing as hard as I could. When the harpoon hit the gator, he made a mad dash for the bottom once again. I pulled up the harpoon only to see that I had hit him so hard that it bent the tip!
The shocking part? It didn’t even puncture his skin! Now we were in big trouble. We needed to get another line on this gator or we would risk breaking the line and losing him if he got near rocks or bushes. Richard handed me back the fishing pole and grabbed the hand line with a much larger hook to better secure the hold on the gator. He succeeded the first try (once again, he’d clearly done this before), and we both began working the gator back to the boat.
As the gator got up to the boat, we got one more look at how big he was until he started to death roll. That’s what gator’s do when they’re caught and know they’re about to get up into a boat supposedly. This monster had luck on his side. As Jason went to get the bang stick to finish him off, the gator went into one crazy death spin, thrashing the water and splashing us. In so doing he managed to shake not one, but both of our hooks that we had cleanly sunk into him. He then bolted for the bottom and was gone.
As a hunter and fisherman, there’s simply no worse feeling than missing a shot or losing a fish that you’ve got to the boat. I’ve had this happen so many times that It makes my stomach turn just thinking of it. We just sat there in the boat, staring at the water dumbfounded at what had just happened. That roughly 45 minute fight, and all the effort and excitement had just one out the window. I was mostly upset, but my mind just kept racing about what I wish we had done differently. Richard voiced what we were all thinking, “There’s nothing we could have done differently, that’s just part of hunting.” That didn’t make it any easier, but he was gone and now we’d have to start all over.
Unfortunately, by now our time was almost up so we decided to call it a day and return that night. I went home to take a much-needed nap, and debrief my wife about the “one that got away.” She wasn’t amused. By now in our life she’d only heard those types of stories on too many occasions and by now was probably used to them. That’s what I call a face:palm moment.
That afternoon at 4pm I returned back at the dock to load up the boat and hit the water again. As we began to head out, the dang mosquitoes came back with a vengeance so we fired up the motor to leave them behind and were just as determined to finish the fight we’d lost earlier in the morning.
For those that don’t know me, let me just be frank in saying I’m not a night person. I can wake up at ungodly hours of the morning with no coffee and no problem, but staying up at night just kills me the next day. Despite hitting the water at 5pm, we went up and down the St. Lucie Canal all night long, only seeing smaller gators that weren’t even worth casting at. To make matters worse, it began to rain and we were all soaking wet. By now I’m tired, wet, hungry and bitter that we weren’t seeing anything worth-while. Once we got later into the night, we began to see some larger gators, but cast after cast was missing. I had one lucky shot, but the gator shook off the hook within ten seconds. I was none to impressed and was dreading telling my wife about how we’d just spent a ton of money for a guide all weekend, and basically got skunked.
Richard and Jason clearly saw my frustration, and I voiced to them that my wife might be having a purse made out of husband skin not gator skin if I come back empty handed. But being the good-hearted Christ-like servants they are, they offered to take me out another weekend in the future to help me fill my gator tags. I couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t a light offer either, that was a weekend lost that they could have taken someone else out hunting to make some money but they chose to take me out instead because they were just that caring and knew that it meant a lot to me. Put another way, this is definitely not something a guide would normally do because that’s part of hunting, but these guys aren’t normal guides. Feeling incredibly humbled and blessed at the same time, I accepted their offer and we scheduled a day to resume the hunt a few weeks later.
Once again, we met at the same dock at Port Mayaca, though RIchard brought along a different guide with him named Jesse, another brother in Christ. It seemed like we had another solid group and we all started getting excited and ready to get out on the water, thinking full well that tonight was going to be the night we boated a decent sized gator. Richard kicked off the hunt by leading us in prayer, and we thanked God for the hunt and for his provision in advance, and then we hit the water.
From the beginning, this trip was a bit different than the last one. We decided to kick off the hunt a little early on Friday evening instead of the early morning. What was even more awesome about this scheduling was that at midnight, I would be beginning my off my 34th birthday, in the middle of the night, on the water, in the wilderness, hunting alligators. Not a bad way to start a new year on this earth! Every year I always try to do something exciting for my birthday. Ideally, I try to cross something off my bucket list Adventure List, and this one was no exception. Heck, it beats the pants off any birthday party or sitting around drinking beer all day!
The night was going a little bit better than the first morning we went out a few weeks before. Thankfully we were now closer to fall so the mosquitoes had become a little more thinned out, which isn’t saying much considering they were still everywhere. Nevertheless, the gators were out, and so were the stars. In total, we saw about four shooting stars that were lighting up the sky. It was truly a sight to see and Richard, Jesse, and I were all in awe of God’s magnificent creation.
Back to the hunt though, the only thing brighter than the stars was the more frequent reflection of gator eyes from the spotlight. After missing a few casts on some decent sized gators, running up and down the canal, we came to this little inlet that seemed to be holding a bunch of glowing eyes. Noticing that there were several gators in our vicinity, we killed the motor and decided to sit tight and turn on the gator call. We sat for about 15 minutes, occasionally, scanning the surroundings with a spot light to see if anything was responding to the gator call.
It was working. We saw a few eyes sneaking up on us from all directions. As exciting as it was, it was also quite eerie. The thought of three sizeable gators (that we actually saw), all sneaking up on us in the dark kind of gave us the creeps. That was, until we remembered who was hunting who. Richard spotted the largest of the gators and decided to launch a cast. It was a miss, but luckily he didn’t spook the gator. He reeled up the hook and decided to give it another chance. The hook flew through the air and hit the water just behind the gator. Richard gave it a slight tug and then jerked the fishing rod as hard as he could. Just after, a huge explosion of water flew about five feet in the air. The gator was on the line! With all spot lights on now, we were in hot pursuit. Jesse quickly took the rod while Richard ran the motor while we beared down the gator to retrieve some of the lost line that was screaming off the reel by this point.
Remembering full well the awful feeling of losing our monster gator a few weeks prior, we began preparing to avoid the same mistake. We told ourselves there was no way this one was getting away. While the gator was still peeling off line, I scrambed to get everything ready. With all the adrenaline flowing between the three of us, it was a bit hard to keep calm. We were as ready as we could be, but couldn’t make up our minds about whether to hit the gator with the harpoon or the bang stick when he got to the boat. I guess we would have to wait and see how the gator was snagged when he got to the boat. If he popped up his head, we would go straight for the bang stick. If he showed his body, we would go for the harpoon to make sure he didn’t get away.
As luck would have it, we snagged him in the tail, which was probably the worst way to get him. Richard tried to throw a hand line and get another hook in him. The same situation from a few weeks ago started to replay itself. Now we had two hooks in him, and we were praying that he wouldn’t go into a death roll and shake both the hooks. Luckily, as Richard got another hook in the gator, he managed to bring the side of the gator up. I swapped out the bang stick for the harpoon and nailed him right in the side abdomen area, setting the gator off into a frenzy. There was no getting a way this time though, by now, he had two hooks and a harpoon in him, and he was clearly getting tired. We began lifting him up to the boat and as I saw the head coming to the surface. I reached for the bang stick, pulled the safety pin, and went for the shot right behind the head. I pushed as hard as could and hit him right behind the skull.
Silence. The bang stick didn’t go bang.
In the firearms industry there is a saying, “the two loudest sounds in shooting is bang when you expect a click and a click when you expect a bang.” In this case, I was expecting a bang but just heard a click. Not a good thing when you’re staring at a pissed-off gator right next to your boat.
Right after the failed hit, Richard and Jesse yelled, “Come on, hit him harder! Harder!” I wound up, held the stick above my head and pushed downward as hard as could right behind his head.
“BOOM!”
The explosion from the bang stick echoed throughout the canal. Once the water splash cleared, I looked down to see if the gator had been properly dispatched. His body was limp and appeared to be dead, but you can never be too safe with dealing with such a creature. Apparently, there was another time on a hunt when Richard brought up a very large gator into the boat, thinking it was dead and one of the guides saw him blink, almost causing everyone to jump in the water. They obviously weren’t going to have that happen again and insisted on putting one more bang on this gator.
So, Jesse went to reload the bang stick while I took the fishing rod. Jesse lifted up the reloaded bang stick above his head and pushed as hard as he could toward the gator.
“SPLASH!”
“OH! OH NO!” Jesse yelled.
“What happened!?” Richard responded.
“I missed the dang gator! The bang stick just flew out of my hands!” Jesse yelled.
We all instantaneously started cracking up. Poor Jesse had completely missed the gator and launched Richard’s expensive, custom-made, stainless steel bang stick right to the bottom of the canal. Jesse knew he’d never live that down and Richard and I made sure of it all night. It was a big loss in more ways than one, but at least we were all to get a good laugh out of it.
Without a bang stick to put one last finishing shot on the gator, Jesse pulled out his pistol fired at the gators head. It was clear, by now, he was done for and we hoisted him in the boat.
Feeling super excited and praising God for his provision, we all began high fiving each other and reliving the catch step by step. It was truly an invigorating moment. As I went to look down at my phone to get a photo in the boat, I noticed the time. It was exactly just after midnight and I had just pulled my first gator in the boat right on my birthday!
We decided to try our luck and get one more gator in the boat, but we just weren’t seeing anything big enough to bring in. We stayed out for another few hours until about 3am before deciding to call it a night. My adrenaline rush began to subside, making me feel even more exhausted than usual.
With the little bit of awareness I had left, I began thinking ahead like I always do. I asked Richard about what we were to do next. Lord knows I don’t have the tools and knowledge to clean and process a gator and Richard reminded me that he had sent me the information for local gator processors. I told him that I had it but I had thought he had organized the place to drop off the gator for processing. He told me he hadn’t, and my heart just sunk. What the heck was I going to do now? It’s 3 am, and now I’ve got to figure out how to get this gator cleaned!
Frantically I pulled out my phone to see where the nearest processor was and if it was open 24 hours. Turns out, there was one up in Okeechobee, about 30 minutes north of where we were. No biggie. I asked Richard if Okeechobee was on his way back to Plant City where he lived, hoping he could help me drop it off. He said it wasn’t because he would be taking the 95-freeway northbound, which was not at all on the way. That just made my heart sink even further. Do I actually have to put a gator in the back of the car, which is my wife’s Toyota Prius?
“You have got to be kidding me.” I thought to myself. I knew it was just a simple miscommunication, but how in the heck I was supposed to get the gator to the processor? My exhaustion and desperation got the best of me and eventually just said screw it, I’ll throw it in the back of the Prius and drive it up there myself. It seemed like a good idea at the time, until we finished taking photos and found out that I could barely lift the thing. I had to have Richard help me lift this gator in the car, which we had just measured and found out it was about 7 feet long. It wasn’t huge, but certainly a decent medium sized gator, and no, it didn’t fit all that great in the back of the Prius. To make matters worse, it was bleeding and pretty dang smelly. I’d hoped the fact that my wife would soon have her gator purse would overshadow the fact that I’d just stunk up her car with a dead gator in the back. Hoped, being the key word.
I finally made it up to the processor at 3:45 in the morning. Now even more exhausted, I had no idea what to do. A quick online search thankfully answered that question, so did as suggested and I filled out my harvest paperwork, and proceeded to unload this heavy gator into the walk-in freezer at the processor. If someone had a security camera footage of this whole ordeal, I would pay to see it. I had no clue what I was doing, and my clumsiness/inability to carry this thing 50 yards from the car into the freezer all by myself is likely going to make me the next Youtube sensation, for all the wrong reasons.
Once I got to the freezer, I opened the door and gagged from the smell. It was filled with a bunch of whole gators that hunters had left for processing, along with other hides, heads, meat, and other gator parts. Once I pulled my gator in with the others, I turned around to see the walk-in freezer door slowly closing behind me. Diving, not walking, I managed to catch the door thereby avoiding a certain slow, freezing death. I casually walked out of the freezer, closed the door, wiped my hands on my pants, and walked to the car, reliving the horror of what could have happened if I had gotten locked in that freezer. Seriously, when it comes to my outdoor adventures, there’s never a dull moment, even after the hunt.
Now that I had got that out of the way, I could finally take my energy down a notch and relax on the hour drive home.
I got home at 5:30am, hugged my wife and kissed my son, before finally getting some well-needed sleep. It was another amazing adventure that is sure to go on the books and be told for years to come.
In closing, I’d like to send a special “Thank You” to Richard, Jason, Jesse, and the Under the Son crew not just for helping me to put a gator on the boat effectively and safely, but also for their amazing guiding. These guys truly are first class in their skill and their service, and I highly recommend you check them out if you’re looking for a hunting guide. They’ve got some excellent private land hunts for deer, hogs, turkey, and yes even gators.
Key Takeaways
Gator hunting is fun, but you gotta be willing and able to hunt all night.
If you’ve never been gator hunting, go with a guide. It is much safer, it will help you learn, and likely increase your chances of a successful hunt.
Make sure to pack lots of bug spray and your Thermacell. Hunting swamps and canals at night with no wind, will mean you’ll be eaten alive by mosquitoes.
Gator tastes absolutely amazing! It really tastes like a more tender chicken and goes exceptionally well with gumbo, jambalaya, tacos, and pasta!