Gator hunters snag 13-footer

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Gator hunters snag 13-footer
Trio spends three hours just getting monster alongside boat
By Byron Stout
Originally posted on August 28, 2006



Why would anyone call the Caloosahatchee River Jurassic Park?
Marcus Haupt does after he pulled a 13-foot, 2 1/4-inch dinosaur out of it.
Eight nights ago, Haupt, 20, of North Fort Myers, and friends Kevin Rossi and Everett Henkel had the gator hunt of their lives.
Their adventure started with the mega gator’s eyes reflecting a Mag-Lite beam back toward their heavily armed bay-style boat. Marcus cast a four-barbed hook beyond the gator and raced it back, snagging the beast in its relatively softer underside.
So far, the event was routine.
Haupt and brothers Nick, 26, and Josh, 23, and sister, Mirian, 18, already had taken an 11-footer, a 10, two 8-footers, a 7 and a 6-foot, 9-incher hunting near Orlando, beginning Tuesday night, Aug. 15.
But when the Caloosahatchee monster exploded, giving the men a look at its head, they knew they were hooked to no routine reptile.
The Florida record-length alligator is 14 feet, 5/8-inch — from Lake Monroe in Seminole County. The Florida record for weight is a 1,043-pounder (13 feet, 10€ inches long) from Orange Lake in Alachua County.
Almost all alligators over 9 feet are males, or bulls, and only a tiny fraction grow to 13 feet. So Marcus really didn’t want that one to get away.
Fighting with 200-pound braided Spiderwire line on a spinning rod and reel, to get within range of his compound bow, Haupt subsequently sank two fishing arrows on 200-pound bowfishing line into the gator’s armored neck. Between arrows they snagged it with another snatch hook.
Three hours into a seesawing battle up and down the river, they got the gator close enough to the boat to use a 10-foot pole with a flying gaff — the gaff hook detaches from the pole to become a hook on a rope — to secure the gator even more. Hauling it boatside, they stuck it with a gaff on a 4-foot pole.
Then they started bangsticking. Bangsticks fire cartridges on contact — in this case, four shots with a .44 magnum and one with a .357 magnum.
That finished the gator, but the ordeal was hardly finished. To get it aboard the boat they had to tow it back to the ramp.
At the ramp they began a process of hauling the beast aboard, inch by inch, cleating off a head rope to the bow so it couldn’t slide back into the river.
They cleaned the gator and removed its head, for a mount. The head filled a 4-foot cooler.
Three for the money
By day, Erik Benson is a physician’s assistant at a Fort Myers orthopedic practice. By night he’s the ringleader of a gang of gator terrorists.
Benson and his girlfriend managed to secure a license and three alligator permits good for a total of six alligators back on June 19, when Florida sold 4,406 permits in a four-hour blitz.
That put Erik, 33; his brother Mark, 41, from San Diego; Kerry Ireland, 45, of Buckingham; Raymond Jones, 52, of North Fort Myers; and Matt Hale, 31, of Hollywood, on track for a three big-dog night.
In six hours on a Tuesday night and Wednesday morning they harvested three gators totaling 35 feet, 10 inches.
The men started their hunts in groups of three — always Erik, the license holder, and Ireland, the airboat owner, plus one of the others.
Hunting off the Old Moore Haven Canal, out of the little town’s public recreation area on the south end of Lake Okeechobee, they spotted their first gator. As they approached, it sped into a spot where they feared the airboat would mire in the mud.
“I told Matt he’d have to go get it on foot. I was just joking, but he jumped right out of the airboat,” Erik said.
Hale stalked over to the beast, which Benson described as hissing and growling, and hurled the 9€-foot harpoon. He missed.
Another throw produced another embarrassing miss.
“He snapped his jaws several times, but he wasn’t interested in fighting,” Benson said.
“We had the spotlight in his eyes so he couldn’t see. He was trying to wiggle down into the mud, on the ostrich theory.”
At which point Hale slogged to within stabbing range and plunged home the spearpoint, which detached from the pole. The gator’s reaction was violent, inspiring Hale to retreat.
“Matt came back to the boat all scared and freaked out. He left the pole out there,” Benson said.
Benson, armed with a 6-foot bangstick, and Hale waded back out. Hale retrieved the long pole and secured a second .44 magnum bangstick head to it.
“He flanked the gator and hit him in the head with the bangstick,” Benson said, “and the gator did the old death roll.
“Then I hit him with the 6-foot bangstick, and that was pretty much it for him.”
Next up was Mark Benson, whose gator also was found in shallow water. Ireland ran the airboat up to it, but it scooted into the bushes.
Mark then left the airboat, harpoon in hand, but the second gator turned out to be less passive than the first victim.
“My brother got about three steps away from the boat and that thing stood up and started growling, and we said no way,” Erik said.
Operating from the airboat, Mark managed to get a harpoon dart into the beast before it got well into the vegetation, and after a prolonged tug of war, a blow with the bangstick ended that hunt.
The last gator also was laid up in shallows.
“To be honest he was sickly,” said Benson.
“He was not well, so removing him from the population was a good thing.
“When we rolled up on him at 3 o’clock in the morning, he didn’t even really care.
“Raymond got within range and put a dart in him. He launched toward the bushes and stopped, and we put another dart in him.
“Then we reached out with the 10-foot pole and hit him in the head (with a .44 magnum round) and that was that.”
Or almost.
With gators of 11 feet, 3 inches, 11-10 and 12-9, it took the five men and a friend eight hours to skin and clean their catches.
They skinned the hides, removing the valuable belly pieces in one piece, and saving even the armored back plates for painstaking disposition later.
Saving the back leather, called hornback, requires leaving it to ants to remove all of the flesh and cartilage around the bony scutes along the back. The back leather is so thick and tough, not even ants can deal with it.
“We treat them the same as you would treat a deer,” Benson said of their no-waste philosophy.
“We get together on the weekends and have gator fries and hog roasts,” he said of the meat’s disposition.
“We hunt out of respect for the animals.”

[matey8941]

wow....id never mess with them things....people crazy

[Jer]

WOW!

[johnseafood]

Holy cow , I think i would crap my pants if I saw that come to the boat. I'd mount it and put it right as you walk into my house to scare the shit out of people.

[WAHOONBOX]

THE STORYLINE IS SO COOL...............GATOR TERRORISTS....I LOVE IT.

SPINNING ROD....BOW 7 ARROW..FLYING GAFFS...BANG STICKS AND .357'S.....WOW

I GUESS YOU GO TO A GATOR FIGHT PROPERLY PREPARRED TO DEFEND YASELF!

[Capt-D]

Now those are some rednecks you dont F with!

Good for them!

-D

[GoinCoastal]

We have so many gator down here....you can't swim in fresh water without bumping into them.

[KEY-LIME-PIE]

Or getting "eaten"