Stive not a 15 footer....15 different ones.....however the two in the water were at LEAST in the 10 foot range.

Stive not a 15 footer....15 different ones.....however the two in the water were at LEAST in the 10 foot range.

Gotcha. Misread that 15 statement earlier. Still pretty rare to see that many 12 footers in one area of a river. From everything I know (which isn't a lot compared to others on this board) gators that big will tend to push other gators that big away due to competition for food.

ursusguy, fair enough and I understand why you don't want to say. But with all of the "monster gator" stories that the news guys build up during slow news cycles it could be anyone of 4 or 5 lakes. I've got a pretty good guess though.

[This message has been edited by Stive (edited 2/11/2011 12:59p).]

Stive, that is a good point you bring up, usually you don't have the real big guys hanging out near each other. That's one of the reasons the three I mentioned are fairly interesting. The 9' and 10' are rarely all that far from each other, the 12' is usually by himself, but closer to the others than would normally be expected. He rarely gets flushed out. The smaller gators do, and there is a media frenzy for about 2 days. Then they up an disappear. Reality is when the water velocity (and seemingly the water temp to some extent goes back up--reservoir upstream releases cold off the bottom) goes down, they return to the marsh.

About every 2-3 years I get drug into a meeting with one of the local HOAs that likes to freak out about them.

If you are thinking about a city park you are on the right track.

[This message has been edited by ursusguy (edited 2/11/2011 1:35p).]

i grew up in the b/cs area and yeah around the navasota and brazos rivers you can occasionally see some around surrounding tanks.

I remember them fishing one out of Wolf Pen Creek Amphitheater while in college some years back.

Then I got this too:

quote:

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SAN ANTONIO -- An 8-foot alligator created quite a challenge for San Antonio police when it showed up Sunday at Loop 410 on the city's South Side.

The large gator stood its ground against police when they tried to move it off the roadway with some poles.

The reptile became aggressive, hissed at the officers and even chomped down on the bumper of a police cruiser.

Police were forced to close down the Southern part of Loop 410.

"He just didn't want to move," an officer said. "He wasn't going anywhere."

The alligator didn't bite any of the officers but it did attack some traffic cones, police said.

"As far as I know there's no procedure on this other than don't get bit," an officer said.

Officers eventually managed to tie the gator's snout and drag it off into a ditch.

The gator then slithered away back to where a game warden said his home might be, Lake Mitchell.

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If I remember right there was some kind of discharge in the river which made that stretch warmer. They talked to a warden cruising the river in a jetboat and he said they congregate in that area.

There have been alligators out there near Easterwood since I took an orienteering class there back in the mid 80's.

didn't they catch a 8' plus gator off the Trinity in Fort Worth a year or so back?

Yes....that media was aware of.

So long as the water body isn't too consistently cold or rocky and the food is available, there could be gators in it if it has any sort of proximity to a river or major creek or bayou. They'll creek, wash, ditch, marsh hop when their local food supply gets exhausted, or when they're looking to mate.

It sounds like we need to start using some of these critters as "National Security" and relocating them down to the Rio Grande.

I've been visiting for work near the border and things have gotten BAD since I was down here years ago. Border Patrol could use some back-up, and I think that those 9' and 10' gator "friends" could really deter traffic over a good mile or two stretch once spotted.

But, really are there gators in the Rio Grande? I don't think I've ever heard mention of them there. (*Not claiming to be the guru of state animals OR news)

Maroon, not too far from Tilden, specifically at Whitsett just off of 99, my old Aggie buddy Stanley Brown, now deceased had a gator in his tank for several years in the late 90s. Gator showed up one day way back when, stayed for years, then bailed.

By the way the crow flies, he was only a few miles from Choke. And as mentioned before, is loaded with toad gaters.

Regarding gators on the Coastal Bend proper: one night I was fishing for trout on the pier of the Rod n' Reel Motel in Aransas Bay on the south side of Rockport... lo and behold, a 3 foot gator cruises past the end of the pier in the lights, heading north. It was almost the damndest thing I'd seen in Rockport, but I've seen a lot there.

And that remind me...there used to be a sizeable gator that used to hang out and sun himself at Palm Harbor in Rockport back in the day.

There are a few, and it is a fairly isolated population.

http://www.allbusiness.com/environment-natural-resources/ecology-environmental/14030214-1.html

Jeezuss, I used to swim golf course water hazzards back in the '80's in the Victoria area for waterballs to be re-sold. Came across several water moccasins but never thougt too much about it.

However, it seems that the once endangered gator has had a real resurgence inland.

I remember snaking my old Majek through a very narrow winding path between Post Lake and some other remote small lake out of POC back about '99. We had to put-put around through a channel not wider than the boat for several hundred yards to get back there. After fishing it, we went back the same way, and around a very sharp turn we had gone around several hours earlier, there was a portion of salt grass four ft. wide that had been mashed down flat. Recently. However, no boats came through there since we did. Our only conclusion was it was one big azz gator. Needless to say, being we had to putt-putt back in a boat that touched grass most of the way we were at high attention after seeing that.

I had a break-off in the lilly pads at Bryan Municipal on a Mann Grape Worm years ago...I chaulked it up to a double digit bass. Don't y'all shatter my dream an tell me it might have been a reptile.

Sarge, for what it's worth, those weren't water mocassins but water snakes.

Well, at least most of them were.

Interesting in reading ursus' Valley article which states the nearly half of our Texas counties have a gator population.

In 2002 they were reported in approximately 120 counties.

SanAntone,

Water snakes headed the other way. The moccasins were kind of territorial. Nothing that big ass rake I had could not dissuade.

At ten cents a golf ball no matter the condition, that was good money to a kid back then. A thousand golf balls a day, after the normal workday bought lots of....er...beer..for a HS kid.

[This message has been edited by Old Sarge (edited 2/12/2011 12:08a).]

Sarge I don't doubt you encountered moccasins. It's just kind of a OB running joke for lack of a better term that any snake encountered near freshwater is a moccasin. Or maybe even a cottonmouth.

The ursus kind know what I'm talking about...

And as a post-script to the gator thread. Early March of '09 our annual white bass camp out trip up the Pecos got cancelled for one reason or another. Since we'd all burned a day of vacation on Friday, we headed down to Tilden. Put in at the Daughtery WMA launch and proceeded to troll up the Frio. We were putting football sized whites into the Igloo pretty regularly before we came around a bend in the river and damn--a huge gator slid off the bank into the drink. My Whaler is a shameful 13 feet. And the dinosaur that slid off the mud bank into the Frio was at least a foot longer than my mosquito-like craft, according to guesstimates by my BILs and me.

Since it was early in the day, none of our brains were beer addled, so we weren't off by much.

[This message has been edited by SanAntoneAg (edited 2/12/2011 12:23a).]

Decided to show yall some of the alligator photos...

I am the one hanging on to the head. Nothing particularly special at this point, just keeping it from thrashing around.

Here we had just finished weighing the gator (note the radio transmitter)...


Here the grad student on the project is sexing the gator.


I just think this is a funny photo....


Five guys getting ready to do an organized scatter drill...

Ursus, is that the gator from Fork that ate the mountain lion in Frisco that was chasing the bobcats in Plano that interbred with the coyotes running rampant in Arlington?

No. But I did just about lose it laughing.

It is from the DFW area.

[This message has been edited by ursusguy (edited 2/12/2011 12:32a).]

I've had a gator sighting in a smaller farm tank near Gibbons Creek in Grimes County.

They had a 6' gator roaming around Floresville last week

I saw what was supposedly a 16' gator kill a 10' gator over a marshmallow on an airboat tour in Louisiana.

The guide about **** himself. and decided it was time to go before anyone took amy photos of the dead gator. I'm also pretty sure the 16' was appropriately named Hercules and only had one eye.

Since we've turned this into the Ursus AMA thread, I have a question for you:

We've got a place up at Texoma and have always heard from the locals up there that there is a pretty decent gator population on the North end of the lake on the Oklahoma side. They typically are said to be in the northern fingers of the lake in the creeks.

Is this possible?

Nice resurrection.

Yes, it is quite possible to fine some large gators on Texhoma. There isn't a lot of gators on Texhoma, but get up into some of the flatter wetland areas and there are a few.

Since it is several years removed now, my alligator photos are from Lake Worth.

looks like there was an article in the paper today about someone spotting another 10' gator in Lake Worth. Seems like a lot of big gators in Worth. Some killed a big one in there a couple of years ago right?

quote:

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looks like there was an article in the paper today about someone spotting another 10' gator in Lake Worth. Seems like a lot of big gators in Worth. Some killed a big one in there a couple of years ago right?

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People are about as good with length of gators as they are with other things. Huge is huge, big is big, average is average and small is small. 10ft could be anywhere from 5-12ft ha

They are in the process of removing a large alligator that has been known for years, and most likely is blind.

The gator killed in 2011 or '12, was actually poached. They claimed self defense, but their claim was flatout bogus (they spotted the gator, went upstream and got out of their boat, and shot it from above on land).

But yes, there are several known large gators on Lake Worth. Been that way for a number of years.

I have a friend who killed a 8'-4" gator in McCoy, TX yestersay. It was swimming in their tank. They said it was tagged etc. I'm not familiar with the hunting laws for Gator so hopefully I don't get them in trouble.

Non-core county alligator season runs 4/1-6/30. So if they tagged it like you indicated, they are perfectly fine.

Aransas Wildlife Refuge has plenty of gators. When the Aransas river is full a few proceed up stream and end up in tanks on ranches that border the river. I have been on a couple ranches in San Pat and Bee counties where those orange eyes spying back at you are plentiful. Have seen several 5-6 footers.

Ursus, any reports that you know of where small livestock have been attacked? Had one old timer tell me he saw a gator unsuccessfully go after a calf years ago. Was not sure if the tequila was helping inspire his memory with that story.