So HammerStump and myself just got drawn for an alligator hunt at JD Murphree next month. Neither of us have ever been alligator hunting. We will have a 15' aluminum boat with a 25hp evinrude, and will be using a hook and line.

Anyone ever been here before? Or would anyone like to share any tips and tactics for alligator hunting in general?

TIA

Good boots, good backpack, good binos, strong legs/back, and the willingness to pack them out.

Oh, wait.....

Does tpwd send you an email when you are drawn? Obviously never been drawn

Yes

Have fun shooting a successful adult animal point blank in the head!

BurrOak - I used to work at the Murphree area, and worked many gator hunts. I'd be happy to spend some time on the phone with you if you send me a note at jattamc9(at)yahoo.com.

Amos Carter and the other biologists / technicians will spend some time giving good guidance and up-to-date information about the marsh. I believe you'll also get some pre-hunt information. However, it is good to start getting your game plan and gear together.

So how do the draw hunts work? Do you get a tag and can hunt as much as you want during the 3 weeks until you kill one or is it for a specific date? By hook & line, you mean your just going to try and side-hook them, or bait a hook off an anchored line?

Congrats! So how do you go about culling with the hook and line method? Do you pretty much have to harvest the first one you catch?

Wouldn't it be better just to shoot a nice mature one that you see and then use a hook and rope to snag it and drag it in the boat?

I think that's exactly what he plans on doing!!

You only get to hunt the WMAs over the weekend. We used to run 3-4 adult hunts in 2 different marsh units plus a special youth hunt in the Lost Lake unit.

Size selection using line & hook is accomplished in 2 ways: site selection and height above water you set your bait. Line is anchored. You want them to swallow the bait, so the don't thrash and fight as hard. You then pull them up to the surface and use a well-placed shot to the head to dispatch the gator.
The chances of killing and recovering a gator you shoot before it is hooked is very low, plus you don't want to mess up the hide if you want to use it for leather.
If you want a big gator (which I'm not sure I'd recommend) they tend to keep the area relatively low density of smaller gators. If you are in an area with higher density of small to medium gators, you want to set you bait high enough that only a 6'+ gator can jump and reach it.

When I worked there we would try to put well-equipped hunters where we thought they might get a 10+ foot gator, and recommend others to areas with higher numbers of medium-sized gators.

Just make sure he's not a collared gator or that he has any kind of a name. Cuz then there's gonna be consequences.

Don't get advice by watching Swamp People. Ease the gator up and shoot him right in the middle of his head behind the eyes. There is a soft spot there. As soon as his head breaks the water, pop him. All that splashing and twisting around stuff is just for TV

I do a lot of duck hunting out there. Good chance our paths have crossed...

I got drawn for the youth hunt back in the day. My bro and I pulled about a 10 and an 8. My dad and his buddies got a 12'6" one year in the adult division. Pretty sure it was the biggest gator taken on the JD that year. Hang em high, catch big gators.

Don't catch a lil 6 footer and put it in a hotel lobby fountain.

I was there from 1997-2000 and worked the check stations a lot, so if you were hunting back then we probably have met.

Pretty excited! A quick Google search told me that out of 126 hunters at J.D. Murphee last year 85 were successful. Those odds are better than anything BurrOak and myself have gotten drawn for, at least in our adult lives. With our skills and the effort I know we'll put in, I'm pretty confident I'll be celebrating my 30th birthday with some gator meat.

Thanks for any advice you folks have!

quote:

---

So how do the draw hunts work? Do you get a tag and can hunt as much as you want during the 3 weeks until you kill one or is it for a specific date? By hook & line, you mean your just going to try and side-hook them, or bait a hook off an anchored line?

---

Our hunt is only 2 days, Sept 15-16. We each get 1 tag, and we are planning on using an anchored line.

Here is the hunt brochure that explains everything.

quote:

---

Congrats! So how do you go about culling with the hook and line method? Do you pretty much have to harvest the first one you catch?

Wouldn't it be better just to shoot a nice mature one that you see and then use a hook and rope to snag it and drag it in the boat.

---

We are not allowed to shoot one in open water. No rifles are allowed at all. We will have to dispatch the gator with a shotgun.

tamc91 - I'll shoot ya an email here shortly.

(warning: long description of my hunts in FL)

i've been fortunate enough to go gator hunting the past two years here in FL on public lakes. since we can't legally use bait lines with our recreational permits, our hunting is a little more active where we go out at night quietly spotlighting for gators (their eyes glow red/orange). once we spot a gator, we try to get as close to it without spooking it and then snag it by casting a treble hook across the body and reeling it in quickly. once we get it close to the boat and determine that it is too small, we just simply take pressure off the line and the hook breaks loose since it is not embedded in their skin. needless to say, it takes a lot of skill to first make a good cast just on the other side of the gator and then reel it in without losing the gator.

so once we have a gator that we want, we then set a big grapple hook in the gator to control it. the bigger gators usually sink down to the bottom of the lake when we have it at the boat with just the treble hook. here we toss the grapple hook just on the other side of where we think the gator is and slowly drag it back along the bottom until it is just touching the gator. then we pull on that hook as hard as we can to set it, which always pisses the gator off. what happens is the gator rolls and wraps itself with the rope connected to the grapple hook. this is our main control point.

we then try to get at least one more control point with a homemade harpoon using some harpoon points we got online. the idea is to let the gator do the work and wrap itself with the rope. all of this is necessary since we are only allowed to use bang sticks to kill the gator. we pull the gator alongside the boat and then attempt to hit that magic spot right behind the base of the skull with the bang stick. if we don't hit the brain directly, it doesn't even affect the gator. once we do hit that spot, though, the gator immediately rolls belly up. we call it the death roll.

after giving it a few minutes (just to make sure!) we then tape the jaws shut and cut it's spinal cord directly behind the base of the skull before we bring the gator into the boat. as an added measure, we also use a long screwdriver to drive into the skull in an attempt to mash the brain (using the cut spinal cord as the entrance to the skull). you'll find that even after doing all of this, the alligator will still be moving. this is usually attributed to it's prehistoric nervous system, but i can't speak to the exact physiology of it. nevertheless, this is why we tape the jaws shut before we bring the thing into the boat.

i've only gotten two gators myself, the largest of which is below and was 7'6" if i recall correctly. i still consider myself an amateur though since i haven't gotten a large one. i think i have some video clips of getting a 6'6" gator but i have to do some digging to find it.

i don't know if people that use the line and hook method use grapple hooks and harpoons, but i find that they are effective and necessary to gain control of the animal. it is CRITICAL to keep the ropes organized and make sure you do not get entangled in the ropes. we keep each rope neatly coiled in it's own five gallon bucket.

a couple of more keys to having a safe and successful hunt is to have good communication and try your best to keep a cool head and do not panic. the adrenaline is definitely pumping through your veins throughout the whole ordeal and it's easy to get excited, even with a small gator!

quote:

---

BurrOak - I used to work at the Murphree area, and worked many gator hunts. I'd be happy to spend some time on the phone with you if you send me a note at jattamc9(at)yahoo.com.

Amos Carter and the other biologists / technicians will spend some time giving good guidance and up-to-date information about the marsh. I believe you'll also get some pre-hunt information. However, it is good to start getting your game plan and gear together.

---

Tried emailing, but it wont go through. Is that email correct?

Out of curiosity, how many priority points did you have? i didnt get drawn on gator or exotics with 3 and 6 points on each respectively.

We had 4 points. I've got 15 in exotic and Gun Deer Either Sex.

Burr/Hammer, don't forget to take the jowl meat along with the tail. the rest of the meat can be iffy depending on the individual, a lot of times it is a bit fishy.

Sorry it is missing a one. I guess I deleted it when I deleted the @ trying to avoid the spammers.

Email sent

Cannot help much on hunting. But to cook the meat...

short version...soak cut meat in buttermilk overnight in the fridge before cooking (frying preferred)

long version. Granny Bott who would be around 100 years old if still living came from north Smith county. Back in the 30's not much animal meat to eat and they cooked anything they could kill. Most common was squirrels followed by rabbits and then possums (yes they ate what they could). Any game meat was prepared by soaking in buttermilk to take the game taste out and it also adds a sweet flavor to the meat.

Back in 2012 for the Florida game we got 3 pounds of gator and deep fried it. It was the hit of the tailgate. Out of the package it definitely had a fish smell. By the time we cooked it was perfect.

We use a "snake charmer", which is a .410 shotgun with a pistol grip.

Does the job and doesn't go through the bottom side of the hide

Baits are hanging. Hopefully we will have 2 gators in the morning.

Seek the advice of a one armed man named after a man of the cloth.

BurrOak-
I hope you had some luck. Post some pics and tell Amos Cooper I said howdy!

Man I'm jealous. Me and some guys from the office applied for the same hunt. We are beginners as well so I look forward to hearing back on how everything works. Best of luck

Well I'm happy to say that we were successful. We went 2 for 2. We didn't exactly come away with the biggest alligators in the swamp, but we are pleased given the circumstances.

Tamc91, we never got to meet Amos. There was a fire on the southern end of the WMA, and he was dealing with that the entire time. Andrew Peters was the one running the show. Tamc91 is good people, he was nice enough to give this newbie lots of advice before we left on this trip.

So after the orientation and the units were assigned, everyone met down at the boat ramp. The entire group was going to follow one of the hunt coordinators in our boats into the WMA so he could show each group their unit. But we couldn't get our engine started at the ramp. So we sat there for awhile working on it, and finally got it cranked just a few minutes after everyone had left. As we started to take off and try to catch the group, Andrew showed up at the dock and told us that due to our engine issues, they wanted us to hunt in a closer unit in Unit 2. We were originally assigned Unit 6.

We finally were up and running, and made it Unit 2. We had to cross a levee, which wasn't difficult at all given our small boat and rollers.




Once we crossed the levee, we had about 75 yards of that stuff to go through to get to the more open marsh. The 25hp Evinrude got through it all, but progress was pretty slow. The entire area we were in averaged about 2' deep and was full of vegetation. The prop was usually digging in the mud and we had to remove weeds and such from the prop very often. And because of that, the engine was struggling and getting kinda hot. So we had to take it slow, and we also paddled around quite a bit as well. While somewhat troublesome, we managed to get around alright. We were newbies at this kind of stuff.

Once through that first stretch, it opened up a bit more.



But all that open area is still about 2' deep with vegetation just under the surface. It was slow moving even in the open area, mainly due to the engine getting a little too warm for my liking. We never saw a gator anywhere on the first day. We cruised and paddled all over, and only saw one nice trail up going up on the marsh grass. So that's where I hung my bait.



Oh, lets talk about the bait! That stuff was RANK! I bought 2 whole chickens (only should've bought one) and quartered them up on Sunday. I put them in a covered 5gal bucket along with a couple cans a sardines, some hot sauce, tony cacheres seasoning, and a few cups a vegetable oil, and then let that sit in the sun 2 days before we left. That stuff was RIPE.

We never found any other trails up on the marsh grass, so we went to the next best looking spot (in our amateur opinions) and HammerStump put out his bait.



We originally were planning on fishing for a bigger gator and setting our baits up high. But due to the issues we were having, and the fact that we hadn't seen ****, we made a decision that we didn't want to go home empty handed. So we set out baits lower and decided that we'd be happy with any gator. Once we got back to the check station and talked to one of the TPWD guys (Clay was his name), he said "There are A LOT of gators in 2." And he didn't think we would have any issues catching some there. He actually said that they were in Unit 2 trying to catch a gator for GatorFest in Anahuac about a week or so prior and saw a real nice gator right where HammerStump set his line. He also said that the hunt right before us a group of 2 guys went 0-2 in our unit, and they didn't understand why they got skunked. Likely because they had set their bait too high. This lifted out spirits as we left the WMA for the night.

And the next morning...

I got a 5.5' gator, and HammerStump got a 6.5' gator.




Like I said, not the biggest by any means, but we were just happy to each catch one. And only a matter of seconds after we got HS's gator in the boat, we looked up and saw about a 8-9 footer swimming about 30 yards from us.

After that, we went on over to the skinning place just down the road, and saw the 2 biggest from our hunt, a 9'5" 200lb, and a 9'3 165lb.



All in all, it was a great trip. We definitely hope to get drawn again. We learned a lot, and will probably do things a little different next time.

Thanks again tamc91 for all the advice!

Looks like fun

Thanks for the report. I'm glad y'all had success and both got a gator.

You got good sized gators for leather and over the years you saved a lot of mottled ducks those two would have eaten. The duck hunters on the WMA appreciate your efforts!

By the way, those 9 footers are skinny gators compared to what we pulled out of the Murphree in the late 90's. I think the last few hurricanes and tropical systems seems to have hit them pretty hard.
It would be interesting to see average weight by size class of large gators before and after Rita and Ike.

Gig 'Em

Just one question: did you ever channel your inner Troy and refer to the alligator as a tree shaker or yell, "Choot him! Choot him!" at any point during your hunt?

Andrew is good people, as are all the guys at the Murph. Glad you got 2.