Florida gator hunting hours could grow
to around the clock
Orlando Sentinel,
by
Jim Turner
Original Article
Posted By: Hazymac,
2/15/2022 1:09:45 PM
TALLAHASSEE — Alligator hunting could become a 24/7 endeavor under a proposal going before Florida wildlife commissioners.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on March 2 will consider a staff proposal that would expand, at most locations, the daily hours for the next alligator hunting season to 24 from the current 17 — 5 p.m. to 10 a.m.
George Warthen, the commission’s director of hunting and game management, said in a memo that proposed rule changes would “provide greater flexibility and opportunity for participants in the statewide alligator harvest program.”
The hours have gradually expanded since the harvest began in 1988, when people holding alligator trapping licenses and
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Hazymac 2/15/2022 1:30:23 PM (No. 1072767)
With an estimated population of between one and two million in Florida alone, the American alligator, indigenous to every county in the state, and legally protected from hunting for most of the year, is in no danger of disappearing. Increasing the hours of hunting from 17 to 24 during season makes sense.
FTA: The state already allows a number of methods involving tethered lines, including crossbows, bows, snatch hooks and harpoons. Airbows, devices charged with an external high compression source to propel arrows, were not commercially available the last time the state updated its alligator harvest methods, the presentation said..
The law has to accommodate new devices like the (fairly new) airbow, which I haven't seen yet. Most licensed gator hunters I've heard of use the old tried and true pew-pew twenty-two. Shot placement is everything. At some local eating establishments alligator tail (fried or jerk seasoned) is offered, and is fairly good, if chewy, if cut into small enough pieces. The skin of the alligator, however, is one of the best in nature. Live alligators, like rattlesnakes and water moccasins, are okay at a distance.
5 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
volksford 2/15/2022 1:41:05 PM (No. 1072773)
There should be a round the clock open season on those damn Pythons
11 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
DVC 2/15/2022 1:43:43 PM (No. 1072779)
LOL! When I was a teen in Florida, they had just recently made gator hunting illegal, "to protect the species". I thought this was kinda funny, since they are pretty dangerous when they get big, and people didn't let a lot of them get that big.
A friend was a 'fish cop' and went out in the nights to catch 'gator poachers' fairly regularly.
Now, gators are pretty much everywhere, and all those little 2 and 3 footers that were around when I was a teen are now 8 and 10 ft long 50 years later, and love dogs, cats and a few kids, here and there.
About time they thinned them out, about 80% of them dead would be about right, IMO.
11 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
rellimpank2 2/15/2022 2:15:08 PM (No. 1072814)
--I sometimes watch 'Swamp People'--just would like to see the 'gator win, once in a while, like the broncs and bulls in rodeo--
1 person likes this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
padiva 2/15/2022 3:21:24 PM (No. 1072861)
Alligator... the new white meat.
2 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
red1066 2/15/2022 3:23:15 PM (No. 1072862)
How about expanding the hunting time from hours to days, and as #2 suggested they can include pythons in that hunt as well.
4 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Hazymac 2/15/2022 4:12:30 PM (No. 1072903)
Re #6: There is no python season in Florida. From a game and fish website: "Pythons can be humanely killed on private lands at any time with landowner permission – no permit or hunting license required – and the FWC encourages people to remove and kill pythons from private lands whenever possible." As with feral hogs, coyotes,and lionfish, there is no limit or season on invasive species. On state property python hunts are regular affairs, with bounties paid for each snake removed. The longest Burmese python culled so far was about twenty feet long. One snake hunter took a bite in the chest from a 12-foot python. Any large snake could easily kill a human, so hunters should not go into the swamp alone. (If I were a python hunter, a 12-gauge shotgun would seem a natural companion in the muck.)
3 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Mass Minority 2/15/2022 4:31:16 PM (No. 1072914)
Whwn I was a lig in grafe school I was earnestly informed by all my teachers that my generation would be the last to ever see an American Alligator in the wild. Just one of the many leftit myths I was taught as absolute fact. like nuclear winter, acid rain would turn the Adirondacks into a desert, humanity would starve by 1990, oil would be gone before 2000, there would be no Eagles, songbirds, Ospreys or waterfowl, mountain gorrilas, black footed ferrets, or whooping cranes. The oceans would be dead, whales extinct and our air unbrewthable. We would all have cancer from the ozone hole and the coming ice age would make growing food almost impossible. we would be shoulder to shoulder in an overpopulated world running out of everything and wallowing in our own waste. We were also taught that Government was our friend.
We were taught an awful lot of stuff that was just plain false. And they wonder why we don't trust all their doomsday prophecies.
5 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
DVC 2/15/2022 5:23:18 PM (No. 1072960)
I heard all those lies, too, #8, but fortunately not in grade school. The book Limits to Growth came out while I was in college, and I got a copy to see what it was all about.
It was clear to a bright, informed college engineering student that the whole bunch of 'computer modeling' for the future was based on shaky to idiotic premises. I read it, did a bit if research and realized that even idiots can get people to fund their "research" and write a book about a bunch of nonsense.
The problem is that so many people bought into the BS. I never have.
5 people like this.
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In alligator season the hunters haven't been able legally to make an excursion after the toothsome reptiles an all day affair. That might change.