The First Hunt

With bellies full of burgers, beer and the best gator tail we have ever tasted, we arrived at Lake Pierce - Beautiful! (and eerie...)

The scenery from the boat was awesome! Natural and as we would come to learn, more dense than the trophies we set out to catch!

Mike & I were excited to be out hunting, which is MUCH better than watching gator hunters on television from the comfort of our moss green couch!

Right away we started looking for alligator snouts and heads poking out of the water. 

If they went underwater before we got to them, we would follow their bubble trail around (if we were lucky enough to see one!). After several great attempts at snatching a few 6-8 footers, we cruised around to look for more.

 

We hunted all through the night, which was exciting! (& buggy & spidery!)

We saw A LOT of gator babies and juveniles, which would let out a high-pitched yunk if you squeezed them. (... which we didn't do.)

Mike tried his hand at harpooning.

After about 13 hours of hunting, the sun finally started to come up.

I was glad that it was because I was cold, damp, bug bitten and in a lot of pain from trying to sleep on a cooler for ~ 5 of those 13 hours! 

This was the first sunrise Mike & I had shared in our 2 1/2 years together. 

We both agreed to start sharing more sunrises because they are beautiful!

:)

Well, still no catch...uh oh. We had seen about 6 medium size gators in all and a ton of babies - they were everywhere! The larger gators were onto all of our tricks and certainly did not want to get caught! They wouldn't let us get even within a hundred yards before they would sink to the bottom into the deep muck and refuse to come up! So our guide decided it was time to take a break & grab a cup of joe at a lakefront store that had just opened. After pulling an all-nighter on the boat, we all agreed that coffee never tasted better!

The mist on Lake Pierce after the sun had risen created a feeling of mystery.

The great mystery after a difficult night of hunting was, "How in the heck were we going to catch our gators?" Our guide assured us he would figure it out! We weren't going to give up easily so we cruised around the lake for a few more hours looking.

Were they in there somewhere?

Mike got a couple chances to use the crossbow.

At 10am our hunt came to an end. We had hunted for 17 hours! Our guide reassured us that I had drawn a difficult lake, the gators were wise and skiddish, and that we had been dealt every bit of bad luck imaginable. But hey, at least we were still alive! I could go to work tomorrow with all of my limbs and Mike could too. Even though we had to go home without our two gators we still had a blast!

So our hunt continues!

We hope that we get our two monsters before the season ends!