Tossey Family: Alligator Hunters

Aaron the Alligator Hunter

Aaron had the opportunity to go gator hunting with our friend and home teacher Justin Ward and was so excited! They would be gone weekends and some weeknight leaving at 9 PM. After his first hunt he came home and woke me up climbing into bed telling me all about it and how fun it was.

***warning*** last picture on the post is kinda gross (blood) but cool. It's the inside of the gator's mouth.

The night Aaron and Justin caught this 10 1/2 foot gator Aaron comes in and wakes me up saying. "We got one!" and tells me to come see.

The Catch Story: By Aaron,

So I pull up to the parking lot at the Bushy Park freshwater side boat ramp a little after 2130 and put my rubber boots on. It wasn’t two seconds after that I heard Justin Ward yelling from the saltwater side for me to come over. At first I thought he was launching the boat over there and needed some help. So I started heading over there casually when I heard Justin yell again saying “Aaron, I got one”. I then jogged across the street to see him backing off the pier to keep the line taught because the reel handle had broken off. He had me run over to get his gun and the harpoon. As I took over the reel and he headed down to the bank to shoot the gator the line snapped. We sat looking at each other a second sad like. Then we went over to the edge of the pier where some spectators were watching the gator. We shined the light looking for the gator and spotted his glowing eyes off the pier about 200 yards in the grass.
We launched the boat and went after him. I held the light on the gator till we got about 30 yards from him and then he went under. We then coasted the boat into the grass about 10 yards from him and Justin casted a few more times with another rod he had. On the third cast he snagged the gator and the gator swam around a bit. Justin using the rod pulled us right over where the gator had settled as I got the harpoon. Justin instructed me to feel down to the bottom with the harpoon to see if I could feel him. After feeling around a bit I felt his hard body on the bottom just shallow enough to be able to thrust the harpoon down and hit him. I thrusted down the harpoon and hit the gator but the harpoon just skipped off what i suppose to be the hard plated back of the gator. The gator took off and swam around a good bit till he finally settled again near the grass. So I got a second chance. I felt down and again thrusted the harpoon through the water at him, but again the harpoon did not enter what I supposed again to be his back. He took off again and gave Justin a good fight and we hoped we wouldn’t loose him, luckily we got a third chance as he stayed near the grass. Justin told me as we were pulling the boat up to him with the rod that I had to get him this time or we could loose him. So I felt down again and felt his skin this time he was a bit shallower and I could get a little better handle on the harpoon to really put some power behind it. So I I thrust it again down where I had felt him and sure enough I could feel the harpoon tip enter and then come of in his skin, so i quickly put down the harpoon rod and picked up the line attached to the tip. As he took us for a ride I gave him the slack he needed and we waited for him to tire out a bit. When he did we started to pull him up. When he was about to break the water he started the death role and wound himself up in the line and broke the rod. It took me a bit to get him up in the right position so that Justin could get a kill shot on him with a 357. Finally we got the shot he wanted and Justin toasted him. We then pulled his head up grabbed his mouth shut and taped it that way just in case. I held on to him by the mouth so we could tow him the 200 yards back to the boat ramp. It was a long 200 yards he was heavy.
As we pulled him up the boat ramp we noticed he only had three legs and that he was a gator that Justin his friends had caught 3 years prior and let go. We also realized he wasn’t dead yet. So we hauled him up on the grass and Justin put another one in him. Though he wasn’t the size of a few we had seen we were content with his size. We then took some pictures with him. It was a thrill to hunt such a feared animal, or dinosaur if you will. I have to say it was a rush. After two broke fishing poles and some fun we had caught ourselves a three legged, 10.5 ft , approximately 300 lbs. gator Thanks Justin, glad I was there.