It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
There is football on TV every weekend and various hunting seasons are opening up all over the country.
Dove and deer hunting season get a lot of the attention in early fall. Early season waterfowl hunting is popular in some places and September is a great time to do some squirrel hunting too.
It’s also a great time to hunt some of the biggest, meanest animals on the planet… Alligators.
Alligator hunting is quite popular in the Southeastern U.S., from the Carolina’s down through Georgia, Florida, Alabama Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.
Alligators are typically hunted through a variety of methods and regulations vary state by state, but a few methods in particular are popular most places people hunt gators.
The most popular way to gator hunt is basically an extreme form of fishing with some kind of hook and line combo. Depending on the state, lines are either left overnight similar to a catfish jug or trotline.
Other hunters opt to hit a gator with a harpoon, with a bow, or crossbow. The harpoons are typically attached to a line with a float that helps locate the gator after the initial shot is placed.
Once the gator is hooked, you have to either reel it into the side of the boat or wrestle it to the shore in order to dispatch it. Some states allow the use of rifles, handguns for gator hunting but in other states only archery equipment, knives, or “bang-sticks” are used to finish a gator hunt.
Bang sticks are essentially a long pole with a mechanism called a powerhead on the end and they effectively work like a single shot gun-on-a-stick.
Of all the gator hunting methods, the knife is actually one of the most efficient means to dispatch a gator quickly.
You gotta be an absolute wild man to consider jumping on the back of a gator and taking it out with a knife though.
Koe Wetzel is an absolute wild man.
He his back home in Texas and showed off pictures of his successful gator hunt on Instagram earlier today.
Not sure anyone has ever knifed an alligator where wearing a Rolex, but it’s almost as cool as fishing in crocs.
“Got to grab ahold and knife my first gator this weekend. Whiskey was drank, memories were made and got to hang out with some good ass folks.”
I mean, there’s nothing like a fresh pair of gator skin boots, amirite?
My guess is this big gator’s tail is headed straight for the deep fryer. Gator meat is a popular dish and while people do smoke whole gators, deep fried gator tail is also considered a delicacy throughout parts of gator country.
If you got some gator meat you’re looking to make delicious, then check out this recipe from the queen of catfish noodling and Koe’s fishing buddy, Hannah Barron.