Gator Hunting

**Warning to my friends who may be offended by killing animals (sorry Brenna, don't judge me! Blame it on Doug) this does involve hunting. Very sorry. **

For those of you who know Doug at all...it has been his recent *obsession* over the past 3-4 years to go alligator hunting. He went a couple of years ago with a friend for the first time, but they were not successful. Since that time, hunting an alligator is all he can think about! The only other things he is more obsessed with is rattlesnake hunting and someday going on a bear hunt. He didn't like to hunt when I first met him. What happened?? Anyways, last week he was able to put a check on his bucket list.

We went hunting in Sea Drift/Port Lavaca TX. Gator hunting season is only 20 days long here. At first I was only along for the ride, but was eventually convinced to join in on the fun. We set out rotten chicken on lines (redneck note: our hunting guide did stop and pick up some road kill on the road and used this as bate. This is when I came to find that it was much more redneck than I realized). We had a lot of bad luck, because unfortunately the gators were smart & didn't want the chicken (they did end up eating the raccoon the next day when we had left). We eventually found some gators. I was the first to find a gator, but it was too big (7 ft and we paid for a 4-6 ft gator). Then I found one that was too small. Third time's the charm for me because I found one that was exactly 6 ft the third time. We then spent the rest of the day finding Doug a gator that was big enough to fulfill his dream (he wanted a 8-9 ft gator).

I never thought in a million years that I would ever hunt an alligator...it doesn't seem like something I would do...but I did it!

While we were searching through a swamp, it started to down pour. It hadn't rained in TX in FOREVER, and of course it rains! This made it difficult to go check some of the other lines on land because it was so muddy. After we had been out for 11 hours, we got the truck stuck in the mud. We tried to dig it out a few times and it only slid closer to the creek and about rolled in. We were stranded for a couple hours waiting for someone to come find us! A million mosquito bites later...we were rescued and continued on.

This picture doesn't do it justice...it was really muddy and we really were close to rolling into the creek!

Twenty minutes before we sundown (the legal time to stop gator hunting) Doug found him a 9 ft alligator. We were able to keep 10 lbs of meat and sent the skin and heads to get mounted and tanned.

I can't say our experience was exactly like "Swamp People" because our guides had all of their teeth and weren't as ghetto, but it was pretty darn close! The hunting guides did live up to our swamp people expectations by yelling “choot em, choot em!” when it was time to “shoot him.” I can definitely say it was a once in a lifetime experience although Doug is still talking about going again.

On another adventurous note...I am going to Arusha, Tanzania (Africa) October 5th for 3 weeks. I don't know my exact placement yet, but I will be working with some other medical people there. It is something I have always wanted to do, so I am really excited to go! I will post again with details of how my trip went.