Pee Dee trio bag 13-foot gator

FLORENCE -- When Clint Parks, Brian Urquhart and Jody Poston launched their boat from Pack’s Landing at the upper end of Lake Marion the evening of Sept. 19, they had little idea what awaited them later that night.

Sure, they had seen videos of hunters capturing and killing alligators, had read up on the subject and had talked to several people who had harvested gators themselves.

But to actually experience it is another story altogether.

Gator processing

Ever wonder what happens to the alligator after the hunt? Morning News photographer Rebecca J. Ducker did. Click here to follow her experience at the processing center. Want to read more about the processing center, click here.

There was good weather and calm water — the perfect night for three novice gator hunters participating in South Carolina’s first public alligator harvest since 1944.

And don’t underestimate how important calm water is when your 16-foot johnboat is practically filled with a 13-foot gator as wide as the vessel in which you’re motoring back to land.

Dennis Matherly, who has been an alligator control agent for South Carolina for more than two decades, processed the gator and said he estimated the animal’s weight at between 700 and 750 pounds.

Holding his hands apart to illustrate, Poston indicated there might have been about six or eight inches between the surface of the water and the boat’s gunwale.

By that time, the Florence trio was reflecting on what they can only describe as the most exhilarating hunting experience of their lives.

“I can’t imagine,” Urquhart said, “anything that would live up to this.”

Stalking the prey

It started calmly enough.

The hunters first went up into the Santee River a ways, but soon after decided they’d have better luck back out in the lake.

They saw plenty of gators of legal harvesting size (at least four feet long), but they had made a pact of sorts that they wanted an animal at least eight feet in length.

When they finally targeted one, Parks said they estimated it was about a 10-footer.

For a while, they played a waiting game. Every time the boat got to within 50 feet or so, Parks said, the gator would go under water, but wouldn’t venture too far.
With the use of a high-powered spotlight, the three were able to keep relocating the gator each time it surfaced.

Eventually — Urquhart guessed the gator got more and more used to the visitors — the hunters were able to get to within what Parks estimated as 20 or 25 feet of the animal.

Sensing it might be the best chance they would get, Parks threw his homemade harpoon as hard as he could.

“I caught him right behind his left front leg,” Parks said. “I saw the harpoon stop and then it fell over. I thought I’d missed.“

But the quarter-inch rope the harpoon was attached to started leaving the five-gallon bucket in which it was packed, and the three knew the fight was on.

“That’s when the fun stopped,” Urquhart said. “It got real serious.”

Slow grind

The gator’s first reaction was to swim off about 40 feet and sit on the bottom of the lake, Poston said, in about eight feet of water.

Then there was a game of give-and-take.

After about 45 minutes or an hour, the trio was able to pull the animal near the side of the boat for the first time, with the goal of getting a second harpoon in it.

And that was when everybody got their first good look at what was on the other end of the line.

“His back was as wide as the boat,” Poston said. “I said, ’We’ve bitten off more than we can chew. There’s no way in the world we’re going to pull this off.’”

They weren’t able to get the gator’s head up out of the water, so Urquhart took a best-guess stab at where he figured the head was.

He guessed well, and the second harpoon embedded in the back of the animal’s head. Again, the gator headed off and dragged the boat around for nearly another hour.

But the animal didn’t give up too easily.

“He came up and hit underneath the boat a couple of times and knocked us down into the bottom of the boat,” Parks said.

Said Urquhart, “He knocked the boat up out of the water. If we’d been leaning the wrong way, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.“

But slowly, surely, the old gator lost his fight, and the next time the men pulled him up beside the boat, Poston put a .40 caliber bullet in the animal’s head.

It finished off the alligator, but then the group had the added chore of pulling 700-plus pounds of dead weight into the boat.

They kicked around the idea of securing the animal to the side of the boat, but decided they didn’t want to risk losing their trophy on the ride back to the landing.

So after a lot of grunting and groaning, the big gator was in the boat — some two and a half hours after the first harpoon found its mark.

‘A grown gator’

Back home, the three slept for less than two hours before taking the gator to Matherly early on the morning of Sept. 20.

According to the alligator hunting guide published by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, alligators in the wild rarely live more than 50 years.

Matherly estimated this gator’s age to be at least 70 or 75 years old.

The two lakes in the Santee-Cooper system — Marion and Moultrie — were formed by the South Carolina Public Service Authority between 1939 and 1942, flooded by water from the dammed up Santee River.

“That gator was in the river system when they dammed it up,” Matherly said.

Matherly said gators are generally about a foot long at birth, about 18 inches at a year old, then grow at a rate of three to four inches per year. Once they hit about the 12 foot mark, the length growth slows down and the animals begin to add mass more so than length.

Matherly said the largest animal he has seen in South Carolina was 14 feet long and about 1,000 pounds.

But the one harvested by Parks, Urquhart and Poston is one to be proud of.

“It’s a grown gator, no doubt about that,” Matherly said.

And to think, Parks nearly chickened out.

At the behest of Urquhart, Parks sent in the initial application and the accompanying $10 fee to get his name in the lottery. Out of all the applicants, SCDNR used a random computer draw to pick hunters who were, in turn, eligible to purchase a permit and tag. SCDNR issued permits and gator tags to approximately 800 hunters. Each owner of a permit and tag was eligible to harvest one alligator.

Once Parks found out his name had been drawn, he started having second thoughts, he said.

But unknown to him, his wife paid the $100 fee and presented Parks his gator tag as a birthday gift in early September.

“Then I felt obligated,” Parks said, chuckling. “I had to go then.”

As it turned out, it was something he would never regret.

Chance of a lifetime

Now the three men look back on the hunt as possibly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

If the state continues the gator hunting lottery in the future, there’s no guarantee any of them will be drawn again.

And if they are, will they encounter another 13-foot monster?

“I mean, seriously, what’s the chance of this happening again?” Parks said.

That was the primary motivation for all three men.

“I think it would be neat to tell your children and grandchildren that you went on the first public alligator hunt in the state in 44 years,” Urquhart said.

“It was so much fun, Clint and I came to the agreement that if they would let us do that three times a year, we’d probably quit deer hunting,” Poston said.

Certainly, there were no regrets among the three, and all three came away with something that will stick with them forever.

Parks said he couldn’t help wondering what an animal three-quarters of a century old might have seen in its day.

“The curiosity, for me anyway, is where has he been?” Parks said. “What’s he done in those 70 years he’s been around? How much of this lake has he been through? How many freakin’ turtles has he eaten? I associate history with just about everything.”

For Urquhart, the hunt illustrated a contrast to his normal hunting activities.

“When you’re hunting deer, humans are at the top of the food chain,” Urquhart said. “But when you’re in that water, you’re not at the top of the food chain. That gator is. And you can fall in that water very fast.”

And for Poston?

His lasting image is the one probably everyone would come away with.

“That,” he said, “is a big lizard.”