Trust me.... there is a shit ton already killed every year in the state legally... probably close to 10k every year. If you have a legitimate gator problem there are legal ways to handle it.... people just need to not be dumbasses and show a little caution around the water.
if there is a gator of any size in near by waters, showing caution means your dogs and small children can not go anyway near the water Basically it means the gators own the water way. Not acceptable at all. In the worst case scenario I have ever heard of a friend that years ago while walking her dog in a FL subdivision on dry land got chased by what was the local neighborhood 8 ft gator. This was some years ago. She grabbed her dog and climbed on top of a car to get away from the gator. She was not mistaking the intentions of the gator. It was likely hungry and after the dog. I believe the wildlife people are better at dealing with such gators these days. I do live near a creek, but do not think there is enough food to keep them too long. The major attraction would some of the ponds that many have on their land that hold fish. Shooting them at night should not be too hard since with a light their eyes really glow well. An alligator hunter wants to recover the body does not want to simply shoot them having them sink out of sight while someone that just wants them dead does not have the same considerations.
I have watched films of people catching gators for meat and skin and as they pulled the live gator to the boat I saw one where a hatchet was used and in another an M1 carbine. The brain case of a gator is very small. exactly where would you place a .22 lr in the skull of a gator?Shot placement... a 22lr will ruin a 10ft alligator
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It's a tricky subject, both gators & bears.
There are disappearances of small kids that occur near water or forest,
and everyone thinks "WHO TOOK THEM?" instead of WHAT took them.
But nobody wants to go down that trail of exploration...
Nobody wants to talk about those big coyote/wild dogs either...
Prior to around 1980, homeowners pretty much took care of any problem critter they came across.
When I was growing up, rarely ever would a bear or gator be seen...then after coming back from
the Army in '95, a favored fishin' hole was chock full of Gators...was up there and saw a pig get taken...
ugly scene for the pig but a great warning to tell me to get the heck out of there & never fish there again.
Dead River...Bone Creek...seems like the older folks really knew how to name the water features
The reason there are so many alligators and bears now is the lack of control over the population.
It's why they're becoming a problem more often...and Fish & Game knew about a lot of bears being
taken illegally...a whole lot more than was being reported, to be certain. It's why they opened an
actual Bear Season, so that folks could clear out the nuisance bears and they could gather the Information
on the ones that were taken...can't get any info if the homeowners do a "Shoot, Shovel & Shaddap".
They were even slower to react to the Python/other big snakes problem when it erupted after Andrew...
they thought most of them would die off in the Glades, gator chow, but it's become rather obvious that
the gators were the chow for the snakes, and now there's a real big problem, and it's moving towards us
as the snakes aclimate to Florida...
So, in my view, if you gotta take care of your family/other familes, do what you gotta do.
Prefferrably call Animal Control, but as we all know, they're overworked as heck and may not
be able to deal with it in a timely manner. Deputies responses can vary wildly as well, from being able
to handle an animal issue, to totally fogging it. I can tell ya it's sad to see someone shoot a deer in
the back of the skull, only to have the deer bleat in pain and require another shot in a better place.
(This is why I'm so against 9mm, BTW. It's not humane for deer, much less humans.)
Alligator IIRC is from spanish: el lagarto or The Lizard.
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