South Carolina’s Reintroduction of Gator Season is a Success

February 25, 2009

After 44 years without a season this past fall hunters in South Carolina once again had the opportunity to hunt the alligator. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources issued by lottery draw 1000 permits with an anticipated success rate of 19% however the actual success rate was much higher with hunters killing 360 alligators.

The 2008 gator hunt drew criticism after two instances in which inexperienced hunters fired many rounds to kill large alligators.
One of those hunts occurred at night on Lake Marion and involved firing at least 18 shots from a .45-caliber pistol over a five-hour period to kill a 12-foot-7-inch, 820-pound alligator estimated to be about 50 years old.
Had the hunters followed state protocol of first capturing the gator and dragging it either to shore or along the boat before killing it, so many shots would not have been necessary, wrote state alligator program coordinator Jay Butfiloski in the report.
“These types of accounts do little to garner support for the public alligator harvest,” he said.

Some changes for the 2009 hunt will be made but the number of permits should stay the same but officials feel that the harvest numbers will drop and be more in line with the initial expectation.

Wildlife officials predict fewer alligators will be harvested because many of the “naive alligators” were hunted out last year, according to the report. They also predict the size of the gators caught will continue to decrease because the slowest, largest ones already were killed.

The Beafort Gazette
With the surging of the alligator population I wonder how long it will be till North Carolina has a season on them?