marlania
Posted : 6/12/2013 10:45:02 AM
calliecritturs
I dunno, Tracy -- down here there are people who make their living as "gator hunters" -- mostly at night in boats fitted with a spotlight
This is common where I live, although not as many people do this as a living anymore. It may supplement their income, but for some, it's just another form of hunting.
My grandpa hunted alligators for sport. In fact, before the wildlife agency regulated gators, he raised them in what is now my back yard. He had several large alligator pits. These were long gone before I was born, but I've seen pictures of it, and it cracks me up to think that huge alligators called my yard home.
I teach Louisiana history, and sometimes I show my kids a video some documentary guy filmed of my grandpa and his friends hunting in the 1980s. My grandpa had macular degeneration, so he lost most of his vision and was blind by the time he died at 91. Anyway, by the 80s, most of his eye sight was gone, and my kids knew this because I always told them crazy stories about him. It took a few seconds to realize that my mostly-blind grandpa was driving the boat, and they were stunned when he shot the gun and killed the gator. My kids always thought he was hardcore and wanted to meet him. In actuality, he was just sweet little old man who experienced a lot in his life.
He did other interesting stuff too, like the time he killed a water moccasin with a hand ax in his cucumber patch because he smelled it. Don't ask---I can't explain it. He just "knew" it was there lol.
Another time, I found him covered in blood (his own...he had heart problems, so he bled easily) when I came home from work. So I'm freaking out trying to find out what the hell happened, and he's acting like everything is fine. The man had been at war with whatever was eating the tomatoes in his garden, and he had set out his old traps (he used to trap mink, muskrats, etc.) to catch whatever it was. Well, it turns out possums were eating the tomatoes, and he caught them. So I thought, OMG, he got mutilated by a possum, but no, he just got caught by the trap. So I asked him if the possums was still in the trap, and he looked at me like I was an idiot. Turns out he took them out of the traps, beat them against a cypress tree to make sure they were dead (because, you know, he couldn't see, and they could have been playing possum lol), and tossed them into the canal at the back of the property for the alligators to eat. He was 90 at this point, so I called my dad to tell him he needed to come check on HIS dad because he was beating possums against trees.