Posted 9:07 pm Sunday, April 12, 2009
Kilgore Hunter Opens Season With 12-Foot Alligator
Jimmy Ellison's first foray into alligator hunting was supposed to have been last year in south Louisiana. That trip was wiped out by Hurricane Ike.
The Kilgore resident got a second chance last week in Rusk County, and as luck would have it he probably couldn't have done any better and made it any easier anywhere else in the world.
FULL GROWN REPTILE: Jimmy Ellison of Kilgore took this 12-foot-1 alligator in Rusk County.
While still scouting on the first morning of the spring season in North Texas, Ellison shot a 12-foot-1 alligator weighing 540 pounds.
Texas has had a spring season since 2007 in the counties outside the 22 Southeast Texas counties that are considered the reptiles' core habitat. During the season, which runs through June 30, hunters with landowner permission can take an alligator by any number of means, including a rifle, if the gator is on private waters.
Ellison, a maintenance foreman for BASA Resources in Kilgore, had heard about an 8-footer on a 200-acre company oil lease between Troup and Price. He contacted landowner Jim Brady, who told him of an even larger alligator living in a slough on the property. Concerned about the alligator, Brady gave Ellison permission to hunt.
Before hunting, Ellison checked out the season information in Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's
Out-door Annual and then double-checked with a local game warden to make sure it was legal to hunt in Rusk County.
Alligators are one of the great conservation stories in the South. They were given protection in Texas as far back as 1969, but were delisted as an endangered species nationwide in 1985.
For years, hunting in Texas was controlled and restricted to the core counties in Southeast Texas. The season was expanded three years ago to help landowners remove nuisance alligators and to show how well the species is doing and how it has adapted to manmade wetlands from public reservoirs to stock ponds.
The season is held in the spring because that is breeding season and when the males are most active. While female alligators stay close to the nest, males have been found to move as much as 10 square miles between early March and the end of May.
Ellison's first time on the Rusk County property was March 31, a day before the season opened. He wasn't alone. The big alligator was there as well.
"He was on a slough. He was just out there sunning," Ellison recalled.
After spending the night learning how to build and place a baited hook-and-line out for the gator, Ellison returned again on opening morning. Fishing for alligators with a 12/0 hook and 300-pound test line anchored to a tree or a pole driven into the ground is the preferred method for taking alligators. A gun will do the trick with a well-placed shot to the head, but if the gator is in or gets to water it is going to sink, forcing the hunter to wade in searching blind for a potentially dangerous animal that could still be alive.
"I knew the season was opened and I went back down to see if I would see him again and looking for a place to put out a line," Ellison said.
He never got a chance to scout because within 30 minutes the alligator surfaced again to sun on a small island. Ellison quickly reached for his deer rifle and shot the gator in the head, killing it instantly.
A cape buffalo hunt to Tanzania last fall may have prepared Ellison for the next step, wading across to the alligator and slipping a rope around it to drag it to shore.
"I had (Billy Blevins) with me, but he stayed on shore," Ellison said, chuckling at the the lack of support. Uncertain of the alligator's condition, the hunter didn't go empty handed.
"I had a shovel and a .44-caliber pistol," he added.
With the rope tied around the gator's snout, Ellison dragged it the best he could across the water. Eventually more help arrived in the form of company electrician Jerry Kerr to help finish the job. Once onshore, Ellison hooked the line to an electric boom on his truck used to move oilfield equipment to load the alligator.
"It hung out about three feet," he said.
The alligator was taken to Kilgore Recycling where it was unloaded and weighed. The alligator is big for Northeast Texas where the water is cooler and growing season is shorter, but falls a foot or more shorter than what can be found along the coast and in South Texas.
The alligator was taken to Kilgore Recycling where it was unloaded and weighed. The alligator is big for Northeast Texas where the water is cooler and growing season is shorter, but falls a foot or more shorter than what can be found along the coast and in South Texas.
