One Heck Of A Ride

70 Author said this water buffalo was added to his ‘gator hunt on a whim Other North American Game shot on Rulen Jones’s place in that state. ‘Gators, Water Buffalo And The Okeechobee At the 2005 SCI convention, a booth with a life-size mount of a huge American alligator caught my eye. That creature had to be at least twelve to thirteen feet long and four feet wide. After talking with the people in J&R Outfitters’ booth, I learned there were at least three ways to hunt a ‘gator. The first involved using large fishhooks baited with dead chickens and setting them out in likely looking places. If a bobber is submerged when the baits are checked, any alligator attached to the hook is shot. This sounded like fishing, and I wasn’t interested. The second method involved taking a big spotlight out at night and looking for the glowing eyes of an alligator. If the eyes were far apart, a hunter would shoot the creature. The third method called for building blinds overlooking deep holes and pools used by alligators, and waiting -- in the daylight -- for a wide-eyed specimen to show itself. This sounded more like hunting whitetails, and I booked a daytime alligator hunt in Florida to take place only a few weeks later. Strictly on a whim, I added a hunt for an Asian water buffalo with the same outfitter. My hunt began with flying to Miami and renting a car to drive north to Martin County, where I met my guide Joe O’Bannon at his farm. After a middle-of-the-night breakfast we drove to a pool in a canal at the back of the farm where he had built a blind. The canal, he said, was one of the tributaries that fed nearby Lake Okeechobee and that alligators used it to reach cover and nesting areas. He cautioned me that I should enter the blind as slowly and as quietly as I could because alligators were alerted by motion and would head for deep water at the first strange sound. Less than an hour later, we were in the blind and I was thinking about everything except alligators when the guide tapped my shoulder and nodded toward the pool. A shape I first thought might have been a log was moving slowly across the water. He again told me I should aim behind the eyes and slightly below the top of its head to destroy the alligator’s brain, but all I could see was its nose and eyes. I slowly raised my rifle, found the target in my scope, waited for the creature to rise to the surface for the fourth time -- and missed what the guide said was the largest alligator using the pool! Things had quieted down when we returned to the same pool the next day, and I shot an alligator that was slightly more than nine feet long. It was a nice ‘gator, but not the ten-footer I really wanted. That twelve-inch difference in length makes an impressive visual difference with alligators. The head and girth of a ten-footer are substantially wider than a nine-footer’s. My buffalo hunt that afternoon consisted of driving to an area the animals were using, making a short stalk, selecting the best bull, and shooting it. We spent the rest of the day hunting bobwhite quail. When the guide asked what I’d like to do the last day of my hunt, I said I’d like to find the ‘gator I’d missed. So we returned to our original blind and waited. This time, I did not intend to miss. “Is he bigger than the one I shot?” I asked the guide when the eyes and nose of an alligator