One Heck Of A Ride

71 Vehicle the guide called “Bigfoot” was built to retrieve alligators from the deep swamp Other North American Game finally appeared. “It’s hard to tell,” he said while watching the alligator’s head with his binocular. “There’s a good gap between his eyes. He probably is.” I took more care in shooting this creature. I waited for the perfect shot at its brain and carefully fired when it eventually presented itself. My shot killed the alligator instantly and it sank to the bottom of the deep pool as if it had an anchor Guide Joe O’Bannon and author with “nice” alligator from the Titanic tied to it. I turned to my helper, a guide-trainee from Tanzania who spoke excellent English, and said: “I guess you’ll have to dive down and tie a rope to his foot so we can drag it out.” ‘Un huh, I don’t think so,” the young man said. “I was only kidding,” I said as we both laughed. The guide and I stayed at the pool while the younger man drove back to the ranch and returned with a long gaff and a huge machine they called “Bigfoot.” It had four eight-foot-tall tires and a platform ten feet from the ground for its driver and passengers. It took about three hours, but the men eventually were able to gaff the alligator, chain it to Bigfoot and drag it onto solid ground. The tape measure showed ten feet, two inches from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail. We didn’t weigh the monster, but it may have weighed more than five hundred pounds. After seeing it hanging in the barn, I was amazed at how much larger it was than the 9-foot 4-inch alligator I’d killed a couple of days earlier. It was only 12 inches longer, but just the head itself was at least a third wider than my first alligator’s head, and its entire body was spread out so much more. “Antelope” On Sage-Covered Flats Nearly everyone who has hunted pronghorns knows these speedy animals of the plains and deserts of western North America are not an antelope. However, calling them by their proper common name would be like a bewhiskered hunter in an elk camp suddenly announcing that he enjoys hunting “wapiti.” His buddies would run him out of camp, laughing all the way. To those of us who hunt them, pronghorns are “antelope” or “goats,” even though they are