Traditional alligator hunting is seeing its last days 

            I remember the first time he hunted for alligators. I was a young boy, about six or seven years old, armed with a shotgun, a skinning knife, a headlight and a battery. Sitting in the pirogue as his father steered and propelled the small boat across the marsh with a pole, I scanned the water, eyes wide open with both fear and excitement.  "You knew it was a gator 'cause its eyes would shine back at you like two fiery coals just floating on top of the water," . But most of the time, the hunters saw signs of an alligator, not the animal itself. In my youth, hunters followed an alligator's trail to its home-usually a small pond created by many holes the alligator dug to find fresh water. Standing chest-deep in water, the hunter drove an 18-20 foot pole set with catfish hooks into the hole and hooked the alligator. When he pulled the animal out of its hole, the hunter hit it over the head with a hand ax. Then he skinned it on the spot, stuffed the skin into a sack and moved on to the next hole.  Living off the marsh year round, most hunters chose not to think about its dangers. And in fact, being attacked by an alligator was the least of their worries.  "A man who's been fishing out here a while knows by  instinct where an alligator's at. For one thing, an alligator puts out an odor of musk. Once you identify what it is, you never forget that smell, so you know he's there even if you don't see him,".  While hunters brag about landing 14-foot alligators, they tell horror stories about catching malaria or being bitten by snakes.  "The hunting conditions are unbearable," . Hunters brave sweltering heat, vicious horseflies, salt in the wounds and eyes and tempers flaring to bring home a sack full of skins. And I won't give it up.  "The reason we do these things, hunt alligators, is because it's the way our people have been doing it for generations-the way my grandfather's done it, my father's done it and the way I do it. There's a sense of pride in what we do, a family tradition,"

Thanks to G. Sellers for this article