Hunters get 13-foot gator
Last Updated on 9/8/2010
Published on 10/14/2009
By Tommy Howard
thoward@gtowntimes.com
Perhaps the heaviest gator harvested in South Carolina's alligator hunting season was taken last Saturday near the town of Elloree.
The Santee Cooper lakes and coastal waters -- such as around Georgetown -- are home to some of the highest concentrations of alligators in South Carolina.
Elloree Chief of Police Preston Avinger killed the gator with a single shot from his Glock .357 Sig handgun.
But, that was just about the easiest part.
Finding the alligator involved seven men in three boats on Lake Marion, harpoons, buoys, hours of searching in the dark of night, and then a couple of hours more to bring the gator out from a swamp near Stump Hole Landing in Calhoun County.
The alligator weighed 1,060 pounds and stretched out 13 feet 2 inches.
Lin Shirer is assistant chief of the Elloree Police Department in the town of about 700 people.
"We'd never been before in our lives," he told the Georgetown times on Tuesday.
This alligator season -- just the second year in the state -- the group of men had been out six to eight times, and not gotten anything.
He and Avinger were in one of the boats overnight Friday and Saturday, getting together about midnight Friday. Around 3:30 to 4 a.m. Saturday, they hooked the gator and dispatched him about two hours later.
"The morning we killed him, we hadn't hardly seen no alligators and were ready to go. Terry and Wendy saw some eyes," and Shirer said go ahead and put in another snatch hook. At the time they thought the gator might be about 7 feet long.
The group included:
Terry Chavis, Windstream Service Tech.; Wendy Heckle, Fire Chief, St. Matthews Fire Dept.; Tyler Garrett, student, First Assembly Christian School; Gregg Antley, Special Agent, SC Law Enforcement Div.; Donnie Porth, Coroner, Calhoun County; Lin Shirer, Asst. Chief, Elloree Police Dept.; and Preston Avinger, Chief, Elloree Police Dept. (tag holder).
About an hour after snagging the alligator he got close enough to the boat to see his head was about 15 to 18 inches from the middle of his eyes to his snout.
"Preston [Avinger] shot this one, close to the boat. He shot him once. We're the police, after all," Shirer said.
"He went limp, stretched to the bottom. He was dead."
There have been others who have killed alligators who said it took as many as 15 shots to finish it off.
Even after the gator was dead, it still took a couple of hours to get back to the landing through the swamps and tree stumps in the water.
While their gator didn't come out of the water fighting or rolling, it "was a pretty interesting hunt, though," Shirer said.
A couple of times after they first hooked the gator he would swim and get the line up under one or the other of the boats. He couldn't go too far in a given direction, because of all the stumps, his size and the three boats involved in the hunt.
Weighing more than a half-ton, the alligator was huge.
"His head was so heavy. We tried to wrap it up with electrician's tape. It took two of us to lift his head."
At 13 feet 2 inches and 1,060 pounds, that's not an animal.
"That's a creature, man," he exclaimed.
After getting the gator ashore, the group brought him to town so the mayor and others could see him.
"We stopped at the convalescent center. I think it made their day to see an old gator that big," Shirer said.
"That was an adventure," Shirer said. "We didn't know how it would be. It was a lot of fun.
"That's pretty good, to do a lot of things, and not get one argument."
