Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting Gators and hogs with a bow

I'm thinking the state wide season that applies to the wild population doesn't have much to do with it.
"Guaranteed 100% success rate on gators and hogs year round"
... Like shooting cows in corral

Im back home after a week in sunny Florida. The trip was great. The weather was great (never saw a drop of rain)

The trip was a great success. Hunting wild gators is an enjoyable experience. We did several spot and stalks on foot (no boats were employed on this hunt) after glassing the area for large gators.

They have better eyes and ears than I thought. This potato, corn, bean and watermelon farm has a lot of free range, wild gators roaming the irrigation canals searching for tilapia, gar and turtles to eat. We wore out a lot of boot leather and sun screen and bottles of water over the course of an entire day searching for a gator to stalk and arrow.

During one attempt, we did a stalk on one large gator sunning himself in the pads, I got to within 10 yards directly above him, drew the 55 pound bow and unleashed a 1700 grain arrow which hit a scute (boney bump in rows down his back) and the arrow bounced off. I got zero penetration on that shot. Hitting a scute with a arrow results in a pissed off gator and lots of splashing and nothing more.

The gator I did arrow (twice) is an 11 footer. Pics and video below.

I'll have the hide tanned and do a euro mount of the skull and preserve the claws and have lots of great alligator meat to enjoy.



The official measure is done on the ground. This male was 11 feet long.



In this picture of the gator hanging, it looks larger than an 11 footer. Gravity really stretched him out and I'm standing a bit behind him so he looks bigger than he is.







Link to the Video of the hunt below.

How much meat you allowed to bring back, or is there no restrictions? Also, how hot was it?

Well done Sir! Although I never bowhunted for gators, I have been involved with trapping and live catching of many a gator (I was an Area Mgr at Disney where we were permitted by the state to capture and relocate gators).

I brought it all back. and Gator meat is great. Our archery club is having a wild game feed this weekend and I'm serving breaded and fried gator nuggets. The temps in FL during our vaction were unseasonable warm with days in the upper 80's which was nice since we spent a week in Clearwater at the beach prior to the bowhunt.

While there I caught this but I didn't have a permit so it was catch and release.



Here is some gator meat in buttermilk and egg prior to breading with Shore Lunch breading.





Deep fried in peanut oil





Now onto the next out-of-state bow hunt. Life is too short to sit home and there are critters somewhere in the world that need to be arrowed.

How did that couple months to plan a hunt treat ya on the hogs?

https://www.michigan-sportsman.com/...-ross-hammock-ranch.639967/#post-7256355

TFF !!

On Saturday our archery club held its annual wild game feed. Since we are located in WI, the bulk of the main entrees are venison or bear dishes so I knew I didn't need to serve another dish made of deer meat. Thanks to all my most recent successful, traveling bowhunts I had lots of choices from Russian boar, Eurasian boar, Red stag, Water Buffalo and most recently, Alligator so I went with Alligator nuggets al the super majority will have never tasted alligator. It was a smash hit.









After the meal there were various novelty archery shoots and raffles to enjoy. In one such shoot requiring archers to use a bow they never touched before to shoot fingers instinctive, I won a pork loin. In another event with the same gear playing blackjack I won $5 and then I won a Moultrie M40 trail cam. Its was a very enjoyable evening. Bowhunters are just good people.

I’ve shot a lot of pigs with s bow, never a gator

The skull mount for my dinosaur is complete. Ive never hired out this work before but time constraints being what they are trying to launch several more bowhunting products didnt allow me the luxury of time to do my own euro mount. It turned out well and I have to figure out how and where to place it in the death room (thats what my wife calls the room where all my mounts reside. Im running out of spaces and places to hang stuff). Im still eating on this thing. They offer a lot of meat.