The story played out like an ancient tale of man versus dragon. Sent out by literally the luck-of-the-draw, a man on his first hunting quest, with his best friend and experienced crew, slew a prehistoric beast of dire proportions to the praise and relief of the nearby townsfolk. The crew landed an alligator with an unusual item in its belly among the standard fare: a pair of women’s underwear.
The heroes of this tale were Kevin Sowell, the first-timer, his best friend, Scott Markel, Captain Tim Land of Land & Sea Charters, and Land’s partner, Scott Bradley.
Sowell said he’s an experienced hunter and fisherman, but had never taken on an alligator before. He said it was a miracle Markel even got a pair of tags to hunt alligators. Of the roughly 18,000 people who applied for alligator tags, 5,862 received a pair, according to Steve Stiegler with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. Stiegler said the FWC awarded 58 in Santa Rosa County. The tags Markel won, Sowell said, applied to the first week of the four in the season, meaning the gators had not yet been disturbed. “They were the cream of the crop,” he said.
Friday and Saturday, Sowell said, he and Markel launched under Captain Land and his partner, Bradley, from Carpenter’s Park at 4:30 p.m. The season opened at 5 p.m. and by 1 a.m., the crew landed Markel’s kill, a 7.5 foot alligator, which Land said was about a foot below average. The next night, the crew met the 10’8” 340 lb alligator Sowell said swam with his head and part of his back above water showing dominance. “He had a swagger to him,” he said. Sowell said they followed him with a red-beam flashlight. In Florida, he said alligator hunters can’t use firearms so one of the tools they use is a crossbow. At 15 to 20 feet out, Sowell said, he took the first shot, a bolt with a special head for alligator connected to a cord with a float. “He broke it off hard,” he said, “but he still had it in him,” meaning the bolt. “He went down and we had to wait 45 minutes for him to come up again,” Sowell said. The injured gator went down again, he said, and Land advised switching to the Cobia rod, a heavy duty fishing rod. Sowell said, “The fight was on then.” From the deeper water, the gator decided to get out of the water, Sowell said, and went under a pier. Captain Land had to abandon ship to keep hold of the rod, Sowell said. Under the captain’s direction, Sowell said he fired another bolt and again the alligator broke the line and bent the rod. The gator went to the bank and Sowell and Markel harpooned him. The beast bent the first harpoon but the team had three lines in him, Sowell said.
Captain Land said he had the gator’s tail over his should by now while Bradley got a snare around the gator’s head. The team had him still enough for the final blow, 3 shots from a bang stick, a rod with a firing pin and 45 caliber bullet struck on the alligator’s head 3 inches behind the eyes. From spotting the gator to harvest, Sowell said, the fight lasted about 3 plus hours.
Land said, “We were fighting an apex predator. Nothing ever goes easy” Land, the “gator guru” as Sowell called him, estimated the gator to be about 70 years old. He said his success was because of Bradley going. “We’re always on the same page. I couldn’t do it without him.”
Sowell said a family nearby was having an outdoor party. Land said, “They thought we were shooting off fireworks when they heard the bang stick.” According to Sowell, they were grateful the massive creature was no longer around with kids and pets in the area. “That gator was there for dogs,” Land said.
After loading the catch into the back of Land’s truck in a makeshift ice cooler, the crew took their trophies to Cooper’s Taxidermy for cleaning and mounting the head. Sowell said his friend Bill Johnson, who works for Chad Cooper, owner, hung, weighed, and cleaned the alligator during which time Johnson pulled dog tags and buckles as well as an item leading to the second part of this story: older style women’s bloomers.
Cooper said he’s handled larger alligators, but this was the second largest he’s seen this year and the first police investigation related to an animal brought into his business. “An alligator can’t even digest a hair,” he said, they just excrete a liquid so hair and tags and everything else stays in their bellies.
Members of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Investigation Unit arrived around noon, Cooper said.
Captain Bob Johnson of the SRSO said the gator was killed without any infraction. The crime scene investigators, he said, removed the women’s underwear and some bone fragments from the stomach contents of the alligator. Johnson, after getting word from the medical examiner, said the bones were deer bones. The SRSO is taking no further action regarding the garment at this time, according to Johnson.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Milton man and crew catches 11 foot gator first time out