What a Fun Week

Wow, what a fun week I have had. Everything from alligator hunting to fishing and spending time with friends and family. Monday, I drove to McComb Mississippi and met up with my best friend from high school. It is very rare for us to get together much less get to spend the week together. He is a friend that is great to be around, and he and I can just spend hours talking and catching up. Anyway, I stayed the night at his house Monday night. Tuesday my son and his friend came down and met us and we made the trip to our hunting location. It was out in nowhere Southwest Mississippi. The last two miles to get there was down a dirt road. As most of you know dirt turns to mud when it rains and last week South and Central Mississippi had more than their share of rain. Two miles in mud in four-wheel drive pulling a boat. Then we arrived at camp with a beautiful view of the Mississippi River. After unpacking and grilling some deer roll ups we headed out as it started to get dark, we headed out to chase down an alligator or two. We hunted from around 6:00 pm to I think 4:00 am and saw a lot of alligators. I was surprised that the bugs were not as bad as I expected except for running through a fog of Mayflies that covered everything. It was hot earlier but as the sun went down the temperature cooled and the breeze off the water was nice. We saw a lot of alligators that seemed to have been hunted opening weekend because they were very skittish and hard to get close too. We got some experience casting and hooked a couple, but we were not successful.

After getting back to camp as the sun came up, we found the power was out due to a dead tree falling and breaking he line along the dirt road. We made the best of it trying to sleep in the heat, but I was so tired that it was not too hard to fall asleep. We got power back in the afternoon in time to fry fish, hush puppies, and French fries. We had crappie and one of the camp members was tightlining for catfish in the river and had caught several nice catfish. I leaned something new about cooking fish. He marinated the fresh caught catfish in mustard. It was really good and definitely something I will try in the future.

Round two of alligator hunting began about 8:00 pm and lasted till sunup. We did not see as many gators but managed to hook up and get one in that was four and a half foot long but chose to let it grow some more and let it go. We got back to camp and had power. After a shower I passed out till 2:30 pm.

I woke to find my son had gone hunting treble hooks because our hook supply was running low. After getting something to eat I decided to take my boat out and try a little bass fishing. I had anchored my boat on the riverbank and apparently the river level dropped a couple of feet because my boat was stuck in the mud. When I say mud, I mean a crust that when you break through you sink up to your thigh. After working and trying for an hour to get my boat back to floating and some help I was able to get it out of the mud and on the river in time to get in a little fishing, riding, and watching the sunset. Meanwhile my son returned with his hooks and local information on a different location to go that we had not been hunting. He wanted to head out while I was still on the river. I was pretty worn out from the previous two nights and was not to upset at missing the final hunt. After pulling my boat out I had a meal of leftover fish, fries, and hushpuppies that was still delicious.

The next morning, I woke at sunup to my son telling me I needed to see his alligators because he had to start cleaning them. This was Friday morning and we also had to get packed to head home. Success! They had two nice alligators and my son had filled both of his tags. One was 6’2” long and the other was 8’11” long. The larger of the two had a lot of battle scars and was missing his right front leg. After getting the gators cleaned and iced down, we packed up and headed home.

What a great adventure it was. I think we will be applying for a permit next year. We learned a lot and I can think of a few hundred things we would do different on the next hunt, but it was an amazing time.