The Frio Gator-Lagarto Del Rio Frio

Frio Gator

I am hoping this is not another bogus or photo shopped story but I am so far optimistic….check out the info on this monster:

Lagarto Del Rio Frio. (Frio River Alligator)

The American alligator is a resilient critter that is quite common where
most people least expect them to live. Gators loafed in the deep pools of
the Nueces and Frio Rivers during Texas Pioneer Days and their population
has multiplied without bound.

My buddy Tim T. resides in McMullen County, the nearest town is Tilden, and
makes use of his time as a rancher and public figure. Thanks goes out to Tim
for the idea to catch a gator. On one of my wandering trips across South
Texas, I stopped in and shot the breeze with Tim for a while and next thing
you know we had planned a gator hunt.

Enthusiasm is contagious, and I set about gathering the gear. I called up a
tackle shop in Houston and ordered some big shark hooks. When they arrived
in the mail, they looked big enough, they were about nine inches long and
had a four inch gap, pretty serious hooks. I hit Tuttle Lumber Co. in San
Marcos looking for braided nylon rope to use as my fishing line. I didn’t
know a whole lot about nylon rope but I now know that braided and twisted
nylon are two very different materials. Always go for the braided full
nylon, don’t even get braided nylon with cotton filler.

The last thing I needed was a few baits. Entire chickens are as enticing a
bait as night crawlers for a catfish. It turned out that no feed stores
seemed to have any full grown chickens. I was beginning to despair, memorial
day weekend was fast upon us and I still hadn’t found chickens. I was
rummaging around in the barn when our neighbor Milton pulled up to the check
the cows that he runs on our place. I told him I was out to catch a gator
and he offered me a bunch of Rhode Island Reds that he was ready to get rid
of so long as I could catch ‘em. Milton said they were a bit wild and don’t
mistake them for his brothers fighting roosters and hens. No problems
Milton, my bolt action .22 rifle could out run and out maneuver any chicken.
My youngest sister Tricia and I loaded up to go tag team some chickens.
Tricia was a good choice for a chicken catcher, she had medaled at the World
Championship of Wild Hog Wrestling. We quickly learned that catching
chickens required a very different set of skills. They were elusive and
jittery. I pulled out the secret weapons but I hesitated and called Milton
one more time. I’m glad I did, sure enough I had drawn a bead on a fighting
hen. A minute later we located the Rhode Island Reds in the hay barn. I
waited till they were clear of anything useful and that there was plenty of
hay behind them, then started cracking those big hens with .22 shorts. These
chickens were tough! Two required follow up shots, two more died only after
running about 15 yards, but I stacked one chicken out hard. We threw the
hens on ice and had bait.

Tricia went to pack up and move off to Albuquerque for the summer. Kim and I
loaded up my tiger shark jon boat and headed to Tilden.

We chatted with Tim a while and marveled at his newest dog. A feisty
wire-hair Jack Russel. I think he had about 14 dogs out in the yard.

I had already called TPWD once and got the scoop on legally harvesting an
Alligator. Tim and I called the McMullen county game warden and reviewed the
regulations once more. Then we went to work. Tim’s ranch in on a wide loop
of the Frio, up river from Tilden a ways. Due to the two year drought, the
river isn’t much but about six inches of stream and no longer habitat for
gators. Instead, we headed for his father’s ranch about the same distance
from Tilden but down river. And found much deeper pools. We paced the banks
looking for slides and other gator sign. We didn’t see a whole lot, the
water looked pretty stagnant and desolate except for the occasionally gar
that would come get air. I didn’t have very high hopes.

Tim’s eyes bugged when I showed him my tackle. “Damn boy, I said a big ass
hook but I didn’t think you’d show up with something that big!” Then he
showed me his hooks and I’d had bested them more than twice over. We figured
they would still, if something took that hook, it would have to be big! When
I was baiting that hook, the full grown Rhode Island Red chicken wouldn’t
fit too well. I could only get one pass of the hook through it.

We’d set the lines so that the chicken was at the surface of the water out a
little way from the bank in hopes of tempting a gator that may be swimming
up or down the river that night. We’d use a stick or log to keep the chicken
at surface. I had a bit of trouble because my hooks were acting like anchor
weighs. We finally got the last chicken perched on an old tee post that was
in the water, probably and old anchor point for a trot line.

I walked out of the river bottom with a burning itch on my knee, I thought
it was from some briar I’d gotten wrapped into. We’d check the lines again
in the morning and with that we went to chase pigs.

The idea is to check your lines early, the longer a fish or gator sits
there, the more chance you give it to get away. I didn’t have much hope, the
river I’d seen didn’t look too promising. It also didn’t help that the night
before, we’d plugged in some guitars, mandolins and harmonicas and had a jam
session at Tim’s. Everyone was a bit sluggish the next morning and we showed
up to check lines much closer to noon than day break.

Derned the luck, two lines hadn’t been touched, except by a one turtle that
was still tugging on a chicken neck. Tim popped him with the .30-30 and out
bait thief was gone. The last line left me sick to the stomach. It was
frayed and busted on that old tee post. my $12 hook with it. Something
pretty big had come out of the murky still water.

I figured we had blown what little chance we’d had. Neverless I had a few
more chickens and an Tim let me borrow one of his extra hooks. We waited on
late afternoon and let a dark thunderstorm empty itself before we reset our
individual lines. My knee by this point had flared up into something
terrible, later to be pronounced and poison oak and I was quite miserable.
The water blisters were boiling up. Tim had an emergency gig come up and
took off to play for a party. At Tim’s father ranch a friend of theirs keeps
his bow fishing boat. I saw him working on it and pulled in to introduce
myself. I’d seen Buck Medley on a few different TV hunting shows and he puts
on an interesting show for the camera. He was no different in person. We
chatted a while, told him our plans and he invited us to bow fish with him
in the morning after we had run lines.

With the lines set, Kim and continued to stalk pigs that evening and I
arrowed a monster boar at dusk.

We rolled up to the ranch and made it down to the river by 7:15 A.M., a much
better effort than the day before. The first two lines were untouched same
as yesterday, and I took them down. I figured our chance was gone and we’d
try again when the river was up and the gators were back. My line was the
further and I limped against the now very swollen and oozing poison oak
blisters on my knee.

I’d left the loose slack of my line lightly coiled in a tattle tale on a
twig. As a I neared the muddy bank I noticed that the tattle tale was gone.
This perked my spirits. I’d eased a few steps closer and saw a horned just
under the water at the bank. Score! I poked my head around to look at him
and now I froze. There were two gators there! The closer one which appeared
to be on my line was smaller. The other one had a head like a cypress stump,
and about as long and big as that hog I’d shot with my bow the night before.
They were each close enough to possibly be on the line, so I tossed a stick
to see which one, if any I’d caught. The monster gator vanished and the
smaller, I figured him at seven or eight feet rolled and my mesquite limed
sagged under his weight. Gator on! But I missed the big one.

Hobbling along came easy with the newfound excitement! Kim didn’t know what
to do. Buck was had given up trying to get his boat motor to run and he
wanted to come along and film the action so we picked him up at the ranch
house.

Buck Medley was quite the character. He TV personality was identical to the
real McCoy. If ever there was a stereotypical South Texas gator hunter, Buck
fit the bill. The enthusiasm and expressions he uses in his stories of
wrestling monster gar while bow fishing and chasing pigs make those who have
participated in such actions appreciate the emotions.

I filled a quiver full of old arrows and G5 Montec 100 grain broad heads.
Buck grabbed his bow fishing rig and back to the muddy banks we went. Once
we got a look, Buck said we’d got a whopper. I told him the big one was
still on the loose. About that time the gator that looked like it was from
the movie Lake Placid surfaced and Buck the veteran gator hunter got
excited. The big gator slipped away as quick as it had appeared and a trail
of bubbles leading down river noted its departure.

Back to the business at hand, but was guessing we had an 11 or 12 footer on
the line. We were on the side of the steep bank and the gator seemed to be
showing off for us. He was walking up and pacing the bank trying to work its
way higher. Buck asked if we’d marked the line from the hook to tell how far
down the hook had lodged. If the hook was swallowed all the way to the
gullet, a broad head could enter the lungs and slice the line and then the
gator is lost. Marking the line lets you know how far the hook has lodged
and what your options are.

I began with the bow fishing rig. I sunk the heavy arrow into the left lung
and the gator lunged back into the water. Bubble leaked from the punctured
lung. I pulled on the line attached to the arrow and we had a good hold on
him. I picked up my Matthews DXT and nocked an arrow. A second later the
gator was back on the bank and I took full advantage. The second arrows
passed clean through and then lay floating out in the water past the gator.
Now when the gator re-entered the water there a lot more lung bubbles, he
was seething and quite pissed off now.

I figured I’d give the beast a minute, but I nocked another arrow. Kim was
working for a better angle to film. The banks were already steep and
yesterdays thunderstorm made them mighty slippery. She slipped and started
down the steep bank. Due to the rope with the hook on it, she was out of
range of the head but not by much. Buck and I grabbed her arms and kept her
from going much farther. That would be a hard one to explain to the
authorities. Girlfriend accidentally slips into river and is eaten by the
gator we had caught.

The gator was back out on the bank again, and hacked up to big mouths full
of blood. The first two shots had been perfectly broadside, now at the gator
quartered away I let fly another arrow that passed through both lungs and
lodged in the far shoulder. I had the chance to let me more fly and the
arrow repeated the work of the previous. The gator jumped back into the
river and swam and thrashed. It was sad to watch the desperation that lasted
only a minute or two. I could see him swimming sideways now and then he
rolled over and sank.

In the current spot, that gator would be very touch to drag up the bank, we
couldn’t get a tractor close. So we took my tiger shark boat and headed to
the little boat ramp buck had built up river. Kim wanted to take Buck’s big
fancy boat. What little faith! My craft was a ’72 sixteen foot aluminum jon
boat, I had four bench seats and I had just put a fiberglass shooting deck
on the front for bow fishing. Kim had only been in this boat once and yes,
it leaked but it would do. A few of the rivets in the back had popped out
and they looked like little water fountains squirting about three inches
into the air. She wasn’t too keen on this. My 15 HP ’84 Johnson outboard
fired up pretty quick and we went putting and sputtering in a cloud of white
smoke down river.

When the caught the gator line I shut off the engine and buck immediately
started hauling the lizard in. Its head came up sideways and lifeless
looking. “Grab his jaws and hold them open so I can tie him”, Buck said. I
hesitated a sec and watched the gator. Then with a feeling of dread I opened
these massive jaws to let Buck wrap some rope around. This was my absolute
least favorite part. If this danged gator had any life left whatsoever my
hands and arms were history. Thankfully the gator remained dead. I cranked
the motor to life and Buck dallied the gator on the cleats and we putted
back up river. Steering was a bit tough with a monster gator tied to the
side of the boat and the prop caught him in the back once.

We used the tractor to take the gator out and man that thing was big. Pretty
stinky too, but mainly just huge! He measured just a hair under 12 foot. The
taxidermist later weighed him and 638 lbs. A helluva gator, and to think the
bigger one got away is a sobering thought. We used the tractor to load the
leviathan into the boat and that’s how we rolled him to the cooler at the
taxidermist shop. Kim and I somehow managed to move the brute into the
cooler with the assistance of a wench and a hoist. I wish the gator was
easier to move, I would have taken him to the part of the Frio, yes the same
river, where all the tubers float and thrown him out on the gravel bar at
Chris Long’s house just to see the reaction of all the tourists. Maybe next
year.

Tim’s daughter Meagan told us an interesting fact that is well worth
sharing. Alligators have a flap in their throat that acts as a valve to keep
them from filling their lungs up with water when they are attacking and
biting. If you are ever so unfortunate as to end up in the mouth of a gator,
stick your arm down that throat and open that valve, then water will pour
into the gators lungs and it will be forced to release you or drown. If your
on dry land I guess your SOL, unless you can reach around and give him the
shocker.

Tim and his father Sonny were both so helpful and I’m very thankful for them
taking me along to catch the gator. Tim and Sonny run cur dogs after
raccoons and an occasional pig. Raccoons like trees that in this kind of
county usually only grow near water. They said they’d lost a few dogs to
gators. The dogs would bay and all the barking was a dinner bell for gators.
My taxidermist buddy AJ sound he found the remains of a dog in the stomach.
He said the leg hair was blue and silver, like the colors on a healer or
lacey. The full body mount total came out a might too pricey, so I’ll end up
with a shoulder mounted gator head. Like the one in Happy Gilmore. I’d like
to get a manakin hand name it Chubbs Peterson.

I’ll eat some of the tail now, but I’ll make sure and save some for those of
you who attend this years Gonzo Comadre party, now taking place in
September. We can continue to eat new and strange things off the grill.

–
bueno bye. Travis