Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 6 4 roaming around again, snarling traffic in the middle of the afternoon. So Joe Maffo wrassled him down a second time, hauled him clean up to Jasper County and loosed him on the New River, much to the dismay of the Jasperites, who reckoned they had their quota of gators already. "I'd a caught hell for killing him," Joe mused. "Now I am catching hell for turning him a-loose." W rasslin down a gator? Ben Moise, 27 years as a warden along the Santee, tells how he did it. "I went equipped with half-inch braided nylon line, a long pole, a roll of duct tape, and a bag of marshmallows." Marshmallows? That's right. This ain't your ordinary story. "To entice the beast into range, we'd cast marshmallows upon the waters. They're known to be a favorite food of alligators due to their resemblance to golf balls. As the gator neared the closest of the white nuggets, we'd slip a noose over its head and snatch it tight. Then all hell would break loose. "I'd drag that old gator up the bank and tie him close to a tree. Then I fixed another noose and slipped it over his tail and drug it around and pulled it tight around another tree until he was in a stiff straight line. Only then could you crawl up his back and grab his jaws and tape them together and tape his eyes shut and tie his legs behind his back and fling him into the pickup. "The worst part was turning him loose. He was roaring mad by then. If it was a big gator, I usually attracted a helpful crowd. There was no way to predict which direction the gator was going to head when freed of restraints, which led to some extremely amusing stampedes." T he big predators were about wore down to nothing in the '60s, when gator belts, boots, gnawing. The golfer who lost a ball and then an arm when he tried to retrieve it. The jogger mauled when she got too close to a nest. A tug of war, a boy on one end, a gator on the other, his momma in the middle. The man who flipped a tractor into the pond and by the time he got himself untangled, the tractor was the least of his worries. The burglar on the run whose final bad idea was to take a short cut through the cattails. Just no end to it. Bass fishermen catch particular hell. Phil the Bug Man was tearing up four-pound largemouths when he noticed a baby gator angling for a fish. The gator was about the size of the fish, and the Bug Man gave it a jab with the end of his Ugly Stick. The gator went eeka-eeka-click-click like baby gators do, and the water erupted in a mighty froth as momma gator launched herself upon the dock. She got her head under the railing but her front shoulders hung up. She thrashed and snapped, then fell back overboard. The Bug Man was recovering pulse and sphincter when he heard a rustling in the canes. Momma Gator was sneaking up the bank, trying to get between him and his truck. It almost worked. Terri's brother Terry was fishing bass too till he ran out of beer. He knocked on my door. "You got any Bud, Bub?" "No, but I got couple bottles of Corona." "No Bud in the can?" "Nope." "Well, I'll take the Corona then." An hour later, rod in one hand, Corona in the other, a gator made a snatch at him. He dropped the rod but not the beer. He turned to run but slipped and fell. The gator was on top of him in an instant, and Terry commenced to wear that gator out with the Corona bottle. Taken aback by a dozen whacks, the gator repented and relented, and and wallets were all the rage and the skins fetched ten dollars a running foot. The Jasperites hunted them with flashlights taped to the end of 22 gun-barrels, and the law couldn't keep up with the poaching. But the 1973 Endangered Species Act killed the market for the hides, and the Jasperites went back to making moonshine and growing marijuana and they were good at both. You could still take a pesky gator with permission, like Phillip Buckles did when one snatched his retriever right off his front porch just as he was sitting down to supper. He baited a shark hook with a freezer- burnt pork shoulder and chained it to a cypress stump. He had a gator the next morning and the stomach yielded hardware from seven dog collars – but none his. There's probably a hundred- thousand gators now, plenty thick enough to hunt. Joe Maffo and his cohorts typically snag 300 to 400 each year, and the state issues a thousand-plus tags via a lottery at a hundred bucks apiece. Gator meat is mighty good, good enough to make a factory-farm frying chicken hang its head in shame. But then, there is the fine print. You can't shoot a gator unless you get a line on him first. Lasso, snare, harpoon, arrow, or treble hook, the Law does not care. But you snag him somehow, haul him to the side of your boat under extreme protest, and you shoot straight down with a revolver or bang stick. And if you fire the bangstick above water, you are apt to be wounded by flying meat and bone. Surviving all, you suddenly have several hundred pounds of gator meat to cool off quick. The official gubmint gator guide contains a final caution: "Never assume any alligator is dead." It's a God's wonder anybody would do it but they do, and they line up for the chance. I've been around here a good long time and I've seen my share of