Luck of the draw

Pivotal moment of alligator hunt is captured in photo

Tim Taylor didn’t get drawn for the Mississippi public lands alligator hunt, but he ended up with a trophy that will soon be hanging on his wall just the same. “Great photo isn’t it?” said Taylor, who works for the City of Ridgeland Parks Department. “Best alligator action shot I have ever seen and I will get it blown up and hang it on the wall.” The photo, taken by Rob Heflin, a conservation officer from Isola, who just happened to pull up at the right place at the right time, is remarkable. It shows Taylor at full draw with a bow, about to fire a line into a 10-foot alligator in the Sunflower River. The gator, pulling hard against the snare rope around its tail, has popped its head up and it is caught in the frame.

As trophies go, any wife will tell you a picture beats a dried-up gator head every time.

The story behind it is good, too.

Taylor beat the state wildlife’s alligator drawing system, just as he has for years, by sheer number.

“I must have had 80 people putting in for the public hunts, on so many different areas,” he said. “I ended up getting about eight or 10 people drawn so even though I wasn’t drawn, I was able to hunt as much as I wanted. I had taken the full week off from work for vacation and needed it all.

“Last weekend, we had a bunch of tag holders with us and had two boats. We were moving guys around from boat to boat to keep it all straight. I was so lucky that I had Woodie Reaves with me. He’s the best.”

Reaves, one of the most respected of the state’s license alligator trappers, was enlisted to help with the new area. He is well-versed in Delta lakes and streams and Taylor’s group had eight tags in the South Delta zone.

The picture gator was caught on Saturday night, the second evening of the season. Taylor had marked the gator’s eyes in the light using one of Reaves’ tricks. Delta gators are different from those on Barnett Reservoir, Taylor said, because Barnett gators usually expose their full heads.

“Woodie taught me to gauge a Delta gator by just the top two-thirds of their eyes,” he said. “That’s all they expose.”

Reaves grabbed the rod and made a perfect cast and hooked the gator. He handed the rod off to the tag holder, Ridgeland High School quarterback Parker Lohman.

“It was his turn, since he had had a game on Friday night and couldn’t be there,” Taylor said. “Turns out that was fortunate for him.”

After getting the gator to the boat, Reaves managed to get the snare around its tail. Problem was, the original line and hook then fell out of the gator.

“The only thing we had was that snare line around the gator’s tail, and that’s not good,” Taylor said. “Woodie was holding it but we knew we needed another line so I grabbed the bow, which was right beside me, and I decided to take a shot.”

Heflin was oblivious to those events.

“I saw that boy reach for the bow, and I just figured he might want to shoot him with it,” he said. “I had no idea what they were trying to do, but I thought that with the bow, it might make a good picture.”

As Taylor tried to get his arrow aimed at the base of the skull, Heflin grabbed his camera and began focusing on the action.

Reaves was busy trying to use the snare pole to get the gator to lift his head to give Taylor a target.

“I finally got a good look at the spot and took the shot, and it was perfect,” Taylor said. “We had the line we needed in its head.”

Meanwhile, about 20 yards away, Heflin had been busy trying to get his perfect shot, too.

Heflin ran off several shots, having to deal with the auto focus and setting and a flash that couldn’t resync as fast as he was taking the pictures. But he kept on pushing the button anyway, knowing that with each shutter release his odds of getting a good photo got better.

“When I got home, I started looking through the shots and was not happy,” Heflin said. “They were out of focus or too dimly lit or dark, until I reached this one. It’s not perfect, but I’m happy with it.”

The lesson to be learned is to take as many photos as you can. With digital cameras, it costs nothing extra and you can burn 10 or 20 shots to get the one you really want.

It’s a lesson this writer-turned-amateur-photographer learned a long time ago, back when film was still being used. I burned a lot of expensive color film on each trip, hoping to get one photo that I could use.

Maybe that explains the downward turn of newspapers…

Oops!