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Even better, the neighbor who snagged the alligator is your city councilman who is also a member of your church.
Obviously Jeff Weilll has way too much time on his hands. How in the world could he go get trained in alligator hunting and spend the entire night with his boys at the reservoir shining spotlights on gator eyes?
As we milled around Jeff’s pickup truck on Douglas Drive he was beaming with pride. Dozens of friends and neighbors were congregating.
“I’ve just always wanted to go alligator hunting,” Jeff told me. “We took the course and did it. . . when they were weighing him I kept saying to myself, Please let it be the state record. Please let it be the state record.’”
Alas, Councilman Weilll was denied. The state record is about 13 feet and 600 pounds. His gator was 12 feet four inches and 450 pounds..
It took two hours to reel the gator in. As Jeff told the story, it sounded a bit like a cross between Jaws, Jonah and the Whale, and the Old Man and the Sea.
Apparently, spotlighting gators is somewhat similar to spotlighting deer, except the gators aren’t mesmerized. Water is flat with no visual obstructions and gator eyes have an incredible ability to reflect light from a spotlight. If their heads are above water and looking in your direction, you can spot them from several hundred yards away.
Having spotted a gator, the key is to stealthily maneuver the boat closer and closer until you are within casting range. You cast a strong deep sea fishing rod with thick line and a special treble hook designed for gator snaring. The goal is to get the treble hook to lodge on the gators back. Then the fight begins.
In this case, it took three treble hooks and three lines and a two hour fight. At one point the gator snapped all three lines. They would have lost him except they managed to get a treble hook with a float on the gator. The float allowed them to track the gator after he snapped all three lines. “It was just like in Jaws,’ ” Jeff told me enthusiastically.
Now what makes a mild-mannered, church going family man like Jeff Weilll want to go out into the swamps and rassle gators? He’s a Mississippi Boy! There’s no mystery at all.
“Making it through the Jackson City Council budget committee meetings was great preparation for gator rassling,” Jeff told the throng.
Jeff Weilll just finished working intensively on balancing the Jackson city budget. The city avoided a millage increase, but thanks to reappraisal, there will be a 10 percent larger city budget.
All of which should indicate that I am a big Jeff Weilll fan. I met Jeff over a decade ago when we joined Covenant Presbyterian Church. When I first met Jeff he had a certain bearing and persona that got my attention, humility and piety being foremost. He was also funny and fun. When a man can be pious and still have fun hunting gators, you know you’ve captured the essence of our great state.
I’ve written nearly 1,000 columns, but this is my first one on gators. Apparently, it was in the stars because I was already planning to write about gators before the Weilll affair.
Just last week, I had gone to a dove hunt at John Palmer’s magnificent spread in western Hinds County. The dove weren’t really flying, but I did see Dan McNamara down two doves in consecutive blasts in the same flight.
Anyway, after a great all-male dinner of fine whiskey, steaks, ice cream, apple pie and fine cigars, I retired to a nearby lodge. Luke Billman and I were sitting on the screen porch, when we heard a loud splash, not unlike a human diving in the water.
It got our attention. The loud splash was immediately followed by what seemed to be the bleating of a goat or some other large hoofed animal. It was a desperate, plaintive bleating. Even though the sound was made by another creature, it communicated a message any mammal intuitively understands: the plaintive desperation of impending immediate death.
The final sound was that of thrashing in the water. Then complete silence. From start to finish, perhaps six seconds had elapsed.
Luke and I stared at each other in dismay. “Have you ever heard anything like that?” I asked Luke. “Never,” was his reply.
“I think a gator just took a deer,” I responded. “I think you’re right,” Luke answered back.
The next morning, over a group breakfast, the local caretakers laughed at my analysis. It was probably some coons fighting in the water, they countered.
After a morning of skeet shooting, Jim Palmer turned to me and said, “Let’s drive back to the lodge and see if we can find anything.”
We walked down to the water’s edge, just 30 yards or so from the porch where we had been sitting the night before. Within seconds, we saw clear deer tracks leading right down to the water’s edge. The hooves were small, indicating a small doe or fawn.
Just a few feet off the bank, there was a line of reeds standing perhaps a foot above the water’s surface. But there was a two or three foot gap where the reeds had been smashed down, exactly opposite the spot of the deer tracks.
The evidence was conclusive to the four or five men who observed the scene. “You’re right,” Jim concluded. “I believe it was an alligator.”
Then someone observed that the lake was only a few hundred yards from the Big Black River, where game wardens relocate misbehaving reservoir gators.
Luke and I looked at each other, both thinking how simple it would have been to walk down to the water’s edge at night.
I recalled how years ago as a young adult I walked out on a concrete quarter-mile walk to view the Lake Okeechobee shoreline in central Florida. No sooner had I reached the end when I started hearing very loud splashing plomps. It took me a minute to realize it was the sound of gators. I ran as fast as I could back to my car.
“So I don’t get it,” wife Ginny says, as we drive to see the Weill gator. “We spend all this money to make the reservoir a public recreation lake and now it’s full of alligators.”
Looking at the Weill gator, it truly seemed prehistoric. On planet Earth, there is more than one way to survive in the modern world.
Not long ago, gators were near extinction. They have made a dramatic resurgence, illustrating yet again why the species has been around far longer than us.
Bears are also making a comeback in Mississippi. Gator and bears, oh my! I suppose I could be eaten by a bear or a gator. If so, then it’s just my time. They may pose a slight danger and significant fear, but life just wouldn’t be the same without gators and bears. I’ll take my chances.
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