Gator Heads

I have cleaned a lot of skulls over the years, including regular ol' coyotes, trophy bears, massive deer, and tiny little mice. But a gator? Well, that's a new one for me, so when a hunter from Texas contacted me about cleaning some gator skulls for him, I jumped at the opportunity. You may remember my post about how this hunter shipped the skulls to me back at the beginning of this month, which can be found here.

Now the time has come to start cleaning them up, so I pulled out the smallest of the three alligator heads, which is still quite large. I have to say that as I was carving off a few remaining large chunks of flesh, I was a little nervous - I kept looking at those closed eyes, expecting them to slide open any moment as the jaws starting snapping, like some horror movie! I know it sounds crazy, but it's my first time ever handling a gator, dead or alive.

 

The lower jaw is just about done, and the upper section of the head will be getting cleaned next. I'll be posting up the pictures as soon as the first gator is completely done, so keep an eye on this blog for more info!

 

Oddly enough, as I was getting ready to write this post I got an email from Outdoor Life in which one of their main article was about a trapper in Florida who just caught a record 14ft, 900lb alligator - in a residential lake! Even more amazing was that in the process, he caught several other alligators, including two 11ft gators. Sheesh - remind me not to swim in Florida lakes. You can find the entire story here.

 

Happy Hunting!