In Florida, spotting an alligator isn’t exactly headline news. Mary Miller grew up in Venice and remembers one afternoon back in 1969 when an alligator camped out by their mailbox. “We’d just come home from school and were about to head outside,” she says, “when my mom suddenly shouted for us to stop.” She and her three siblings, all set to hop on their bikes, froze while their mom pointed out the gator stretched out in the driveway. “I think she called the police, but before I knew it, there was a whole wrestling match happening in our front yard.”
Every year, Florida’s alligator hunting season runs from August 15 to November 1. The state issues about 7,000 permits through a lottery system. If you get picked, you walk away with two harvest tags, part of the effort to keep the alligator population, now about 1.3 million, in check.
Permits are in demand, too. Over 15,000 people try for them every year. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) lets hunters go after gators at any hour during the season, and each standard permit includes two CITES tags, letting you take two alligators.
Alligator Biology Trivia
Did you know that the temperature in a mother gator’s nest determines if her eggs hatch into males or females? Above 93°F you’ll get males, below 86°F and they’ll be females.
Hatching season lines up with the start of the hunt, mid-August to early September. Just before that, in spring, the air fills with the sound of male alligators roaring and bellowing as they fight for territory and mates.
But gator mating season isn’t just noisy; it can get dangerous. Florida’s dense alligator population means a higher risk of run-ins, and sometimes those encounters turn deadly. Since 1948, the state has recorded about 500 reported alligator attacks. Of those, over 150 were minor and needed little or no medical care. Almost 350 attacks caused serious injuries. And tragically, 33 people have died, including a recent case: a woman swimming with friends in the Little Big Econ State Forest just this past summer.
Click here for more information about alligator hunting season.
