Gator Control Program Pits Hunters Against Animal Experts

South Carolina officials say the Lake Marion incident has caused them to review the hunt. This year, only 300 out of the 1,000 permit-holders attended training sessions. "It's really hard to play Monday morning quarterback about what was going on at 2 in the morning," says Butfiloski. "But somewhere there's a lack of technique."

Inexperienced gator hunters

The key with a gator hunt is to snare the animal with a fishing pole or cross-bow arrow attached to a line, and then tire the animal out before it's secured to the boat and shot. What seems to have happened in the Lake Marion case is that the inexperienced men, working at night and caught in an adrenaline rush, may not have had the alligator close enough when they fired at it.

But the three North Carolina hunters defend their actions. "It's not like we were shooting wildly into the night," says Chris Samuels, a Hickory, N.C., arborist,. Mr. Samuels says the main problem was that the state wouldn't allow shotguns on the hunt. The .45 caliber pistol, he says, simply wasn't powerful enough to penetrate the giant gator's hide. Samuels says his group felt ethically bound to kill the animal once they had begun firing.

"People on the lake were so grateful to us that we had taken that gator out of water where children swim," he says.

South Carolina wildlife biologist Philip Wilkinson says he does see a value in having a public alligator hunt. But he points out that one reason alligators have survived so long is that their cannibalistic tendencies make them masters of population control. "Sometimes those big ones, if you can tolerate them, do the job for you."