Getting 'Gator Getters

" 'Gator killin' " is as time honored a pastime in the swamps of Louisiana, South Georgia and Florida as moonshining is in the hills to the north. The beasts are supposed to be protected by the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969, but in the three years since then, federal officials estimate, some 127,000 alligators have been slaughtered by poachers.

The poachers can sell their prey for about $6 per foot, but they do not get them without a struggle. Poaching must be done at night--partly to avoid agents and partly to catch the slumbering alligators. The poacher blinds the animal with a spotlight, then approaches in his boat and fires a "brain shot" between the eyes with a .22-cal. rifle. A good poacher gets a rolled skin into his boat in 15 minutes. "They can get a 'gator out of his jacket real fast," says Federal Agent Andrew Pursley.

One poacher has bragged that he killed 114 alligators in a single night, and he was equally adroit in eluding pursuers. After throwing the hides out of his pickup truck as a posse closed in, he dove into a Louisiana bayou, swam across the border to Texas and holed up there for six months before being captured. Another, who is now serving a long jail sentence, used to zip across the swamps in a shallow boat that could reach speeds of 85 m.p.h.

These are only two of the 460 poachers whom the Government has identified in a new crackdown. Forty-eight arrest warrants have been issued within the past two months, and the penalties are severe. Two Atlanta men, indicted three weeks ago for trading in alligator hides, face sentences of up to 40 years in prison and $400,000 in fines.

Still, the rewards have kept the traffic going. Salted, rolled and stashed in barrels with false labels, the alligator hides are shipped to manufacturers in France (mostly shoemakers) and Japan (belts, wallets, watchbands). And even when a shipment is uncovered, the law permits the confiscated catch to be auctioned off after it has been presented as evidence. So the buyer loses his poacher, but not his hides.

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