Don’t Feed the Alligators
For those of you who don’t know, there is a “Texas Game Wardens” Facebook and Instagram page where a lot of cool official game warden stuff is posted regularly. You should check it out if you’re on social media.
Last week, there was a post with a headline of “Not every classroom has alligators, but ours does” that chronicled the activities of current Texas Game Warden Training Center attendees and included a bunch of pics of the cadets wrangling a few of what I’d call “mid-sized alligators” somewhere in the 5-7 ft. range.
And good for them – that’s great training. Back in the day though, there was no classroom instruction on gator wrangling.
Maybe that’s because, way back, there just weren’t that many alligators. The American alligator was listed as an endangered species going all the way back to the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 and continuing with the Endangered Species Act of 1973. They weren’t removed from the list until 1987.
Choke Canyon Reservoir, located in Live Oak and McMullen Counties, has always had its fair share of alligators.
Construction of the lake began in 1978 and was pretty much completed on August 11, 1980, with the arrival of Hurricane Allen and the 11+ inches of rain the storm dumped over the area. But when construction was clipping along in the summer of 1978, a rancher in Three Rivers called Live Oak County Game Warden Rick Thomas to discuss concerns of a “6 ft. alligator” in a stock tank on his ranch, which was scheduled to be underwater upon the completion of the reservoir.
Apparently, the gator was quite accustomed to being fed by people, and the rancher was worried that the gator might be dangerous to unsuspecting recreationalists when the reservoir was completed.
Nowadays, it’s illegal to intentionally feed a free-ranging alligator, but that wasn’t the case in 1978.
Regardless, the “6 ft. alligator” was a potential problem, for sure; especially given the fact that, once Rick got there with Game Wardens Steve Woodmansee and Jim Daughtrey, they discovered it was much larger than the landowner had estimated.
Usually, it’s the other way around – people routinely overestimate the size of alligators. Maybe it’s because they’re big and scary looking or something - I don’t know. Anyway, the wardens didn’t have any catch poles or duct tape or other fancy gator-catching accoutrements that might’ve been useful had they had a class that taught them how to use such things. All they had were ropes.
So, Rick grabbed one, formed a loop, and roped that gator with the first toss.
That’s when the gator got mad and fought so hard that the wardens thought it best to tie one end of the rope to a nearby mesquite tree in the hopes of letting the beast tire itself out a bit before they tried to do much more with it.
After some considerable thrashing by the gator, the wardens dragged it ashore, pounced on it and hog-tied it up for transport to a remote location on the Aransas Wildlife Refuge.
The alligator was weighed and measured before release. It was just over 9 ft. long and weighed 274 pounds!
The American alligator is truly one of the great success stories of wildlife conservation. Today, their numbers are such that in Texas, depending on the county’s designation by Texas Parks and Wildlife, a general hunting season has been established.
The General Non-core Season started on April 1 and ends on June 30, 2026. For details, check out the Texas Outdoor Annual on the Texas Parks and Wildlife webpage, or get the app. Remember – know before you go. If you have questions call a game warden.
Each warden’s cell phone number is listed by county on the TPW website. Lastly - whatever you do - don’t feed the alligators.
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