The night hunter

Staff writer

personaljourneys@ajc.com

ABOUT THE REPORTER AND PHOTOGRAPHER

Mark Davis joined the AJC in 2003 after working in Philadelphia, Tampa and his native North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Davis has reported on heroes, bums and creatures that walk, swim, crawl and fly.

Hyosub Shin was born and raised in Korea. Inspired by the work of National Geographic photographers, he came to the United States about 10 years ago to study photography. Past assignments include the Georgia Legislative session, Atlanta Dream's Eastern Conference title game, the Atlanta Air Show and the Atlanta Braves' National League Division Series.

The man cut the engine. For a moment, everything appeared frozen — the river, the boat on it, the thing in it.

Then the thing moved. The man followed it with a spotlight, illuminating its eyes. They glowed red, twin coals on a black background. The man started the engine.

“There!” The word came out in an excited whisper.

The boy reached for the fishing rod. From its tip dangled a treble hook. It shone silver.

The man pointed at a spot just behind the eyes. “There!”

The boy cast. The hook rose and vanished in the dark, trailing 40-pound mono-filament line. It splashed in the water behind the red eyes. The boy started cranking, cranking hard.

Again, for just a moment, nothing seemed to move. Then everything did.

The creature rolled, thrashed, dove. The boy yanked the rod backward, setting the hooks even deeper in its hide. The boat rolled. The sky tilted.

The creature surfaced. Its tail swept a small wave into the boat. The boy kept cranking. The man stepped from the wheel. He held a noose, affixed to a stick.

The boy cranked some more. The creature surfaced again, thrashed, tried to dive for the river bottom. It could not. The man slipped the noose over its snout, over its head, and tightened the rope against the animal’s neck. It heaved. He pulled harder.

In a moment, the creature was still, hard against the boat’s hull. Its stripes stood out in stark relief in the spotlight. Lightning sketched the sky.

The man pointed at a spot behind its eyes. “There.”

The boy aimed the gun.

2. Red eyes in the dark

Georgia's brief alligator season recently ended. It began at 12:01 a.m. Sept. 6, and concluded as the clock struck midnight Oct. 5. If past seasons are any indicator, more than 200 alligators were taken from rivers, ponds, lakes and any other place conducive to Alligator mississippiensis. The American alligator, a creature whose numbers had so dwindled in Georgia that it once was a protected species, has rebounded thanks to solid state wildlife management. It's had an official hunting season since 2003. This year, the state issued 850 permits.

On the second night of the season, Jim and Griffin Gillis, the man and the boy, slid their boat into the Champney River just south of Darien. It was a watershed outing: the man, father to the boy, had received one of the coveted permits to kill an alligator; he’d given it to his son, 16. It would be the boy’s first gator.

Jim Gillis, 43, is a wildlife technician for the state Department of Natural Resources. That’s a bureaucratic term for someone who’s equally at ease in a field full of doves as a river teeming with gators; he works with other state employees and the public to enhance our appreciation for Georgia wildlife. He’s a country boy, raised in Tarrytown, near Vidalia. He’s never strayed far from the fields and woods where his daddy taught him to hunt. He doesn’t cuss, laughs as much as sanity allows and appreciates the gifts God has given us. He’s impossible to dislike.

Griffin Gillis, 16, is a junior at Pinewood Christian Academy in Bellville. He is a shorter, slightly more solid version of his dad. He has his old man’s looks: like the elder Gillis, he has a ready smile and wide eyes. He also has dad’s manners. If he doesn’t call you “sir,” you’re probably a woman.

He’s not sure what he’ll do with his life. Right now, he cannot decide whether he wants to be a pharmacist or a forester.

The night before his gator outing, Griffin had played defensive tackle for the varsity football team. The Patriots routed Brentwood Academy, 35-0. He was still pleased about that when he and his daddy showed up at the boat landing in Darien, 280 miles southeast of Atlanta. Heat lightning in a darkening sky illuminated their arrival.

They trailed an 18-foot McKee Craft. On its stern was a 90-horse Johnson. Inside the boat was a cooler, two fishing rods, a 3 million candlepower spotlight, two gas tanks and life vests.

After some hand-shaking, I turned to the boy. He nearly vibrated with anticipation.

“How’d the game go?” I asked young Gillis. “Did you win?”

“Yes sir.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Yes sir.”

“Ready to get a ‘gator?”

“Yes sir.”

We were on the water before 9 p.m. Gillis turned the key. The Johnson coughed, sputtered, then idled. He put the boat in gear. It shuddered, then moved, trailing white water under a black sky. The waxing moon, three-quarters full, slid behind some ragged clouds. That was a good sign; it’s easier to track gators in the dark, when boat shadows won’t spook the creatures.

The previous night — the first night of hunting — may have left the gators jumpy, Gillis said.

He eased the throttle. Gillis flashed the spotlight, which cast a white beam across the river. Perhaps half a football field away, two red eyes looked back.

“Looks like a big one,” he said. The light tracked the creature’s eyes. The gator was swimming rapidly — another sign, he said, that the swimmer was not small.

“The little ones stay near the banks so they won’t get eaten by the bigger ones,” he said.

And the larger alligators? Gillis shone the light where, moments earlier, the big swimmer had been. The beast was gone.

3. An earlier kill

I am not a hunter. I have caught and killed more fish than I can count, but never have I felt comfortable taking the lives of other creatures. It may be because of that little bird.

On a cool spring afternoon it stood on shaky little legs, lost and scared and starving. The hatchling, I knew, was doomed.

Nine-year-old boys rarely have philosophical arguments with themselves, but on that day I did. Should I leave it alone, hoping mama bird would find the baby that fell from the nest? Or should I end its misery?

I pulled a large rock out of the earth. It was wet and cold. I held my breath, blinked back a tear and smashed the baby bird into the dirt. I broke out crying. Later, when I told my dad, he looked suitably serious.

“You did the right thing,” he said.

A half-century later, I still wonder.

Others deaths followed, as they must. A parakeet mauled by the cat. Another cat, this one mortally injured in the road. An old dog that made a final trip to the vet. I wept for them all.

Older relatives died. Two school mates were killed in auto accidents. Cancer claimed a colleague. I witnessed the 1991 electrocution of a cop-killer in Florida; his head caught on fire. In Georgia, I chronicled the last breath of a convicted killer in 2005.

You live long enough, you become acquainted with that cold traveler, death. And the tears stop.

As I got closer to Darien, I felt a flutter of disquiet: I was to be a participant in a death.

In my mind’s eye, I saw that baby bird.

4. Hunter and the hunted

He was a bull gator, strong and loud. He bumped snouts with the female, the alligator version of foreplay. She accepted his advances.

Impregnated, the female laid eggs inside a mound of grass and mud. Then, answering an impulse dating back millions of years, she crawled atop the nest. She stayed there for more than a month, keeping her clutch warm.

The youngster was born in late spring. She announced her arrival, squeaking while still inside the egg. Mama responded by scraping away the vegetation that had helped incubate her egg and those of her siblings.

The hatchling kicked and bit her way out. She was hardly longer than a big man’s finger.

Mama picked her up in her mouth. Jaws that could break beef bones held the youngster gently. Mother took the baby to the water. Plop! The tiny alligator joined siblings already swimming in the currents.

The tidal river was perfect for a baby reptile. The tide brought food — insects, small fish, shrimp. With the mother gator keeping a careful watch, she spent her first year in relative safety, hugging close to the shoreline — knowing, innately, that larger creatures waited in the river’s depths. It was best to grow some more before venturing out there.

One year followed another. Summers, she lazed in the mud, her appetite growing along with her length. Winters, she slowed, awaiting the return of warmer weather. At 4, she was four feet long — the minimum length that made her legal quarry for a hunter. At 6, she had reached six feet in length. She’d also grown enough that she no longer feared anything in the river.

Nothing native to the river, anyway.

The last night of her life began as any other. The water was warm, alive. She felt it moving and knew: Food would be moving, too. She swam toward deeper water. It was time to hunt.

Others were on the hunt, too.

The sky sometimes lit up. Her brain registered the change. It was nothing to fear; night lightning is a constant in coastal Georgia.

Then, a different light. It came in flat and low across the water, dazzling in its intensity. She’d never seen anything that bright.

She paused.

Umph! Umph! … Umph-umph! The sounds of another gator. How could she know a man at the wheel of a boat was imitating her species?

She swam toward the sounds.

That light again, closer. She paused again.

Umph-umph!

She resumed swimming. The sounds were getting closer.

Then something – what? She’d never felt anything like it – grabbed her. It sunk sharp teeth in her side and wouldn’t let go. She rolled, dove into the black water, thrashed. And still it held on.

She surfaced. She pulled. She yanked. And still that thing held her. She made a run toward shore — shore, sanctuary. Something pulled her back. She slapped the water with her tail, crack! And still that something held her.

It pulled her toward the light. In a moment, something slid over her snout, then encircled her neck. She tried rolling to escape.

Again, that light — this time, so close. It filled the world. She stopped struggling.

I held that light. Gillis had handed it to me in the final moments that his son fought to drag the gator to our boat.

The beam illuminated a creature maybe 7 feet long, dark-yellow with black stripes. Her eyes, which had glowed red in the water, now gleamed like anthracite.

His hands free, Gillis pointed to the spot where his son needed to shoot. It was a depression, maybe three inches behind her eyes. A bullet there would sever her spinal cord. Griff had one chance for a clean, killing shot.

5. Boated and beautiful

“There.”

The boy aimed the gun.

A .40-caliber Glock boomed once. The shot echoed in all directions. I imagined other gators pausing in their nocturnal wanderings, knowing: One of us is going into a cooler tonight.

She was dead. A thin stream of blood spilled out of the hole in her head. Griff lowered her into the water to cleanse the fatal wound; no need getting blood inside the boat.

Adrenaline flowing, father and son grinned at each other. They looked at me. I felt a wild thumping in my arms and legs; blood roared in my veins. This, I thought, is what it feels like to kill something. I felt myself grinning foolishly and didn't try to stop.

“That shot was perfect, Griff,” said his dad.

“Thank you, sir.”

I fist-bumped the kid.

‘Nice shot, son,” I added.

“Thank you, sir.”

We hauled her on board, admiring her perfection — slender, built for swimming; strong jaws, made for snapping; and a beautiful tail, perfect for gator chunks. A precise measurement would place her at 6-feet, 8-inches long.

Gillis took a tag, issued by the state to track where the gator was taken, and by whom. He clipped it to her tail. Gator No. 0005966 now became a statistic for the 2014 hunt.

The elder Gillis was pleased. Fewer than a third of the hunters who get a permit actually bag a gator, he said. On his first outing, the son had snagged a creature, dragged it to the boat and dispatched it with one shot. We’d managed to boat one after three hours of prowling in the dark.

“We’ll be back in plenty of time for church tomorrow,” he said.

The outboard coughed into life again. With heat lightning in the south, we cut a V through the dark waters of the Champney River. We cranked the boat onto the trailer as another set of hunters arrived to stalk the same water’s we’d just left.

I was in bed by 1:30 a.m. and slept soundly. The next morning I was out the door, heading home.

I thought about alligator No. 0005966 as the miles clicked past. I relived the moment — holding the light, urging the boy forward, feeling something wild in my soul as the gun boomed. If Gillis had offered to blood my face with the gator’s blood, as deer hunters do for a hunter’s first kill, I would have said OK.

Then I remembered that long-ago boy, as alone and afraid as the baby bird that trembled on the ground before him. I wondered what happened to that kid.