In short supply

Natural disasters such as hurricanes don’t ordinarily affect wildlife all that much. Hurricane Isaac, which drenched Louisiana last month, apparently did.

Wildlife authorities have dramatically curtailed deer seasons in low-lying areas of the state, where as many as 90 percent of this year’s fawns are feared drowned.

From the Associated Press:

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — More than a month after Hurricane Isaac invaded southern Louisiana, state wildlife biologists confirmed last week that the Category I storm’s surge and heavy rains could have more long-lasting wildlife and habitat effects than much stronger storms bearing names like Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike.

State Wildlife Division chief Kenny Ribbeck told the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission that extended periods of high water over 391,000 acres in what he described as “The Maurepas Basin,” likely resulted in fawn mortality as high as 90 percent and light-to-moderate adult deer mortality.

Those estimates, Ribbeck said, forced wildlife biologists and managers to call for a reduction in the seasons lengths and switch in the decade-old either-sex-take allowed to deer hunters.

While the emergency plan the LWFC approved during Thursday’s meeting did not change the structure of the archery-deer season, it altered the primitive and modern firearms seasons throughout this basin and most of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes.

The firearms seasons in these areas will be bucks-only, and a reduction of 46 days for Maurepas Basin and more than 60 days for St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes’ deer hunters.

The hunters with their prize (AP photo/Austin WInter)

Wow. It’s hard for me to imagine snagging a near-700-pound reptile and then hanging onto the line until it tires enough to get next to the boat. To me that’s like lashing oneself to a stick of dynamite.

Then again, I’m a hillbilly, not swamp person.

From the Associated Press:

FITLER, Miss. (AP) — The hunters knew there was a huge ‘gator in wetlands where they had hunting permits. He gave them a scare before they killed him, but they got a state record — 697.5 pounds.

It took six days just to sight the gator on private land where Tom Grant of Cleveland had spotted it while fishing and where the hunters had permits to catch several alligators.

“I caught one two years ago that was 12 feet, 9 inches long and I knew this one was as big or bigger,” Grant told The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger.

They spotted it late Sept. 21. The big guy — females don’t get that big — spotted them too. It went under water.

“I threw in his general area and hooked him on a blind cast,” said Grant.

Grant, Kenny Winter and Jim Reed, both of Greenville, and Michael Robbers of Palos Verdes, Calif., got more hooks in the gator as it headed for deeper water.

It stayed at the bottom for a while. When it surfaced, it came up under the boat.

“Depending on who you talk to, he either rocked us or almost sank us,” said Reed.

Winter said, “He hit the boat so hard we started taking on water on the opposite side. We started stomping on the bottom of the boat to make him change his plans.”

From first hook to final gunshot took two hours, with another 2 1/2 to wrestle the beast to shore and lash its head to the boat trailer. By then it was Sept. 22.

“We tried to winch him up on the trailer. It broke my winch,” Winter said Sunday.

They drove slowly the mile or two to camp, dragging the alligator.

The head of Mississippi’s alligator program drove from Jackson with a portable scale later Sept. 22. The gator broke the old state record by 7 pounds.

The 13-foot 1.5-inch gator is far shy of the 19-foot-2 that Tabasco Sauce president and naturalist E.A. McIlhenny said he measured against his shotgun’s 30-inch barrel in 1890. That’s listed as Louisiana’s and the species record.