Regel showed Sandy how to shoot a crossbow, allowing her practice shots before taking to the alligator infested lake waters.
The most difficult part is holding the cross bow. "You're looking at the gator's eyes," Regel said. "Be alert, no star-gazing."
To find an alligator, the hunter wears a hat with a mounted light.
When the light shines on the alligator, the hunter will see two red dots in the distance.
The pickup boat is then notified to come to the site and the alligator is hoisted aboard it.
"Don't be afraid of them. But do have a nice healthy respect for them," Regel urged Sandy as she readied her shot.
The deal struck between Regel and Sandy was that she would get two salted hides and 100 or so pounds of meat. Regel would get the rest. With raw hides going for $17 to $20 per foot, this would pay the trapper for his services.
Sounds simple, but it isn't. There's a lot more to alligator hunting than that.
Packing up lots of bug repellent and long-sleeved shirts, Regel was off in his Alligator Trapper-marked truck with a Genoe canoe strapped on top and pulling a 16-foot Carolina Skiff pickup boat.
The pickup boat was staffed by Jeff Cox, a Collier County deputy sheriff and Pat Lieb, this writer.
When Regel told Huff they'd be going out into the heavily-alligator populated lake in a canoe armed with a crossbow, she thought he was crazy. "I assumed they'd be out with loaded revolvers" looking for the notorious beasts.
But she found the Genoe very safe and the crossbow "amazingly easy to use," with the front sight being a tiny red light, the size of a pin head.
The difficult part was using the head-mount as a flashlight by turning her head to search for the alligator's red eyes glowing in the black night. After finding the gator, she had to figure which way it was facing and allow it to move within 30 feet of the canoe.
On her first shot, Sandy pulled back on the draw, "there was a ting. Then the water just exploded. There was this great fog."
Regel then picked up his hand-held radio and said, "Jeff, come to us," breaking the tranquil sounds of tree frogs and the unidentifiable chirping and critter music across the swarthy waters.
Regel cupped two half-gallon-size floats to the end of the 50-foot alligator line which already contained a small float.He followed the runaway floats, guiding the canoe closer, picking up the floats and reeling the bolt line in.
With the bolt embedded close to the gator's spine, Regel pulled it to the canoe, then using a bang-stick, jabbed the gator on the forehead and sent a 12-gauge shotgun shell into its skull.
Until 1963, alligators were considered legal game in Florida, with alligator hunting a profitable, but poorly managed venture.
With the animal on the verge of extinction, the state banned hunting and designated the reptile a protected species.
By 1988, with gator numbers near record levels in some parts of the state, the Florida Wildlife Commission established a tightly controlled harvesting program.