'Crocodile Sandy'
Well, maybe I am crazy. I went alligator hunting on a moonless night with my friend and fellow writer Sandy Huff, and while she was on a canoe in this alligator infested swamp in South Florida, I was on this little boat with this sheriff's deputy among three alligators Sandy captured with her crossbow before the night was over.
Nuisance alligator trapper Dave Regel and Sandy Huff
So says the book of rules on alligator hunting Sandy Huff received when she was one of 768 to win a permit for a special gator hunt at the 6,500 acre lake Trafford area in the Florida Everglades.
A sportswoman and outdoors writer, Sandy was born and reared in South Florida but had never considered hunting alligators.
But on her first night hunt, she bagged three gators with her crossbow including an 11-foot 7-inch long trophy.
That's when Sandy Huff became known as "Crocodile Sandy." Of course that nickname fails to grasp that crocodiles and alligators are different members of the reptile family.
"I considered it my civic duty to go hunt some gators," she said matter-of-factly on the night of her first hunt.
After returning home from a swamp-buggy ride last April and seeing thousands of huge alligators lurking in the Lake Trafford wetlands, she decided to learn more about the critters and contacted Dave Regel, a South Florida nuisance alligator trapper.