Lake Waccamaw backpedals on alligator hunt; Hyde County moves forward

At its regular meeting on Tuesday, the Town Board of Lake Waccamaw rescinded an earlier approval to apply to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to hold an alligator hunt. The vote was 3-1 in favor of a proposal by Commissioner Kevin Butler with a second by Commissioner Jimmy Stanly against holding the hunt. Also voting in favor of the motion was Commissioner Frank Carroll and voting against was Commissioner Matt Wilson.

At issue were lots of questions and confusion regarding details of how the hunt would have been conducted. N.C. Wildlife Resources Commissioner Richard Edwards spoke in favor of the hunt.

"It's an effort to protect the resources we have," Edwards said. "Do we allow poachers to poach them or do we eliminate poaching and allow a resident to harvest that animal? Fifty to 100 alligators are poached or hit by cars each year."

While that hunt was shot down, Hyde County has moved forward in hosting North Carolina's first alligator hunt in decades. Rather than a town, it is a county, but it qualifies for the hunt under NCWRC rules.

For Lake Waccamaw, the hunt would have been confined to the Big Creek area and NCWRC personnel would accompany hunters who successfully applied for a tag. Edwards said the Commission had not yet decided on the value of the lottery style tags, but estimated the fee could be as high as $1,000, which could help pay for alligator studies and research.

Edwards said NCWRC biologists had yet to determine how many alligators a hunt in the Lake Waccamaw area would target, or in any other area. The hunt is patterned on the success of a similar program that allows municipalities to deal with over-abundant deer, the Urban Archery Program, which also requires municipalities to submit an application.

"Biologists would determine the number of alligators to harvest, but it would be very low," he said. "Maybe two to five, perhaps 10, but no more than that"

The reason for the vague numbers is that, until a municipality adopts the season, it is not necessary to establish a hunt quota. Each hunting area's quota will be tailored to the desires of the community and the abundance and size of alligators. Biologists would accompany hunters on every hunt, pointing out alligators in the right hunting areas. That could dispel some of the Town Commissioners' concerns about hunting alligators on private property or waters overwhelmed by large numbers of hunters. With the hunt still in the planning and research stage, biologists would be on hand to examine harvested alligators.

The devil is in the details and details regarding the actual hunt are currently in short supply. The problem is that until this week, no municipality had adopted the alligator hunt, although the NCWRC had extended an original deadline of May 1 to June 1 for applications.

"It's a wonderful wildlife resource that has been restored, just like turkeys and deer," Edwards said. "Our sportsmen should also have access to the alligator resource, now that it has been restored. Make no mistake an alligator hunt is going to happen. This was a chance for the Town of Lake Waccamaw to get out, ahead."

"I voted in favor of the alligator hunt," said Town Commissioner Matt Wilson. "An alligator has tried several times to get into the pen and attack my Labs. It's only a matter of time until we have a problem. I don't want to wait until that happens."