Gator girl

LITTLE ROCK — Several men have killed more than one alligator in Arkansas, but Rhonda Hampton of Lodge Corner is the only woman with two in the bag.

She killed her second gator Sept. 22 on a family owned reservoir in Arkansas County. It was 7 feet, 3 inches long, and though it wasn’t as big as she wanted, it marked a satisfying end to two weekends of all-night hunts and corresponding days of insomnia. Hampton killed it in the waning minutes of the season, when she had to decide between gambling on a risky opportunity to get a 10-footer or take what was available. She took the gator in hand, so to speak, and put herself in Arkansas hunting lore.

Hampton’s first gator was 8-3. She killed it in 2009 on a permit she got through a random drawing conducted by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

“I went out that night and we chased quite a few,” Hampton said. “We finally found one.”

Hampton’s first gator provided some valuable lessons, such as when to capture one with a snare or a harpoon.

“You have to have them restrained before you can shoot them, either by a snare or harpoon,” Hampton said. “If it’s in open water, you can get the snare around its neck. If it’s in the weeds or lily pads, you have to use a harpoon. She kind of got out in the open water, and I was able to get the snare around her head. She went down and gave a little bit of a fight, but when she came back up I was able to shoot her.”

Sloan Hampton, Rhonda’s husband, explained the challenge of snaring a gator.

You find them by shining a light across the water.

Alligators have a membrane under the retina that glows red when illuminated by white light. Inexperienced hunters mistakenly believe that alligators lie flat in the water, but Sloan Hampton said they actually suspend in an S-shape. If you try to slide a snare straight down a gator’s head, it will simply back out of the snare.

“That’s exactly what happened,” Rhonda Hampton said. “It took me three or four tries. I went to get him, and he went in reverse.”

Instead, you have to clear the head, pull the snare down and then back up to get a secure hold. Once captured, a gator fights hard, and it can resort to a number of tricks. You have to be prepared for anything.

“You don’t know what kind of ride you’re in for,” Rhonda Hampton said.

“They can go down. They can roll, or they can pull you around.”

They also bite.

“I told you about how I was a little leery of the big ones,” Hampton said, “but this one I got Saturday night came up and bit the side of the boat so hard that it knocked out its teeth on both sides of its mouth. I’ve killed a few deer, but the adrenaline you get from fighting something that can turn around and really hurt you is unlike anything else.”

The few deer that Rhonda Hampton has killed include a collection of very large Arkansas bucks. She also hunts pheasants in South Dakota, but she grew up hunting raccoons and rabbits in eastern Arkansas.

“I’ve been hunting as far back as I can remember,” Rhonda Hampton said. “We grew up west of Brinkley in a community called Monroe. When I was 13, we moved to DeValls Bluff. Well, you’re right there on the [Cache] river. It’s where you grow up that’s what you know. I started deer hunting, and it led to other opportunities.”

She hunts from stands on family property, but she doesn’t work as hard at it as she once did. Sloan Hampton added a garage to the house that includes a storage room on top with a window that overlooks a food plot out back. That’s where she got one of her biggest bucks.

“I still go out in the big stand, but the three I killed last year I never had to leave the house,” Rhonda Hampton said.

She described coming home from work one day and seeing deer in the yard as she pulled into the driveway. She glimpsed a big buck and backed out of the driveway to a place where the house concealed her vehicle.

“I came through the house and looked at him through binoculars,” Hampton said. “I went upstairs and got my gun [300 Winchester Short Magnum] and went through the garage. By the time I got there I was out of breath.”

Not surprising, considering Hampton was seven months pregnant.

“I sat there long enough,” she said. “He and 10 or 12 does were working across the yard, and I finally got him.”

For now, her second alligator is the year’s highlight. She was after a big one that had made itself quite at home in the Hampton’s rice fields. It was so imposing that Sloan Hampton said his hired hands didn’t want to work in the fields. They also saw it occasionally sunning itself on top of levees.

“A gator is lazy,” Sloan Hampton said. “It isn’t going to chase anything. It just sits there and eats whatever gets near it, but my guys didn’t want anything to do with it.

It was a real nuisance.”

Rhonda Hampton had the hide from the first gator tanned and converted to leather, which she intends to use to upholster a chair. The Hamptons also ate the meat and shared it with friends, as they will from this latest gator. Sloan Hampton said careful processing is very important for edibility.

“You’ve got to get that fat out of there,” he said. “If you don’t, you can’t get the scent off your hands. You’ve got to get it all. Nobody wants to catch 4-footers around here, but those are the best ones to eat.”