Alabamians have until July 12, 2016, at 8 a.m. to register for a chance to win an Alligator possession tag for the 11th alligator hunting season in the state.
Each person who receives the tag will be allowed to harvest one alligator.
With roughly up to 5,000 applicants registering every year, the returning applicants who have never won a tag earn “preference points” in order to heighten their chances of winning one of 260 possession tags.
Chris Nix, an Auburn alumnus and wildlife biologist at Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, discussed the success of this change since 2014.
“We’ve had great responses from the public,” Nix said. “I think it's been the best system we have in place for these alligator hunts.”
Nix said this preference points system was added because residents made complaints about never winning a tag, even after many years of applying. People were once allowed to purchase as many tags as they wanted as long as they paid the registration fee.
“Within a five-year period, people are almost always guaranteed at least one tag with these preference points,” Nix said.
The alligator population has remained stable throughout the years, with the exception of a decrease in the Lake Eufaula area.
“We believe that doesn't have anything to do with the hunt,” Nix said. “We think it had to do with more of the reproductive success of those alligators living there. Once we noticed that, we had to decrease the number of tags for that area.”
Nix and his coworkers conduct survey routes in all four of the hunting zones in order to see if the alligator population is increasing or decreasing.
“We run them year after year,” Nix said. “We always try to do it under the same weather conditions so that we can notice trends in the population.”
He also mentioned that the Mobile-Tensaw Delta still contains the highest population of gators out of all of the hunting zones. Nix will be teaching in the mandatory training courses for the applicants who win tags for the Southwest and West Central hunting zones.
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