Very little of the leather is now used in making shoes, the chief demand being for handbags, music-rolls, etc.
In hunting alligators for their hides two methods are usually employed, in our Southern States at least. The common method is “fire-hunting” at night; the hunters here go, either singly or in pairs, usually in boats, sometimes on foot, with shotgun and torch. The torch may be fastened to the hunter’s hat, after the manner of the miner’s lamp. One more progressive hunter that I knew had, as a torch, an acetylene lamp, attached to his hat, with the tube for the gas extending down his back to the generator in his pocket. This lamp threw a blinding beam of light far across the swamp into the eyes of the unsuspecting ’gator, which usually remained fascinated until it could be approached to within easy range. A shotgun at close range, of course, blows off nearly the entire top of the animal’s head and kills it instantly; it is then seized before it sinks out of reach and is either taken into the boat or dragged upon the bank to be collected with others in the early morning.
In daylight, with no glaring light to hypnotize it, the alligator is difficult to approach within range and it usually disappears into its cave before the hunter can get a shot at it. The daylight hunter, then, should be supplied not, of course, with a light, but with a ten- or fifteen-foot pole with a large iron hook at the end. If the alligator be vigorously prodded with this mammoth fishhook he will usually finally seize it with his mouth and can be pulled out of his hole alive. It is then an easy matter to kill him with a bullet through the base of the brain. I have seen an eight-foot alligator thus killed with a little .22 calibre “cat” rifle. An eight-foot alligator will often be all that two men can manage to drag out of his cave in this way; and, in the torrid heat of the Southern swamp, this violent exercise is not to the liking of the usually not very energetic hunter.
While the manufacture of leather gives the chief value to the alligator there are other ways in which it has some economic importance. Chief of these is probably the sale of alligator goods to tourists. In 1891 there were in Jacksonville, Florida, twelve dealers in live and stuffed alligators. In 1890, 8400 alligators were sold to tourists, the price for the live animals varying from $10.00 to $35 per hundred. For individual animals of the smallest size (less than twelve inches long) the price is usually from 50 cents to $1.00. For a three-foot alligator the price is generally $3-$5.00; for sizes over three feet $2.00 per foot may be charged, though for very large specimens the price may be from $50 to $300 each.
Besides the live and stuffed animals the teeth are polished and sold as souvenirs; about 450 pounds of teeth were sold in 1890, at a price varying from $1.00 to $2.00 per pound. From 75 to 200 teeth will make a pound.
In 1891 about forty people, in addition to the regular dealers, were engaged, in the United States, in stuffing alligators, polishing teeth, etc. The teeth are extracted by burying the head until decomposition sets in.
The tiny alligators that are most commonly sold to tourists, to be brought North, perhaps, and allowed to freeze or starve to death, may either be caught by a wire noose at the end of a fishing rod, or they may be hatched from eggs that are taken from the nests shortly before they are ready to hatch. Such eggs may readily be hatched by simply keeping them moist and at a fairly constant temperature, as has been previously noted. Besides the above uses Ditmars says: “The eggs are eaten in many portions of the South, and the search for eggs at the proper season furnishes profitable employment for many persons, as each nest contains a large number of eggs.”
Broad-Nosed Caiman. (Caiman latirostris.)
Distribution: Tropical South America.