Copyright Charleston Post and Courier
The South Carolina alligator hunting season, which ended in early October, brought in applications from nearly every corner of the U.S. The season, which spanned Sept. 13-Oct. 11, is important for maintaining ecological balance across the state. This year, hunters slayed more than 450 alligators, with the potential for more harvest kill reports still to come, according to a state Department of Natural Resources official. That’s around 60 more gators than the year prior, somewhat in part due to the fact that officials issued an additional 200 permit tags this year as a result of a new category of gator sizes that hunters were required to comply with. South Carolina is home to an estimated 100,000 alligators, the majority of which live in the Midland and coastal regions south of the fall line. To be chosen for the hunt, an individual must submit an application during a set period between June and July. This year, 12,243 people signed up, with at least one applicant from each of 49 different states — and one Puerto Rican, according to Jay Butfiloski, furbearer and alligator program coordinator with DNR. The applicants are then thrown into a lottery system, which awarded 1,400 tag permits this year. Each hunter receives one tag eligible for the capture and kill of one alligator. Adult alligators can grow to be fairly large, but those that reach the tail end of the spectrum are rare. The longest alligator on record measured 19 feet, 2 inches and the heaviest 1,043 pounds — both found in in Gainesville, Fla., according to DNR. This year, the two largest two reptiles that hunters brought in included a 13-foot, 8-inch male weighing 781 pounds and a 10-foot, 10-inch female coming in at 323 pounds. The female represents an “exceptional length,” said Butfiloski. New permitting category Unlike previous year hunts, DNR implemented a new “slot tag” category limiting the size of alligators that some hunters were permitted to capture and kill. These are gators between 5 and 8 feet from the tip of the nose to end of the tail. Prior to 2025, any tag was good for the take of one gator larger than 4 feet. “There is always concern over the overharvest of very large alligators,” said Butfiloski. It can take around 30 years for gators to reach adult size, around 10-12 feet, and decades more for the species to ecologically recover from overharvests. While some hunters want the glory of killing the biggest and baddest of them all, there’s a tangible “segment of the hunting population that is perfectly fine with taking smaller alligators,” Butfiloski told The Post and Courier. The smaller creatures are easier to handle and process as well, an added benefit for some hunters. Around 53 percent of the alligators killed during the 2025 hunting season fit within the slot tag category, Butfiloski said. More than half of the 241 reptiles measuring between 5 and 8 feet were taken by regular tag holders who had been permitted to go after larger gators. All in all, the addition of the slot tag category proved to be effective, allowing DNR to have more hunters participate in season without the added risk of overharvesting the larger reptiles, said Butfiloski. Skills required for the hunt It is illegal to kill or attempt to kill an alligator that has not been restrained during the permitted hunting season, according to DNR. One can estimate the relative size of a gator by measuring between the animal’s nostrils and center of its skull between the eyes. For example, if this snout area measures 8 inches, one can roughly assume that the alligator is about 8 feet long. But rough estimates don’t fly during the hunt. The only way to be sure that a gator fits the accepted range permitted by a DNR-provided tag is to humanely capture the creature using snares, ropes or other regulated devices. If the gator fits the length requirements, then a hunter is permitted to “dispatch” the creature. Hunters are only allowed to use a handgun or a bangstick to get the job done. A bangstick is a pole-mounted device that can be used to humanely kill alligators. It delivers a firearm cartridge through the target on contact. Local spectacle and economy stimulator Employees at Cordray's Processing and Taxidermy, located in the heart of rural Ravenel, had a very busy hunting season, said part-owner and taxidermist Kenneth Cordray. “It was a long 30 days, but a good 30 days,” he told The Post and Courier. The folks at Cordray’s processed 170 gators during the monthlong hunt and harvest season. The biggest gator the team processed this year was 702 pounds, Cordray said. The majority of takes brought into the shop are cleaned and stripped for meat. While employees have found some interesting items inside alligators in the past, this year was so busy that crewmembers focused only on the meat and did not investigate the contents of internal organs, Cordray said. Business boomed online as well, he added. A number of the team’s videos posted to Instagram garnered mass attention. An Oct. 6 video of a 13-foot, 580-plus pound gator suspended from a crane had amassed nearly 39 million views by the time of publication.
