She arrived to the Central Pasco Chamber of Commerce mixer last week at the recently reopened Beef O’ Brady’s at the Village Lakes Shopping Center with long blonde hair, perfectly manicured nails and an inviting smile – to represent her family’s heating and cooling company.
But that’s just touching the surface. Charlene Ierna might help service and sell air-conditioning units during the day, but her off time is filled with a much different passion: gator hunting.
While it might not be the most common form of game hunting in Florida, alligator hunting attracts many adventure-seekers looking to come face-to-face with the state’s largest native reptile. And these hunters don’t use guns. Instead, they stalk their prey with weapons like spear guns or crossbows.
“A lot of people still do consider it a little dangerous,” said Ierna, who is vice president of Ierna’s Heating & Cooling in Lutz. “Having been around them my whole life when I would hunt them with my dad as a kid, I’m still not going to say that I’m comfortable with them. You can never be comfortable with something that is more powerful than you are.”
Ierna captured her first gator this past Easter during a professionally guided hunt just south of Bartow. Her gator measured 13 feet and 4 inches, and weighed 800 pounds. She lured it close to her with an alligator call, and then while it was still in the water, hit it with her crossbow.
A giant bobber, that was part of the arrow she shot, kept the alligator afloat. She finished it off later with a second arrow.
“They’re dinosaurs essentially,” Ierna said. “One bow and arrow is not going to do the job, unless it’s a perfect shot hit in the perfect place.”
But hunting an alligator is not just for the trophy head. Fully processed gator hides can run for as much as $100 a foot, according to Shane Smith, a Lutz resident who owns The Hungry Gator Meat Market in Plant City.
Alligator meat, while not quite ready to replace beef or chicken in most people’s diets, is still quite popular with various eateries, including Hungry Harry’s on US 41, which serves a popular gator sausage sandwich.
“Alligators, especially wild alligators, are found only in the Southeast, and there are few other alligator farms outside of there,” Smith said.
The alligator meat industry as a whole has grown 500 percent in the past year alone, Smith said. That’s due in large part to cable television shows like “Swamp People” and “Gator Boys” that have whet the nation’s taste buds to alligator steaks and alligator sausage.
“Trappers in Florida used to only sell to local restaurants. Now they’re shipping to restaurants all over the country,” Smith said. His meat processing company, open only a year, already is distributing more than 450 pounds of gator meat a week to restaurants, including Charley’s Steak House and Market Fresh Fish in Tampa.
For the uninitiated, gator meat tastes a bit like chicken, believe it or not, and has a texture probably best described as those found in certain types of fish. But it does have some significant health benefits.
“It’s a very lean meat, low in cholesterol and high in protein,” Smith said. “It has a higher protein count than in chicken or tuna.”
Ierna, in the meantime, is already gearing up for her next alligator hunt. She’s heading to St. John’s River in September with the hopes of picking up two more gators to add to her collection.
This time, Ierna will be without a professional guide. She’ll be hunting an animal with heightened senses of smell and sight that could turn the tables on a hunter in an instant.
“My personal opinion, and I even tell my kids this,” Ierna said. “They are far more intimidated by you than what you think. They don’t want anything to do with us.”
But still: “You have to be wise and be alert, and you certainly can’t be relaxed. You can’t just sit and look and just hope everything goes well. You have to be attentive to what’s going on.”
