Sports

Outdoors

No tears for Big Joe

It's spring, and alligators are on the prowl. One legendary beast inspires a look back at scary encounters.

By TERRY TOMALIN
Published May 12, 2005

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[Times art: Steve Madden]

When word reached me that Joe was dead, I was saddened but not surprised. There's an old saying that if you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword and Joe's aggressive reputation extended far beyond the otherwise peaceful stretch of the Hillsborough River he called home.

Nobody knows how old he was, or how many people he had threatened, when a slug from a .44 Magnum finally ended his reign of terror. Few mourn his passing, for there's no doubt Joe was a cold-blooded predator, a monster in some eyes, who would kill man, woman or child without a blink.

Yes, Joe was the stuff of nightmares. He struck a primordial nerve that lies dormant in most people until they are faced, sometimes quite suddenly, with the issue of survival.

"He had a way of making an impression on people," said Jack Coleman, a simple man who played a major role Joe's death. "I had nothing but respect for him. This was his home. But he had to go."

I recently learned of Joe's death from a fellow student in my Florida Rivers class at the University of South Florida. Even though the following events happened more than a decade ago, I decided to research Joe's life and death for a class paper.

My search started with Coleman. I wanted to know the details, not out of morbid curiosity, but for my own peace of mind. For since our first meeting a quarter century ago, Joe has more than once invaded my dreams.

I hated him for it, yet I know his nocturnal intrusions into my psyche had somehow made me tougher, stronger, more like him. Still, I needed closure. So naturally I was tickled to learn that when Joe was shot, Coleman had kept his head.

"That's him," I said gazing into the lifeless black eyes that had stared me down one warm October afternoon 25 years ago. "I'll never forget those teeth."

In 1980, life was simple. I had no money, no worries, no fear. But after meeting Joe, I vowed to never again travel unarmed. That first encounter, deep in the swamp, left me visibly shaken. I tried to hide my fear, but Sam Prather saw through the charade.

"You look like you have just seen a ghost," said the grizzled old canoe instructor.

I had been paddling since l was old enough to walk, but was taking Prather's class because I thought it would be an easy "A."

We had put in at Hillsborough River State

Park, I in a small whitewater kayak, the rest of the class in canoes. I should have stayed with the group, but instead pressed ahead to an area about 2 miles south where the river narrowed and entered the swamp.

A few families - their names long forgotten - homesteaded here up until the '50s. By 1980, however, the land had been abandoned, except for the rattlesnakes, wild pigs and of course, Joe.

This was his home and he guarded it till the end. The swamp to the south, a maze of tiny creeks and channels called Seventeen Runs, was where he hunted and killed.

"I remember coming back from a fishing trip one day around sunset," recalled Coleman, now a ranger a Wilderness Park Dead River. "I knew I had stayed longer than I should have and was feeling a little apprehensive. Seventeen Runs isn't someplace you want to be after dark."

Coleman had just rounded a bend of the river when the wind shifted and he caught the smell of rotting flesh.

"I smelled it long before I saw it," he said. "But there it was, the mangled body of a 200-pound buck staring up at me through the water."

The deer probably had been drinking from the river when Joe sneaked up, grabbed it and snapped its neck like a dry twig. He hunted both sides of the river, but on warm afternoons, he liked to bask in the sun on the west bank. From here, he had an easy view of any thing or body that came or went. It was a perfect point for ambush, as I would soon learn.

[Times photo: Keri Wiginton] Jack Coleman, a ranger at Dead River Park, peers through the impressive jaws of the late Joe.

The Hillsborough's current isn't strong, except after a hurricane. But on this day, the water was swift, and I moved along without much effort, hugging the banks, where the current was the quickest.

Moving swiftly and silently, I scanned the shoreline for signs of life, but saw none. Still, I had an eerie sense I was not alone.

I rounded the bend and came face to face with Big Joe.

Our eyes met for a second and neither one of us moved. Frozen with fear, I let the current carry me forward, straight into a downed tree. I swerved to avoid it and nearly tipped the kayak. When I glanced back over my shoulder, Joe was gone.

Pressing on, I soon found myself helplessly lost among the many channels of Seventeen Runs. Every few minutes I glanced back over my shoulder, because I had a gut-wrenching feeling I was being stalked.

A zebra on the plains of Africa knows when a lion is near. He might not see it, he might not hear it, he might not smell it, yet he knows it is there, because he feels it.

It's an age-old game played by predator and prey, each actor knowing and accepting its role. The feeling in pit of my stomach told me that despite my perceived status as apex predator, I had gone from hunter to hunted.

Two hours later, the river finally opened and I pulled over at Morris Bridge Road and told Prather what had happened. He laughed, gave me a pat on the back and told me that he knew all about Big Joe.

A year later, I returned to the river better prepared, this time with a roommate.

I haven't talked to Brian French in more than a decade, but I called him last week and asked him if he remembered that fateful day on the Hillsborough River. He said he did, as if it happened yesterday:

"What's that for?" French had asked as I duct-taped a knife to the canoe thwart.

"Just in case," I said.

Within a few hours, we found ourselves in Joe's stretch of river. We were watching a wild pig scampering along the shoreline when French let out a scream.

I turned just in time to see Joe jump off the bank and land a few feet from our canoe. The impact rocked our boat and nearly tipped it over.

"Did you see that?" French yelled.

That is when I told him about my first encounter with the Sentinel of Seventeen Runs.

***

Not long thereafter, I left Tampa and found myself in a desk job. I didn't get on the water much, but studied natural history and developed a morbid fascination with large alligators and the people they killed.

In August 1984, an 11-year-old boy was killed while swimming in a canal in St. Lucie County by a 12-foot-4 bull gator described as "aged and in poor health." Three years later, a 29-year-old snorkeler on the Wakulla River as killed by a 11-foot male.

That same year, I ran into an old fried, Rick Norcross, and we set out down the Hillsborough together. About a hundred yards north of Seventeen Runs, I found Big Joe swimming down the center of the river.

Quiet as a cat stalking its prey, I sneaked up on the big bull gator.

"It was calm as a mirror and you paddled right up its back," Norcross recalled in a recent interview. "Then it disappeared and I remember the 10 minutes that followed were the spookiest 10 minutes of my life."

A few months later, Big Joe ate Jack Coleman's dog.

"There was an old woman fishing with a cane pole sitting right next to him," Coleman said. "She said it just came out of nowhere and grabbed it. She was pretty shaken up."

Coleman really started to worry when the scouts had a campout at Dead River. A few of the boys were playing near the shoreline, and Coleman watched as Big Joe crossed the river to get closer to the potential prey.

"That was it," Coleman said. "Kids are on the menu with dogs and raccoons."

Coleman notified state officials, which in turn contacted a licensed alligator trapper. Mike Fagan, just 22, was a seasoned veteran.

"At that point I had been working with my father for 15 years," he explained.

In October of '93, Fagan baited a cow to a big treble hook and secured it to a piece of re-bar pounded into the river bank.

"He (Big Joe) watched the bait for three days," Coleman said.

Fagan said the big male was probably 35 to 45 and smart to have lived that long, but on the fourth day, he took the bait.

Fagan and his father, Mike, returned and dragged the gator out of the water, but not before Joe had twisted the re-bar into a horseshoe.

The trappers tried to weigh Big Joe but their scale wasn't big enough. "It stopped at 650 pounds," Coleman recalled.

Fagan saved the hide, which was "validated" on Oct.13, and gave Coleman some of the 130 pounds of meat stripped off the alligator.

Coleman got to keep the Big Joe's head. Inside the jaw is written the year, 93, and the permit number, 7233.

"We remove about 7,000 nuisance alligators every year," said Lt. Gary Morse, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "The problem is that people feed them and they lose their fear of humans."

Nobody knows for sure how many alligators live in Florida's lakes and rivers, but by best estimates, the number lies somewhere between 1- and 2-million.

When Fagan pulled Big Joe out of the Hillsborough, he told Coleman that it wouldn't be long before an 8-footer claimed his old den. Sure enough, a week hadn't gone by before another male took over Joe's old territory.

On a recent trip to the old homestead, now called Wilderness Park Dead River, I stood on the bank where I had stood so many times before and looked across the river at the new kid in town.

I think I'll call him Little Joe.

[Last modified May 11, 2005, 23:30:28]

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