Huge Gator bagged by York Countian

**87th PVI** · February 13th, 2009, 12:39 AM

Good golly! Man shoots gargantuan gator
By DAVE SOTTILE
Daily Record/Sunday News
http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_11680172?source=most_viewed

Posted: 02/11/2009 02:15:49 PM EST

Ed Yates of Hellam Township, left, killed this 13-foot, 800-pound gator recently during a trip to Florida. He said he killed the gator to help out the man who owned the pond where the gator was living because the man was afraid to let his children and his dogs out in his yard.

Good thing Ed Yates had already proceeded with plans to expand his Hellam Township home.

He'll need the extra space for his latest hunting harvest, because it's none too easy finding a spot for a 13-foot, 800-pound alligator.

"I have 150 animals mounted at the house, and probably another 120 that need to be mounted," the big-game hunter said Tuesday. "That's why we're adding on to the house again. I was just talking to the architect about his drawings."

Yates, a retired Dentsply International senior vice president and chief financial officer, has traveled the world following his passion for hunting.

By his own account, Yates has hunted on six continents and in nearly 50 countries, with more than 200 species of animals, including polar bears, a variety of deer, some 26 different types of goats and 30-some varieties of wild sheep.

"You name it, I've probably hunted it," Yates said, adding that he has 2009 trips planned for southern Mexico (to hunt deer), the Arctic Circle (musk ox), Nepal (Himalayan blue sheep), Peru (deer), Alaska (brown bear) and Greece (kri-kri ibex, a wild goat).

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Late last month, while on a trip to Florida with his wife of 21 years, Yates met up with Lee Lightsey, who arranged for him to help track down "a problem gator" near the central Florida town of Okeechobee.

"The homeowner had a deep, quarter-acre pond in his backyard," Yates explained. "And in that pond was a rather large alligator, who had migrated from a canal on the other side of the road.

"He had kids in the house he was afraid to let out in the yard. He had dogs that needed to stay in cages. He needed that gator taken care of."

So Yates, using his 300 WSM rifle, planned to shoot the alligator between the eyes -- a "brain shot," he called it, something that "would end it quick."

Yates waited for hours before the alligator showed his nose above the water. Yates shot the animal in the nose, causing the alligator to thrash up and out of the water "like a Polaris missile."

Yates said he finished off the alligator with two more shots, and a front-end loader was called in to help remove the animal from the property. He said the length was 13 feet and estimated its weight between 700 and 800 pounds.

"No. 1, I thought I was doing a good deed for someone," Yates said, explaining his reasons for his most recent hunt. "No. 2, gator meat is a delicacy in Florida. There were several people who heard what I was doing and they wanted some of the meat.

"I'm getting the gator mounted, and I'm keeping some of the meat, but I gave a lot of it away, including some from the tail to the guy at a WalMart in Florida who sold me my alligator hunting license."

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Yates' wife, Arlina, said she's long since gotten used to her husband's appetite for big-game hunting, which frequently puts him in harm's way.

"The first 10 years or so, there was always some gut-clenching going on when he went out on one of these trips," Arlina Yates said. "The transportation he takes getting to the hunt, the environments he's hunting in, the animals themselves. . . . There are any number of ways he could die.

"And I always pray for his safety, but what's changed for me is that he's almost died a couple of times and I've seen God's hands on him. I know he's being protected."

Which isn't to say Arlina Yates doesn't still worry from time to time.

"I'm not going to say that Ed's not going to die on a hunting trip someday," she said. "But with what he's gone through already, I have a sense of peace that this is just what he does.

"It's part of his purpose in life, and God is with us, whether he lives or dies doing what he loves to do. As long as we're following God's way in life, that's what is most important."

dave@ydr.com; 771-2063