Does anyone have experience coon hunting around alligators? I live in North Carolina and was thinking about coon hunting on our South Georgia deer hunting property. The problem is that there is a gator in our pond and i'm not sure how safe it is for the dogs even in the winter months. Any suggestions?

Gators can, have, and will eat dogs. Tracking collars are great. If the tracking collar is sending a signal from a water source, but no dog is present, then you got yourself a problem. The collar can be found a week or so later on the edge of the bank from what I've heard.

There was a story out of FL some years back about a guy loosing many high dollar coon dogs over time. He did the tracking collar and it lead to a huge gator. The DNR speculated the old gator had learned to ambush the dogs at a specific spot the dogs used to cross between a swamp and thicket. I am under the impression the guy just let them run every night on their own. I can't recall how many collars they found but it was many. Seems like the big gent was laying on the onther side of a log the dogs had to jump over, it's been a while though. When I lived near Daytona there were always stories of gators climbing 4 ft chain link, eating the pooch and getting trapped in the back yard not being able to figure out to climb back over. A lot of owners got their dogs ate by playing fetch in the water as well.

Not really sure about the climate of your propety down there. When it get's cold they go into a hibernation mode. He will be at the bottom of that pond and have to come up twice a day to get a breath of air. In Central and South FL there is not many cold snaps so they are out most of the year. Up in Birmingham AL they have a zoo. I read an article once that they had to keep a little section of ice cleared in their gator pond so they could come up for air.

I wouldn't take them down there if it is over 50 degrees. A gator can out run a dog if he is fully charged. They start getting a tad sluggish at about 70 degrees.