COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Roy Floyd is used to opening the coolers at his Peach Orchard Deer Processing plant and finding dozens of deer carcasses left by hunters overnight.
But one morning last year, he opened the door and discovered something completely different a huge gator carcass.
"It scared the hell out me," Floyd recalled.
He hadn't advertised that his business would handle gator processing, but he was willing to do it for his customers. One year and 14 gators later, he's an expert in slicing the tail meat into steaks.
Just down the road, Victor Smith has developed expertise in mounting gator heads at his family's Custom Taxidermy facility in the past few years.
When you see photos of hunters next to huge gators they have killed, that's only the beginning of the process. People like Floyd and Smith do the rest.
When the state Legislature voted to allow the first gator hunting season in nearly 40 years in 2008, Smith knew what to do. He had helped pull some big reptiles from local ponds as part of the nuisance gator program starting in 2005, and he used those carcasses to learn the intricacies of gator taxidermy.
"I didn't really see the (hunting) season coming, but when it did, I was ready," Smith said.
He also has served as a guide for hunters who draw one of the annual permits (1,200 were issued by DNR this year). But spending all night on the water stalking gators isn't nearly as time-consuming as preserving the prize catch for the hunter.
Gator-related work in South Carolina picked up Sept. 11 when the one-month hunting season began. On Sept. 18, when a hunter brought in a 12-footer (estimated to weigh 800 to 900 pounds) to Peach Orchard Processing, Smith got a call. The hunter wanted the head of the big reptile mounted. Skinners at Peach Orchard removed the head, and it was refrigerated until Smith could begin cleaning it on Monday.
"When they come in, you've got to put everything aside cause there's no place to freeze them," Smith said.
With the massive skull perched on a wooden table outside the taxidermy building, Smith spent about an hour using razor blades and knives to trim the approximately 25-pound tongue, the bottom of the throat and anything besides bone and skin from the base of the head. He rigged a section of broom handle with a screw sticking out to prop open the mouth to make it easier to get at the palate.
Cutting through the quarter-inch thick skin "is like cutting a tire," said Victor, who more routinely works with deer, ducks and fish. The gator head had a slightly fishy aroma.
The gator was missing a lot of teeth, but it obviously had no trouble catching prey. The head was one of the largest Victor had ever preserved. When his father, Vince, put a large bowl on the table to collect the usable meat from the jowls, Victor noted: "I think we're going to need a bigger bowl." It sounded like a similar line from the movie "Jaws."
With the initial work done, Victor cleared room for what remained of the skull in a refrigerator. He'll spend several more hours cleaning the meat and membranes from the snout so there's nothing but bone and skin remaining.
He'll also have to cut many of the bones and then reconstruct them in the taxidermy process. The hide is removed and soaked in a special solution for months to preserve it. Once everything is put back together, Smith will have to apply paint to restore the lost color.
If the customer opts for a head mount with skin attached, the process can take six months. Some hunters prefer the skull mount, without skin, which is simpler and takes only about a month, Smith said. Depending on the size of the gator, prices range from $250 and up for a skull mount and $300 and up for a skin mount.
If a customer wants the full gator preserved in a lifelike form, the costs easily can run into the thousands. Cordray's Taxidermy, one of the larger operations in the Lowcountry, charges $250 per foot for the full gator skin spread out flat like a rug but with the head and claws still attached.
With only 814 gators killed in the previous two hunting seasons in the state, taxidermy operations are still feeling their way around the gator market. So are processing plants.
At the Peach Orchard processing facility, Floyd would much rather cut the meat from a deer carcass (his U.S. Department of Agriculture-approved operation averages 3,200 deer a year). Gators are tough and slimy and they have more, and more intricate, bones than deer. Cutting them up wears out knives.
"I didn't even advertise for them," Floyd said. "They just started rolling in."
Skinning and gutting a gator takes several hours and needs to be done soon after they are dropped off by the hunter. With the 12-footer that was brought in on Sept. 18, the tail and trunk had to be separated so they could be hung from the freezer hooks about 6 feet up.
Monday afternoon, Floyd and co-worker Michael Aytes zipped through the butchering process of cutting meat from the bones and packaging in less than two hours. The work requires skill. Floyd got his start as a butcher in a grocery store.
The tail, with a T-shaped extension of the backbone separating four meaty sections, is relatively easy to butcher. Floyd made quick work of the tail, with Aytes helping slice probably a hundred steaks. Closer to the body, the steaks are the size of a beef T-bone. Near the tip they're filet mignon-sized.
After finishing the tail, Floyd and Aytes struggled to move the tree-trunk-size trunk of the gator from the freezer to the butcher slab.
"On a cow or a deer, the torso around the backbone is where all the steaks come from, but there's not much meat here," Floyd said. The big pile of meat strips he trimmed from the carcass would be chopped into small chunks or ground up for gator sausage.
Hunters can end up with nearly 100 pounds of meat from large gators. State law doesn't allow the hunters to sell the meat. Many invite friends to large dinners to help clear meat from crowded freezers. Aytes did that after getting a gator last year.
The unadorned meat tastes a little like fishy chicken, but spices and cooking technique can alter the taste and consistency. Wildlife cooking experts warn that gator meat gets tough if you cook it too long or on too hot a setting. But Aytes said his gator cube steak just falls apart when you take a bite.
The processing requires a lot of work for what Floyd charges (about $150 depending on the size). But the people who bring Floyd gators are loyal deer customers, so he does the work for them.
"As long as I make a few dollars, I'm happy," Floyd said.
