South Carolina Ping 
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Posted on 04/11/2021 11:53:59 AM PDT by george76
RAVENEL, S.C. - The owner of a Ravenel butcher and taxidermy shop says his team found five dog tags, a shell casing, turtle shells and even a spark plug inside the stomach of a 12-foot alligator killed by a Lowcountry hunter..
The gator, which weighed in at 445 pounds, was killed by Ned McNeely, who owns the Adams Run property where he found it.
He then took the animal to Cordray’s in Ravenel for processing, where the discovery was made.
I’ve got several alligator tags you apply for with the state,” he said.
South Carolina bases the number of tags hunters receive based on the acreage they have and alligator population.
McNeely said he has twin 7-year-old girls, three labs and a variety of duck impoundments at his property as well as a lot of swampland near the Edisto River.
“So I’m rife with alligators down there,” he said.
McNeely said he asked Kenneth Cordray about examining the gator’s belly.
Cordray says that’s something they don’t normally do, but in this case, they did.
“What we found is five dog tags, a spark plug...a bullet casing and bobcat claws,” Cordray said.
Former dog owner estimates age of dog tag found inside gator.. Some of the dog tags were still readable, so Cordray called one of the numbers.
I talked to him and he was an older gentleman and he said that he had a lease down on the other side of the river from where the gator was killed, 24 years ago,” he said. Cordray said with so many gators down there, a dog would come up missing. “And that’s what they always figured is the dogs got eaten by the gators,” he said.
“I’ve always known alligators will take a dog if they get the chance,” McNeely said. “But how does the spark plug get in there?”
Both McNeely and Cordray said it’s difficult to estimate the alligator’s age. McNeely called it “an old man.”
“They grow according to their habitat and their food supply and their population,” Cordray said. “But, I mean, he’s up there because he was big enough to eat [full grown hunting dogs] 25 years ago.”
He said he estimates the kind of dog the man described would have weighed about 80 pounds or so.
Cordray said his team will process the alligator meat into steaks, summer sausage and jerky, which takes about a week; and then will make a mount of the gator’s skin, a process that takes about nine months.
He said in his 10 to 15 years of hunting alligators, this one was the biggest he has killed so far.
“I had to shoot it a couple of times, and I had to get a bunch of ropes and hooks and kayaks and a tractor with a chain to finally get it out of the canal, because it was in probably an eight to nine-foot canal,” he said.
McNeely said he’s still deciding what to do with the gator.
“My wife is upset with me,” he said, “because I’m talking about doing a full mount, or I might do a rug mount. I haven’t decided just yet.”
But he joked that his wife was “having discussions” with him about the plan.
Hate gator meat it’s as chewy as they look. Wouldn’t bother me if we got rid of all gators on US soil.
Hey! Hey! Hey!
I wonder where my spark plugs went... Did he find my V-12 engine? 😀
South Carolina Ping
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Perhaps a pair of nice shoes, or a designer handbag, made of Alligator leather might make his wife a little happier.
Did my Basic at Ft. Jackson in 83, my barracks were called “old Hollywood” because of the newer barracks “new Hollywood “ on post. I guess they were “Hollywood “ to you, better than the metal dome huts or old wooden barracks of the past.
Moral of the story is apparently to not leave your hunting dog in a small car near the swamp.
Unless the DI was SSgt. Matthew McKeon.
“And that’s what they always figured is the dogs got eaten by the gators,”
I must be losing it. When I first started reading the article, I was thinking “dog tags” were MILITARY dog tags. I never thought of DOG dog tags.
Perfect.
Chomp!
That’s a disgusting picture. Ketchup on a hot dog, really?!?!
***“So I’m rife with alligators down there,” he said. ***
And fifty two years ago there was weeping and wailing that the alligators were going extinct because of poachers.
In’72 I made a number of trips to Jackson as a tech rep working on the printing equipment. Ten years earlier I had been there for a Navy induction physical.
Those tags, both military and for canines were stamped out on a Graphotype machine, they came in different versions from one you could pick up and carry to others that needed two strong men to lift one. They were made by a company called Addressograph-Multigraph which was known later as AM International. I worked for the company at one time.
Thanks for the info. When I was a military brat (many years ago) the dog tags were metal ones on a chain. Nowadays I believe they have a rubber band around the edge. Yes?
I have no idea about current dog tags, mine were issued in ‘62 and yes, they were all metal and on a chain to be worn around the neck.
Both my brothers, our mother and I were all issued dog tags when Dad got transferred overseas in 1954. I recently discovered them in my folks’ dresser drawer and I had totally forgotten about them. Pretty cool.
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