Alligator charges at fisherman and it’s caught on camera

By Brooke Butler

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    HILTON HEAD ISLAND, South Carolina (WYFF) — A man visiting Hilton Head Island with his family captured cell phone video of an alligator charging at a fisherman.

It happened at Shipyard Plantation Tuesday evening.

“It was about Tuesday night around 7 o’clock. My wife and three kids decided to go for a bike ride,” said Micah Kimberlin, who recorded the video. “We came across a couple people standing [near a pond], and then we see an alligator…this gentleman is fishing kind of far away, and it’s headed directly towards him. That’s when I started filming this alligator heading toward him.”

Thankfully, no one was injured. The alligator re-entered the pond shortly after charging on land.

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources said it is likely that the alligator associated humans with food.

“My opinion is it was probably an alligator that has been fed,” said Morgan Hart, alligator project coordinator for SCDNR. “It has learned that people fishing there have given it food in the past. It is very hard to unteach an alligator that people mean food.”

Hart said if you’re ever fishing in a pond with a gator, you should keep your distance.

“If you’re seeing alligators, they’re approaching you, they’re interested in your bait, your line, your bobber, you should pull all that gear out, step away, give them time to move on,” she said.

Host of The Outdoorsman, Buck McNeely, said ultimately, you never want to get too close to a gator or attract its attention as it could quickly end in tragedy.

“To an alligator, everything is fair game. Everybody is in the food chain,” McNeely said.

Kimberlin’s brother-in-law captured a photo of crews removing alligators from the pond where all this happened Thursday morning.

SCDNR now wants to remind everyone that a fed gator is a dead gator.

“Once an alligator learns to approach people for food, that is a dangerous animal that has to be removed,” Hart said.

WJCL 22 News has reached out to Shipyard Plantation for a comment. We are waiting to hear back.

Kimberlin said he does wish the fisherman in the video had reeled in his bait sooner than he did.

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