A 10-foot alligator used his leg as a chew toy. How common are these kinds of attacks?
James Boyce was in fear of his life.
The hunter had been searching for hogs on a reserve near Martin County when a 10-foot alligator latched onto his right leg below his knee and began dragging him into the water.
“All I felt was like I got an electrical shock,” Boyce, 46, said at Tuesday from St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. “I just screamed.”
By smashing the gator’s face with the butt of his shotgun, Boyuce was able to get free. Thanks to some “redneck ingenuity” and some timely help from another hunter, Boyce survived.
“The tourniquet that you had in place helped you and saved you from additional blood loss,” Dr. Jorge Vega, the trauma surgeon who operated on Boyce, told reporters.
Although terrifying, what happened to Boyce was actually extremely rare.
The odds of being seriously injured in an unprovoked alligator attack in Florida are approximately one in 3.1 million, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. That means you have a better chance of being struck by lightning, fatally wounded by fireworks or killed by a bee.
The margins seem even smaller when reviewing Fish and Wildlife’s data over the past 61 years. Since 1948, only 413 unprovoked bites have occurred in Florida. About 6 percent, or 25, have proved fatal.
Put differently, Florida averages just under seven gator-related incidents a year, which is pretty consistent with the number of attacks over the past decade. Considering the Sunshine State’s population ballooned roughly 723 percent during that time, it’s safe to say gator attacks aren’t worth losing much sleep over.
Still, the FWC recommends taking precautions like swimming solely in daylight hours, and never feeding gators to avoid confrontations.
