Chad and Dana Wall Run an Alligator Farm and Hunt Alligators
Editor’s Note: Chad Wall and his wife Dana, who are the hosts of “Wallhanger TV” on the Pursuit Channel, live in Springfield, Louisiana, on an alligator farm. The webpage is www.wallhangertv.com or visit them on Facebook.
Chad Wall explains, “Our show is mainly about the outdoor lifestyle we live and our hunting whitetails all over the country. Our family owns an alligator farm and a boat business and also hunts wild alligators. Dana is my wife, co-host and business partner, works with me on the alligator farm and hunts wild alligators with me. We try to spend as much time together as we can. Our family has about 50,000 alligators on our farm year-round, and raising an alligator to a harvestable size requires about 10 months to a year. We raise a crop of alligators each year, just like some farmers raise crops of corn or soybeans. Every piece of the alligators we raise has a market, including their feet, head, meat, eyes, etc. My grandfather started this business in 1952.”
According to Dana Wall, “We have taken a few alligators in the wild with our bows. Alligator season in Louisiana starts around the end of August and only lasts for a month. So, during that period of time, we are really busy trying to catch and harvest the number of alligators for which we have tags. Then during most of the fall and into the winter, we are doing our TV show and hunting all over the country. When we are home, we have responsibilities on the alligator farm. At any one time, we usually will have about 50,000 alligators on the farm. We have the baby alligators that have just hatched. We will have some alligators left from the year before. So, they will be a little bit more than 1-year old, and we will have the alligators that we are growing for the market. These alligators will be harvested some time, from the fall until the first of the year. So, we have about three-different age groups of alligators on the farm.
We never really have had a problem with handling alligators on the farm. On the farm, all the alligators are contained in alligator houses. When I am handling the small alligators, on the farm, I have been bitten, but the bite never is very bad. But when we hunt alligators in the wild, especially when we’re harvesting the eggs from their nests, we have had alligators run off the bank and practically get in the boat with us. If those big gators bite you, you can have a real problem. Because Chad has been farming and hunting alligators longer than I have, he has been bitten more than I have. When you hunt wild alligators, and when you have an alligator farm, you have to assume that you will be bitten every now and then.
