Tony Aarts had just made one of the best shots of his long golfing career, his ball coming to rest a few feet from the hole, a short par 4 at Magnolia Landing Golf & Country Club in North Fort Myers.

Aarts got out of his golf cart, grabbed his putter and walked past a water hazard toward the green.

Then he heard a splash. He assumed someone in the group behind him hit without waiting for him to get out of the way. Then he saw the alligator.

“He was coming right at me. Just, boom,” Aarts recalled of that February day in 2017.

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The gator grabbed Aarts’ right foot and began pulling him into the water. Aarts dug his left foot into the mud, a futile attempt to slow the gator down. He clubbed the gator in the head with his putter. No use.

The gator relented only after Aarts began bashing its eye.

“Funny, I felt no pain,” said Aarts, 77, a part-time Cape Coral resident from Ontario.

Aarts, who suffered only minor injuries to his foot, was one of 12 people bitten by an alligator in Florida in 2017, and one of 410 people to have been bitten since Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission began keeping track in 1948. Twenty-five of those attacks were fatal, including two in Lee County — both on Sanibel Island — in 2001 and 2004.

No Collier County attacks are included on FWC’s list of fatal alligator attacks.

Although alligator attacks are rare, this is the time of year when the reptiles are most active. With the weather warming and their hormones hopping during mating season, which usually starts in April, alligators have been popping up all over the place in recent weeks.

In mid-April, a hulking alligator walking down the sidewalk surprised drivers on McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers. Video of the reptile’s lazy stroll went viral.

In early May, a 9-foot gator surprised kids at a Golden Gate school bus stop. A week later, a gator was found blocking the runway at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

A few days after that, a woman reported seeing an alligator eating a dog in Lehigh Acres.

And around 2 a.m. Wednesday, Collier County alligator trapper Ray Simonsen was called to wrangle a 10-foot, 6-inch gator lounging on Immokalee Road.

“It’s mating season, so there’s lots of activity,” said Simonsen, who goes by the name Ray the Trapper. “The gators are on the move. It’s summertime. The waters are going to start to come up. They don’t have boundaries.”

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More people, more problems

Most of the animals are killed, or harvested, and processed for their hides and meat. Alligators less than 4 feet long can be relocated.

The 10-foot, 300-pound alligator that attacked Aarts was eventually killed. It was one of more than 8,000 nuisance gators harvested in 2017, and one of about 215,000 harvested since 1977, according to FWC data.

Across Florida, the number of alligators harvested or relocated continues to rise, according to a Naples Daily News and News-Press analysis of five years of data from the FWC’s Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program.

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The number of alligators either harvested or relocated jumped from 7,296 in 2014 to 8,929 in 2018, a 22% increase in five years, according to the analysis. In fact, the number of gators harvested has been steadily increasing for decades, according to FWC data.

The increase likely has more to do with the rapid rise in the state’s human population than it does with the overall number of alligators, which has remained relatively steady at about 1.3 million, according to the FWC.

With more people it’s easier for an alligator to become a nuisance.

"So whether we're talking about snakes or alligators or whatever, if you have 1,000 people moving to an area per day, yeah, you're going to have human-animal conflicts," said Chris Gillette, a Fort Lauderdale-based wildlife biologist.

Over the past five years, trappers removed more alligators (3,020) from Palm Beach County than any other county in Florida. That’s far more than Broward (565) and Miami-Dade counties (248) to the south of Palm Beach, and Martin (749), St. Lucie (630) and Indian River counties (476) to its north.

"When I think of the Palm Beach area, I do think about a lot more golf courses and a lot more waterways," said Gillette, speculating on why so many gators are caught there.

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While alligators live in all 67 Florida counties, the regions with the most nuisance alligators generally are in Central Florida and along the Gulf Coast, the data shows.

Over the past five years, trappers harvested or relocated 2,050 alligators from Lee County, sixth highest in the state, and 1,073 in Collier, which was 14th highest, according to the analysis of SNAP data.

Collier County has seen year-over-year decreases in the number of alligators removed, dropping from 282 in 2014 to 159 last year.

The reason for the decrease is unclear. In an email, the FWC said “there are a variety of factors that could impact the number of alligators removed,” offering no additional information.

The FWC declined multiple interview requests for this story and agency spokeswoman Tammy Sapp would only respond to questions submitted via email.

Simonsen, the Collier County alligator trapper, said he hasn’t noticed a decrease in activity and said he's getting more emergency calls.

Over the past five years, May has been the busiest month for animal trappers, according to the analysis of FWC data.

From 2014 through 2018, trappers across the state harvested or relocated 6,359 alligators in May, according to FWC’s data. The next busiest months over the five-year period were April (5,914 alligators harvested or relocated) and June (5,682).

Gators harvested, gator relocated

Simonsen is one of four alligator trappers in Collier County who work under contract with the FWC. There is one alligator trapper in Lee County.

Statewide, the FWC has 103 alligator trappers and is in the process of hiring a replacement trapper in Pinellas County.

Trappers receive a $30 stipend for each alligator captured and also get to keep the gators for their hides and meat, which become their primary source of compensation, according to the FWC.

Occasionally nuisance alligators are sold alive to an animal farm, animal exhibit or zoo, the FWC said. Simonsen said he works with two local alligator farms.

Alligators must be more than 4 feet long to be defined as a nuisance alligator, which typically are not relocated.

“Relocating nuisance alligators is not a responsible option for people or alligators,” Sapp, the FWC spokeswoman, said in an email. “Relocated alligators nearly always try to return to their capture site. In the process of returning, they can create problems for people or other alligators along the way.”

Over the years, Simonsen said he’s captured alligators in all sorts of places: garages, pools, hot tubs, third-floor landings.

“I even captured an alligator in an elevator,” he said. “It was in a community in Naples. They had automatic doors on the entry, on the front lobby. A gator ventured in.”

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In addition to catching gators, Simonsen also is a bear and crocodile response agent, and runs a nuisance animal business. But gators keep him the busiest.

He said he typically uses a rod and reel to catch gators. He urges people to stay back and keep quiet when trappers are stalking a gator. Trappers need to focus.

“We make one slip,” he said,” it could be a severe bite, it could be a broken bone, it could be a missing leg or worse.”

Alligator safety tips

Keep a safe distance if you see an alligator.

If you’re concerned about an alligator, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s toll-free Nuisance Alligator Hotline at 866-FWC-GATOR (866-392-4286).

Never feed an alligator. Feeding alligators is dangerous and illegal. When fed, alligators can overcome their natural wariness of people and learn to associate people with food.

Swim only in designated swimming areas during daylight hours. Alligators are most active between dusk and dawn.

Keep pets on a leash and away from the water’s edge. Pets can resemble alligators’ natural prey.

Alligator bites can result in serious infection. Victims should seek immediate medical attention if bitten.

Source: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

TOP 10

Here are the numbers of nuisance alligators harvested or relocated by county from 2014 to 2018:

PALM BEACH 3,020

POLK 2,864

HILLSBOROUGH 2,376

LAKE 2,214

ORANGE 2,084

LEE 2,050

PASCO 1,861

SARASOTA 1,807

BREVARD 1,769

MANATEE 1,557

Source: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission