When you want to mount a deer head, a turkey or even a wild hog, it’s not hard to find a taxidermist to clean and process it.
But what if you want to show off your harvested alligator?
That’s when you call Lilly Hagood of Lowndes County.
Last year after the alligator hunt got underway, Hagood started offering her unique specialty as an alligator taxidermist to skin the giant reptiles caught during the two-week season every August. The 2022 season ended Sunday.
The mother of two toddlers has been busy the last two weeks skinning and processing gators caught throughout south Alabama – some 11 feet long. Over the last three years, Hagood has been mounting turkeys, coyotes, bobcats, deer and more, but her passion started when she learned the trade on alligators nine years ago.
This year, she’s been processing the gators at Southern Sportsman Lodge in Lowndes County, using a facility offered by Hagood’s longtime friend, Ashley Mason, who runs the place.
“Being friends, we offered the facility to her and to help get her name out there,” Mason said.
Haygood plans to open a taxidermy shop near Lowndesboro in the near future.
“My doors will be open next season which will allow people to stay and watch or help a little bit on their gator if they want to,” she said.
Hagood said processing an alligator is very different from other game, deer for instance. There is the thickness of the skin to consider and, “You don’t gut and alligator like you would a deer. And you don’t leave it in a cooler for a week. You have a three-day window max to get the meat and get the hide off. The hide then needs to be scraped and flushed and cured with salt or tanned.”
You can skin alligators for leather for use in belts, boots or purses. Or it can be skinned for a hardback mounting that includes full-body mounts.
Hagood saves the meat because it is edible. Alligators have white and dark meat with the favorite meat coming from the tail and jowls. She said that the back strap is dark meat and is also good to eat.
From an 11-foot gator, which is the largest caught this season, she said she will get close to 100 pounds of meat.
Hagood is originally from Savannah, Georgia. She spent time in Mobile but now lives in Lowndes County with her husband, her three-year-old daughter and two-year-old son. They are an outdoors family. Even though the children are a little young, they are slowly introducing them to the outdoor life too. And she is introducing them to her profession.
“My daughter came with me yesterday to get some work done. She knows that mommy loves to play around with alligators.”
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