Lest anyone think the state of my birth has slouched toward sophistication, note that tonight marks the opening of Florida’s annual alligator hunting season. The state has issued more than 5,000 gator-hunting permits this year — an all-time record.

Apparently, some folks are real excited about it:

“Everybody’s super-stoked,” said Grayson Padrick, who owns a hunting and guide business.

This year, that crowd of hunters has more to be excited about: They can use artificial lures, and they can hunt an hour longer than in the past.

That’s a real help for hunters because using real gator bait can quickly get expensive:

And what, pray tell, is the attraction of taking to the swamps at night to stalk the wily allapattah (Seminole name for alligator) with a flashlight, a harpoon and a bang stick (a device with a shotgun shell on the end that discharges when pushed with force against the skull of a gator to obliterate it’s walnut-sized brain)?

The hunt’s increasing popularity — as indicated by the crowds scrambling for permits in the past couple of years — is partially because veterans of the hunt have recruited people who haven’t experienced the primal rawness of tracking down and killing the potentially ferocious reptile.

Note to self: Stay out of the swamp for the next month or so.