A record number of applicants sought permits for alligator hunting this year, though they had to wait an extra day to find out if they won a lottery for the permits.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said Thursday that 6,566 permits were issued from 19,358 applications submitted in a first round of permitting.
The commission was initially scheduled to announce the lottery winners on Wednesday but sent out a message to applicants saying, “We received a record number of applications this year — over 19,000 — and the lottery process is taking longer than expected.”
The processing was completed Thursday, a day before the second round of applications was scheduled to start.
