If you have a vacation planned to Mississippi in the coming months, I recommend you quit reading this article now. If you’re continuing on, you’re about to see the most magnificent and terrifying beast that could be conjured up into the southern United States.
An 800-pound alligator was caught and pictured on the Facebook page of the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks shows a massive alligator that stretches longer than the three gentlemen who nabbed it. The post declared this beast to be a record-breaker, saying, “A new state record for the longest alligator harvested was broken today! “
The post went on to detail the massive size of the prehistoric beast, writing, “They harvested this male alligator in the West Central Alligator Hunting Zone. He measured 14 feet and 3 inches long, with a belly girth of 66 inches and tail girth of 46.5 inches. He weighed 802.5 lbs!” Now that is a monster!
At 14 feet long, that alligator is long enough to stretch the length of many boats that would have had the opportunity to see it in the water. The Clarion Ledger spoke with the hunters who brought down the insane animal and found a couple of awesome quotes along the way.
Donal Woods, from Oxford Mississippi, gave a recounting of the night leading up to the encounter with the big one. “We got on the water right at dark. We were seeing a lot of alligators. It was a calm night. We saw a lot of 8-footers, 10-footers, but that’s not what we were after.”
As someone who stays away from deadly animals at all costs, the idea of intentionally entering an area that has a number of such animals is nightmare fuel. But, for these men to intentionally enter the water at night with ginormous nocturnal predators roaming about, they might be the coolest men alive.
The group even noted that it was not rare for them to kill a 12-foot-long alligator in those waters, with Woods saying that they had “killed a lot” of those. On to the alligator that has brought us here. Woods knew at first glance that this gator was something special.
He compared seeing the floating alligator to “following a Jon boat” and said that the width of the back was awe-inspiring. Their battle to reel in the animal was not an easy one. “We hooked him eight or nine times and he kept breaking off. He would go down, sit and then take off. He kept going under logs. He knew what he was doing. The crazy thing is he stayed in that same spot,” Woods said.
Continuing on about the encounter, he said, “He dictated everything we did. It was exhausting, but you’re adrenaline is going so you don’t notice it. It was more mentally exhausting than anything because he kept getting off.”
In the end, the monster was reeled in, and the group captured the record-breaker. It was a tremendous feat, and one that helped an entire ecosystem in Mississippi.
Featured image: Facebook, Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks
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