Four gator hunters went where no gator hunters have before last weekend, nabbing a record-breaking reptile while partaking in Mississippi’s gator hunting season.
On Saturday, Tanner White, Don Woods, Will Thomas and Joey Clark captured an alligator in the southern state’s West Central Alligator Hunting Zone, one they knew was special from the get-go.
“We knew he was wide,” Woods told a local newspaper of their find. “His back was humongous. It was like we were following a jon boat.”
Yet the gator’s astonishing size wasn’t only in their heads. The group quickly discovered that the alligator was truly one of a kind, shattering the previous record of the largest alligator ever caught in Mississippi by roughly 30 pounds.
“He measured 14 feet and 3 inches long, with a belly girth of 66 inches and tail girth of 46.5 inches,” the state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks explained on Facebook, noting the gator “weighed 802.5 lbs!”
Here’s to the hunters — one giant leap for man, one even giant-er leap for gator kind.
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