13 foot 5 inch Alligator Taken
"Matt Thornton of Mobile, along with five of his hunting partners, killed a 13-foot, 5-inch behemoth that tipped the scales at a whopping 701 pounds on the first night of the fourth gator season on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta."
"Prior to Saturday morning, John Sutton of Stockton held the record for length with a 12-foot, 10-inch gator pulled from the Tensaw River and William Simmons of Headland held the weight record with a 675-pound animal pulled from Lake Eufaula during the first-ever hunt on the lake."
All the details, including all the fun of trying to get it into the boat are at South Alabama Outdoors.
Dang, that's a big gator...
Regards,
Albert A Rasch
Member: Hunting Sportsmen of the United States HSUS (Let 'em sue me.)
The Hunt Continues...
Wonder what the Florida record is? And who the heck keeps legitimate records for all the non game species, anyway? I was looking up the record diamondback, and you would be hard pressed to stake your life on any of them...
ReplyDeleteBut there are some gators in Florida, back in the swamp where I hunt, that have to go over 15 ft, and possibly over 16...
Holy smokes that's quite the gator.
ReplyDeleteI've had smaller boats!
Is there a non resident gator tag?
Definitely "Not" one which a tail grab should be attempted upon ;-)
ReplyDeleteBion, I believe that there might now be records kept on such animals now because Florida Fish & Game has re-classified the Gator as a big game animal along with tags, bag limits and such.
But I as well and personally, in my younger days when Florida was my place of residence, have killed larger ones.
But "Any" gator too big to tail grab and be subdued is gonna' be a bigun' and put a world of hurt on ye' if you let go a yer' hold. ;-)'
Wow. I used to do some duck hunting down in Stuttgart, Arkansas with my black lab, til someone told me about the gators, some of which I was told could get to 14 feet long. I was afraid of losing him to one so we did some land bird hunting.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how true it was, I do know they've increased in population down there a lot since they are protected.
Holy Moly, you're not wrong!
ReplyDeleteFolks,
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure I've seen a couple that might come close, but no matter how you slice a gator, anything over ten foot is big, twelve foot is huge, and fourteen or bigger is monstrous! Even at ten foot the proportions are such that they look dinosauresque!
I've manhandled gators as big as me and let me tell you, they are all muscle, and will thrash you to exhaustion.
I would really like to hunt them on their own terms, with a small craft, swamps and bayou, harpoon, and rope. Up close and personal because they lend themselves to it. Should be an adventure worth having!
Albert