NATURE
Huge alligator caught in Mississippi: Hunters spend 7 hours catching the record-breaking beast
How did you spend your weekend? These four friends spent theirs catching Mississippi’s largest ever alligator after gruelling showdown with the beast.
An alligator the size of a Jeep Cherokee has been hunted in Mississipi, breaking the record for the largest ever caught in the state.
Don Woods, Tanner White, Will Thomas and Joey Clark proudly displayed the 14 feet three inches reptile after chasing and killing it. It weighed 802.5 pounds (364 kilogrammes), 36 pound sheavier than the previous record.
The team fought for seven hours to conquer the scaly killer.
“We held onto him a while – until 10pm or so. He broke my rod at that point,” Woods told The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. “We hooked him eight or nine times and he kept breaking off... He knew what he was doing.”
“We’re done with chasing big ones this year. I might even call it a career after that, honestly.”
Amercian alligator fact-file
The American alligator, scientifically known as Alligator mississippiensis, is a large reptile. Adult males typically range from 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.6 meters) in length, although some can reach over 15 feet. They are common along the Mississippi river, which has allowed hunting of the creatures since 2005 for one week every year.
Overhunting and habitat destruction once had the animals marked as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. However, they were removed from this list in 1987.