Leapin’ lizards!
Hunters in Mississippi broke a state record for the heaviest alligator ever bagged, kicking off the season with two monster catches.
Dustin Bockman of Wisconsin and two hunting buddies bagged the 727-pound 13-foot-long beast on Sunday, beating the previous year’s record-setter by 26 pounds, according to the state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.
“We’re going to cook it for sure,” he told Gulf Live.
“There’s plenty for me and everybody else.”
He and his team of hunters tailed the gigantic reptile for 12 hours until they could get close enough to shoot it with a crossbow.
“He would go to the bottom and sit like a log. You couldn’t do nothing with him,” Bockman said.
The hunters then had to figure out how to haul the massive beast’s carcass in their boat.
It took four hours of tugging — at which point they rested on a sandbar and called friends for help.
First-time hunter Beth Trammell, initially broke the record when she bagged a 723-pound, 13-foot gator with a team of six hunters, but Bockman stole her thunder hours later.
She was shocked at the gator’s size.
“It took about four hours to get it in the boat,” she said. “We had to flag another boat down to help us out it was so big.
“[I thought], ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s the Loch Ness Monster!’”
She said that she, too, is going to eat the critter and use it for decoration.
“I think my brother-in-law is going to get the head mounted,” she said.
Alligators nearly went extinct in Mississippi in the 1960s, but a conservation helped the species recover to the point that hunting is now legal.