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Family captures 1,000-pound alligator after 10-hour battle

An Alabama family battled a half-ton monster alligator over the weekend for 10 hours before finally capturing the record-breaking colossal beast.

The gator was caught in the Alabama River near Camden, Ala.AP

Mandy Stokes and her crew wrangled the 15-foot alligator Saturday afternoon near Camden and brought the behemoth to a check-in station at Roland Cooper State Park, where the giant reptile weighed in at a whopping 1,011.5 pounds, AL.com reports.

The gator hunters — including Stokes’ husband, John, brother-in-law Kevin Jenkins and his two children, Savannah, 16, and Parker, 14 — started their search Friday night and wound up battling their mammoth catch until Saturday afternoon.

They fought with the gator for hours before firing the fatal shot.

“He came up just as calm as he could,” Stokes told AL.com. “When I pulled the trigger this time, water just exploded on all of us.”

AP

The gargantuan gator is the largest to be killed in the state of Alabama, beating the former record by 173.5 pounds.

It may even devour the record for world’s largest alligator as well, which was previously declared in June to be a 14-foot, 8-inch, 880-pound alligator killed in Texas back in 2007, according to the Safari Club International.

The gator measures 15 feet long.AP

The beast was so enormous that when Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries biologists attempted to weigh the creature, it destroyed the winch assembly designed to lift most alligators, according to AL.com.

Stokes said she’s likely to get out there to hunt again, but she isn’t after another record-breaking catch.

“Right now the fairest way for me to say it is that we’ll apply again, but I can assure you, I have no desire to hook into anything like this again,” she said. “I truly don’t.”