"We're going to need a bigger boat" [View all]

'Once in a lifetime': Two boaters reel in a massive one-eyed alligator weighing over 477 pounds.

DIAMONDHEAD, Miss. —
It was like a scene right out of Jurassic Park when two gator hunters (John Ladner and his friend, Derek Stiglet) pulled a massive alligator out of a Mississippi marsh. "I said, we have a dinosaur, this thing is huge!" Ladner told CNN. The two were in Ladner's 14-foot boat.

"My buddy was on the front of the boat ... and just saw a gator eye and said, 'It's over there!' ... when we hooked it we thought it was a log because it wasn't moving like an alligator would."
Ladner had to call a friend to come with a larger boat, since their small vessel was not going to be able to accommodate the load. They thought it was dead until it started thrashing its tail back and forth.

"The whole time we were waiting for our friend we just prayed (the gator) wouldn't take off and flip our boat." It took three hours to get the gator into the boat, and when they got the gator to shore, they had to use a tractor to remove it.

A game warden came down to see just how big the catch was. It was determined that it was one of the biggest captured in the Diamondhead, Mississippi in the last 15 years.
The gator weighed 477.6 pounds and was 12 feet long. Ladner said that the animal had over 100 pounds of meat.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/05/us/massive-gator-caught-in-mississippi-trnd/index.html