680-Pound Alligator Captured After 20-Year Hunt In Texas Bayou

On September 28, Robert Hennis, his son Joel, Rev. John Benandini Jr. and Tommy Strain captured a 13-foot-long, 680-pound alligator.

They pulled the reptile from Turtle Bayou, near Chambers County, Texas.

“We have been trying to get this gator for 20 years,” Joel told Bluebonnet News. “Every year, a week before the [hunting] season, we will see him, and then we won’t see him again until after the season is over. This time he bit the wrong hook.”

The gator lives right behind Robert’s home. The group used a bayou muller to catch the creature, and it took four 800-pound paracords to haul the gator up to the surface of the water. The reptile broke two lines as he struggled.

The majority of the meat from the alligators was brought to Porter’s Processing, a wild game processing farm in Anahuac, Texas, and will be given to local church parishioners.

Joel and his father took roughly ten pounds of the meat from the alligator’s jowls and intend to make a full-body mount of the creature’s carcass.

This alligator had not been the cause of any issues in the local area.

Alligator hunting season in Southeast Texas is from September 10 to 30.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has estimated there are over 250,000 wild alligators across the state.

The highest populations of alligators in Texas are concentrated along the eastern Gulf Coast, which stretches from Houston to Louisiana. A fair number of alligators can also be found along the coastal prairies towards Corpus Christi and scattered throughout east Texas. 

50 BEST CELEBRITY BIKINIS SLIDESHOW!

As of September 1, 2005, the requirement for an alligator hunter’s license was abolished in Texas.

Under the terms of House Bill 2026, signed by the governor and enacted by the Texas Legislature, hunters can now pursue alligators with any hunter’s license.

The catch comes after a mammoth 920-point gator was caught in Florida in August.