Mississippi Hunters Catch A Record Breaking 727-Pound Alligator

Hunters caught a record-breaking 727-pound, 13-foot-4.5-inch-long alligator Sept. 1, only two days into Mississippi alligator hunting season.

Led by Dustin Bockman, a UPS truck driver, the hunters, including brother Ryan Bockman and friend Cole Landers, pursued the massive alligator for an estimated four hours before they were able to catch it.

“He broke all the lines we could put in him. Finally put a snare on him and got him up high enough to put a shot on him. All in all probably took us four and a half hours to catch him from the first time we saw him,” Bockman told MS News Now.

After the trio managed to shoot the alligator, they waited another two hours before calling friends to help get the alligator out of the water and onto the boat.

“We killed the alligator at 4 a.m. We waited until 6:30 a.m. before I called three or four more guys to help us load it into the boat,” Bockman told WLBT TV.

This huge gator wasn’t the only massive animal caught early Sunday morning. Just hours before Brockman captured the heaviest alligator on record, Beth Trammell led her hunting party to a record-breaking catch: a 723.5-pound, 13-foot-5.5-inch-long alligator. Before that night, the heaviest alligator ever caught during hunting season reportedly weighed in at 697.5 pounds The Tramell hunting party held the record of capturing the most massive alligator for all of one hour before Brockman clinched the title.

“It took about four hours to get [the alligator] in the boat. We had to flag another boat down to help us out it was so big,” Trammell said.

The record for the longest alligator caught – 13 feet, 6.5 inches – remains unbroken since it was established in 2008.

The record for the heaviest female alligator caught was also broken this season by Brandon “Boo” Maskew and Allen Purvis, who caught a 295.3-pound female alligator on Saturday along the Mississippi River.

Both Bockman and Trammell plan to eat the alligator meat and share it with friends. Bockman also expressed his plans to use the gator skin to make a gun strap and a frame.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong

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