Alligator hunter Jason Ullendorf landed an enormous, record-breaking gator on the Pascagoula River on Saturday, the final weekend of the 10-day Mississippi season. Ullendorf’s feminine gator measured 37 inches across the stomach, had a tail girth of 32 inches, and was 11 ft, 3/4 inches lengthy. The large reptile weighed in at 324 kilos, in accordance with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.
The monster gator will set new feminine size and weight information for the state and was licensed by Andres Arnett, the MDWFP Alligator Program coordinator. It’s attainable that Ullendorf’s gator might set a brand new world file for longest feminine alligator.
Ullendorf’s cousin was tipped off to the gator’s location at an area boat store, in accordance with the Clarion Ledger. The alligator had made some vacationers antsy once they noticed it lounging on a sandbar.
“We figured we’d assist them out and get it out of there,” Ullendorf advised reporters. “We went down there to take a look at it, and it was a reasonably good gator.”
Sadly, discovering the gator was far simpler than catching it. Ullendorf and his buddies chased the mammoth reptile for many of the evening. She would take their bait and dive below construction, throwing the hook within the course of. By 3 o’clock the subsequent morning, the crew had misplaced each hook that they had.
Ullendorf returned the next evening to seek out the gator in the identical spot they’d left her. Sadly, their evening grew to become a repeat of their earlier outing. They hooked the gator a number of instances, solely to have it get away.
“It was irritating,” Ullendorf’s looking accomplice Joseph Manango advised the Clarion Ledger. “At one level, we acquired so pissed off that we left it and, an hour later, began once more. We knew we might hook it, however we have been going to should get it out of the bushes.”
A couple of hours earlier than dawn, the hunters noticed the large gator on the floor close to her favourite sandbar. They hooked the gator on a rod and reel after which have been capable of handline it towards the boat.
“When she got here up, she was below the underside of the boat between the pontoons,” Ullendorf mentioned. “She was slapping the boat together with her tail and all that. I assumed she was going to knock my motor off.”
However on the time, Ollendorf had no concept the gator slapping round his pontoon was a feminine. Earlier than this, the longest feminine alligator caught within the Magnolia State measured 10 ft, 2 inches. The 2 males mechanically assumed the gator they hauled in was a male due to its measurement. As soon as they acquired the animal to shore, they realized the animal was lacking male intercourse organs. That’s once they knew that they had caught an enormous feminine, so that they referred to as Arnett to return down and make sure it.
Arnett verified the gator was certainly feminine and licensed its weight and size. Ullendorf’s monster dethroned the previous record female killed by Jim and Richie Denson on the Pearl River in 2022.
A gator that measured over 10 ft 6 inches and weighed a powerful 375 kilos at the moment holds the female Florida record in a state well-known for its alligators. That gator was hooked by Chester and Barrett Koerner of Woodland, Texas, in 2019.
Learn Subsequent: How to Hunt Your First Alligator. Plus, the 7 Best Gator States
Though these measurements are spectacular, they’re dwarfed by the male file gators. Throughout the 2023 Mississippi alligator season, a gaggle of hunters tagged a 14-foot, 3-inch lengthy, 802.5-pound gator with a 66-inch stomach girth.
Nevertheless, Alabama claims the world file alligator. The enormous was killed in 2014 and measured 15 ft, 9 inches.
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