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A family in Alabama are celebrating after catching
the largest alligator ever recorded in the state over the weekend.
The mammoth beast, which measured 15-feet long and weighed 1,011.5
pounds, was captured by five members of the Stokes family near
Thomaston.
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It took the family, consisting of Mandy Stokes, husband John Stokes,
brother-in-law Kevin Jenkins and his children Savannah, 16, and Parker,
14, ten hours to capture the monster.
The hunt started on Friday night and lasted well into Saturday morning.
Mandy Stokes said her crew went through the full range of emotions as
they first staked the animal, before battling it, then killing it and
finally struggling to take it back to shore.
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‘He came up just as calm as he could,’ Mandy Stokes told AL.com. ‘When I
pulled the trigger this time, water just exploded on all of us.’
When they finally got the beast back to dry land, he was so big that he
crushed the winch system normally used by Alabama Wildlife and
Freshwater Fisheries biologists.
Alligators are the only dangerous-game species that can legally be
hunted in the state. In the end, a backhoe had to be brought in to lift
the animal and officially weigh it.
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The mammoth gator has now been officially named as the largest ever
legally harvested in Alabama and it could even be a new world record.
In June, Safari Club International declared a 14-foot, 8-inch, 880-pound
alligator killed in Chalk Creek near Lufkin, Texas by Justin Wells of
Bossier City, La., in 2007 as the new world record.
It isn't clear which metric - length, weight or a combination of both -
SCI used to come to its decision.
The Stokes' gator measured 70.5 inches around the stomach, 46 inches
around the base of the tail and had a 16-inch snout measurement. |