COFFEEVILLE, Ala. (WALA) – A Clarke County man has caught a massive alligator near Coffeeville in Clarke County.
Madison Anderson said, “He was laid up on the bank and we saw his whole body. We knew he was big.”
Before the big hunt, Anderson said he spent about three days tracking the massive alligator along the Tombigbee River.
“We originally spotted him about two hours before dark, and you can only hunt from sunset to sunrise. So we sat there and watched him all evening until they got time to hunt him, and then we used a fishing pole, 65-pound pole and a big treble hook to throw over him and snagged him. And we fought him for about an hour on just one fishing pole. We could never get another hook in him. And finally, after about an hour, he started wearing down, and he had to come up for air from time to time. And we got another big snatch that John David was able to throw over him with some heavy rope, so we could actually pull him in.”
Once the gator gave in, Anderson said he, John David Skipper and Louis Sullivan had a hard time getting it in the boat.
“It was everything we could do to get him in the boat with three people,” said Anderson.
At 12 feet 8 inches long and a whopping 770 pounds, the gator could be a contender for one of the heaviest caught this year.
Each year, through a lottery system, the Alabama department of conservation and natural resources gives 260 hunters a license to catch two alligators max.
A majority of those license are for hunters in the southwest zone, where Anderson said the waterways are overpopulated with alligators.
“We probably saw 30 gators that night, and actually, But the population has grown tremendously every time, every time I’m in the woods or doing anything for long along the river, some of these natural lakes, there’s gators and every one of them,” said Anderson.
Anderson said they took the gator along the causeway to be weighed in and tagged. As an added bonus, they got to keep the meat. Anderson said he will have to Google how to cook gator. It’s not something he’s done before.
There are two weekends left for those with a license to hunt gators.
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