JACKSON, Miss. (WABG) \u2013 A hunting party in Mississippi pulled in a monster this gator season.<\/p>\n
First-time alligator hunter Aubrey Westerfield led the team that caught the 12-foot-long alligator that weighed 628 pounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I seen his foot and his foot was bigger than my hand, I knew,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody was like, \u2018Oh my God.\u2019 And then we seen his head. And when we seen his head I was like, \u2018Whoa.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Westerfield was with his wife and another group of men when they caught the alligator in the Yazoo River.<\/p>\n
Westerfield said it took a team effort to bring the beast in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI threw my hook over him, hook him to the side, and when I hook him to the side he just took off and I knew right then he was the biggest thing we\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d he said. \u201cHe put up a battle for about 40 minutes, but we finally got him close to the boat and then we threw two big hooks in him, got a noose on him, and we dispatched the gator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wesley Newton, owner of Newton\u2019s Chop Shop, said he received an early morning phone call about the gator. Seeing it in person lit a fire in his eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe woke me up at 2:00 in the morning and we come up here and spend a couple hours here with it, and it was exciting, big, and really nice,\u201d Newton said.<\/p>\n
Newton said skinning, processing and preparing the gator is a job in itself.<\/p>\n
He added the trophy-size catches like this one are why he loves what he does.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes it just that more exciting whenever something like this comes in, you know that trophy status, especially around this part of Mississippi,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Westerfield said they plan to cook the alligator, mount the skill and stretch its skin on the wall.<\/p>\n
He advises anyone planning on hunting gators to be cautious and bring friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake somebody that\u2019s done it before and put multiple people in the boat because if you hook up a big one, you\u2019re not going to be able to get him by yourself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 WABG via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSON, Miss. (WABG) \u2013 A hunting party in Mississippi pulled in a monster this gator season. First-time alligator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[96690,6619,96689,30971,663,9599,96692,79,96693,201,96691],"class_list":{"0":"post-158580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-12-foot-alligator","9":"tag-alligator","10":"tag-aubrey-westerfield","11":"tag-gator","12":"tag-jackson","13":"tag-mississippi","14":"tag-newtons-chop-shop","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-wesley-newton","17":"tag-wildlife","18":"tag-yazoo-river"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}