A family of Alabama hunters has allegedly caught the largest alligator to be ever recorded in the state over the weekend, UK MailOnline reported. Five members of the Stokes family near Thomaston captured the massive 15-feet long beast, weighing 1, 011.5 pounds.
After hunting the monster for ten hours through Friday night into Saturday morning, the family of Mandy Stokes, husband John Stokes, brother-in-law Kevin Jenkins and his children Savannah, 16, and Parker, 14, found the alligator near Thomaston, Ala., battled it, then killed it and brought it to a Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries biologist to measure, AL.com reported.
"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."
Even after the mammoth alligator was brought back on dry land, it was so huge that it ended by crushing 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," according to UK MailOnline. "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."
Back in June, the new world record was declared by Safari Club International after a 14-foot, 8-inch, 880-pound alligator was killed in Chalk Creek near Lufkin, Texas by Justin Wells of Bossier City, La. However, it isn't clear which metric - length, weight or a combination of both - SCI was 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, New York Daily News reported. The haul eclipsed the previous record set by Keith Fancher and his crew who killed a 14-foot, 2-inch, 838-pound alligator from the Alabama River in 2011, AL.com reported.
