Alligator hunters harvest a 920-pound alligator.
In the heart of Central Florida, a seasoned alligator hunting guide, Kevin Brotz, recently went on a hunt that would leave him and his friends speechless. While on the swamplands, the group came face to face with a colossal creature —a behemoth of an alligator weighing 920 pounds and measuring an impressive 13 feet in length.
Brotz, who operates Florida Gator Hunting, has over two decades of gator hunting experience and what started off as a fun outing with two of his friends, turned into an epic four-hour battle with the gator. According to Florida state law, you’re not allowed to kill an alligator until you connect with it first so the hunters had to secure a hook and direct line to it before using a gun to harvest it.
They battled the reptile for four hours before it surfaced.
The boys said it took nearly four hours of relentless battling with it before it surfaced for the first time. Brotz said, “We were just in awe. I’ve harvested close to 1,000 gators, but this was like nothing I had seen before.”
Safety was his number one concern as the men grappled the nearly half-ton gator in a relatively small boat. Brotz emphasized the inherent danger, saying, “All he had to do was turn his head, and he could get in the boat.”
After the hunters finally secured the hook and line, they had to shoot it five times in order to put an end to the battle. Brotz told WESH 2 in an interview that it was his friends Carson Gore and Darren Field who made sure they caught the gator as safely as possible.
Gore said, “I laid down in the front of the boat and said, ‘Alright, I have to lay down until we get back,’ because I thought I was going to die. That thing was huge.”
Field added, “When we saw this gator, it was way bigger than anything we’ve ever caught before. It was a giant dinosaur. Not every day you get a giant dinosaur in your boat.”
Waiting on officials to make it official!
Brotz said that he harvested the gator in order to help maintain the population levels the state is looking to have that will ensure a healthy ecosystem. He also uses the proper tags that the Statewide Alligator Harvest Program request gator hunters use.
In the end, this remarkable gator yielded 130 pounds of meat, which Brotz generously shared with friends and family. As for the rest of the creature, it will serve as a striking full-body mount that Brotz plans to hang on his wall at home.