It took three Mississippi hunters more than eight hours to finally secure a 727-pound alligator over the weekend, but it was well worth it when the trio learned they had broken the state record for heaviest male alligator.
Dustin Bockman of Vicksburg, Miss., his brother Ryan Bockman, and their friend Cole Landers spied the 727-pound giant in the Mississippi River and stalked it for four and a half hours. They finally got close enough to shoot the animal with a crossbow.
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"He broke all the lines we could put in him. Finally put a snare on him and got him up high enough and put a shot on him. All in all probably took us four and a half hours to catch him from the first time we saw him,"
Dustin Bockman told MSNewsNow.com.
But the hunt didn’t end there.
Bockman and his team struggled for another four hours trying to get the monster alligator in a boat before calling for help.
"We pulled his head up on the bank far enough he wouldn't float away,"
Bockman told the Hattiesburg American. "He was so heavy he wasn’t going anywhere."
Just an hour before state Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks officials weighed Bockman's 727-pound alligator, another group of Mississippi hunters thought they were the new record holders.
Beth Trammell and her six-person crew registered a 723.5-pound gator that held the state record for 60 minutes until Bockman's catch, according to Mississippi's alligator program coordinator Ricky Flynt.
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