Hunters Land Massive 802-Pound Alligator in Mississippi
On September 1, Megan Sasser and her family caught a massive alligator while hunting the Yazoo River in Mississippi. The alligator weighed 802 pounds and measured over 14 feet long, just shy of the state record.
Sasser and her five family members, experienced gator hunters for a decade, launched their boat around noon on opening day. After enduring a three-hour storm, they spotted the gator over 100 yards away with binoculars.
Initially estimating it to be 10-12 feet long, they approached for a closer look. When the gator submerged, they waited patiently. “At that point, we had no idea how big he was,” Sasser says. “We just knew he was a good gator.”
Once the gator resurfaced, the crew hooked it with large treble hooks on bait-casting rods. After a fierce hour-long battle, Sasser managed to secure a third, larger hook attached to a 60-foot hand line.
Mississippi law requires hunters to “secure” gators before dispatching them, so they snared the alligator in two spots and brought it alongside the boat.
“We decided we were going to dispatch him, and then he started to death roll,” Sasser recalls. After rolling about 10 times, damaging the hooked poles, the gator finally stayed still long enough for the crew to use a 20-gauge shotgun.
Too large to fit in their boat, they hitched it to the side and headed to the boat launch. “We were just a few pounds shy of the record weight,” Sasser says, “but we’re not disappointed. It was still the catch of a lifetime.”
