Mississippi’s brief 10-day alligator season opened at noon Friday. So at 12:05 p.m. Megan Sasser and her five crew mates launched their 21-foot War Eagle skiff into the Yazoo River near Vicksburg. The six hunters, who call themselves the Gator Getters, motored a short distance downstream, where they warmed up by catching and releasing a few smaller alligators. Then came the storm.
Over the next several hours, as lighting cracked overhead and rain pummeled the river, the hunters hunkered patiently under their rain gear. Other hunters might have cursed the foul weather but Sasser’s team, which included her parents and three buddies, considered it a good omen.
“We sat out in the hard rain and lighting, just waiting, because we know that after the rain, alligators tend to come up,” Sasser tells Outdoor Life.
And sure enough, as the monsoon turned to a drizzle, one of the hunters looked down the Yazoo roughly 300 yards and saw what looked like the head of a giant alligator. They slowly eased down that way, thinking it might just be a big log, and then the head disappeared under the river’s surface.
“Alligators can stay underwater for a long, long, time before they have to come up and catch a breath. So, we dropped anchor and sat there for an hour,” Sasser says. “He finally came up, and we got a good look and we’re like, ‘Well, that’s a pretty good gator.’”
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Another hour passed as the alligator made another dive, and the hunters repositioned their boat roughly 40 yards upriver. When the gator came up a second time Sasser’s dad, Marty, and her friend Justin Pettway cast out two heavy treble hooks with their spinning rods and snagged it. The hooked gator then dove for the bottom, peeling drag and pulling the boat in circles as the hunters hung on for the ride.
“When he finally came up, my job was to get a hand line with a little bigger treble hook in him. That really made him mad,” Sasser says. “He probably pulled us 200 yards down the river … And when we finally got a view of his whole head, everybody in the boat goes, Oh my God.”
Sasser tried snaring the gator, but its head was too big for the loop, and she was only able to tighten the cable around the top of its mouth. The giant alligator then death-rolled, snapping the tips off both fishing rods as it wrapped itself in the lines. After about 10 rolls, the team was able to lift the gator near the surface to finish it off.
The battle finally over, Sasser says all six of them tried to hoist the gator into the boat but were unable to even get its head out of the water. They ended up tying the alligator to the gunnels and slowly ran back to the boat ramp, where other hunters were gearing up to launch for the evening.
“By this time, it’s starting to get dark, and there’s already a long line at the boat ramp. And here we are coming out with this huge alligator,” Sasser says. “A few of the guys helped us roll him into the boat and get [the gator] situated. He was so big though that we still couldn’t stretch him out flat to get a good measurement.”
The hunters wouldn’t get any real measurements until they brought the gator to Red Antler Processing in Yazoo City, where it tipped the scales at 828 pounds — six pounds heavier than the current state record. Sasser reached out to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks that evening, and MDWFP alligator program coordinator Andrew Arnett came out the following morning to take a look.
Sasser says that according to Arnett’s measurements, the alligator weighed 802 pounds and measured 14-feet long, both of which fell short of the state records. (The current length record for Mississippi alligators is 14 feet, 3 inches and was set just last year.) Sasser’s gator also missed the state girth record by just half an inch.
“But that’s okay,” Sasser says. “I mean, we were right there, and it’s still a wonderful thing to celebrate. According to MDWFP, there have only been four other alligators killed in the state that are 14 feet or longer. He was number five.”
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Sasser says Arnett also estimated the gator’s age around 60 years old. She’s getting the head mounted and plans to keep the hide along with all the meat. But for now, she and the rest of the Gator Getters are focused on harvesting another gator so she can fill her second tag.
“In Mississippi, you get to kill one small alligator that’s between 4 and 7 feet, and you get to kill what we call a ‘big alligator,’ or one that’s over 7 feet,” says Sasser, who drew her tag through a lottery system. About 900 tags are distributed among thousands of applicants each season. “This year was just a huge blessing for us.”