Alligator hunter Jason Ullendorf landed a massive, record-breaking gator on the Pascagoula River on Saturday, the last weekend of the 10-day Mississippi season. Ullendorf’s female gator measured 37 inches around the belly, had a tail girth of 32 inches, and was 11 feet, 3/4 inches long. The massive reptile weighed in at 324 pounds, according to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.
The monster gator will set new female length and weight records for the state and was certified by Andres Arnett, the MDWFP Alligator Program coordinator. It’s possible that Ullendorf’s gator could set a new world record for longest female alligator.
Ullendorf’s cousin was tipped off to the gator’s location at a local boat shop, according to the Clarion Ledger. The alligator had made some tourists antsy when they spotted it lounging on a sandbar.
“We figured we’d help them out and get it out of there,” Ullendorf told reporters. “We went down there to look at it, and it was a pretty good gator.”
Unfortunately, finding the gator was far easier than catching it. Ullendorf and his buddies chased the mammoth reptile for most of the night. She would take their bait and dive under structure, throwing the hook in the process. By 3 o’clock the next morning, the crew had lost every hook they had.
Ullendorf returned the following night to find the gator in the same spot they’d left her. Unfortunately, their night became a repeat of their previous outing. They hooked the gator multiple times, only to have it get away.
“It was frustrating,” Ullendorf’s hunting partner Joseph Manango told the Clarion Ledger. “At one point, we got so frustrated that we left it and, an hour later, started again. We knew we would hook it, but we were going to have to get it out of the trees.”
A few hours before sunrise, the hunters spotted the big gator on the surface near her favorite sandbar. They hooked the gator on a rod and reel and then were able to handline it toward the boat.
“When she came up, she was under the bottom of the boat between the pontoons,” Ullendorf said. “She was slapping the boat with her tail and all that. I thought she was going to knock my motor off.”
But at the time, Ollendorf had no idea the gator slapping around his pontoon was a female. Before this, the longest female alligator caught in the Magnolia State measured 10 feet, 2 inches. The two men automatically assumed the gator they hauled in was a male because of its size. Once they got the animal to shore, they realized the animal was missing male sex organs. That’s when they knew they had caught a massive female, so they called Arnett to come down and confirm it.
Arnett verified the gator was indeed female and certified its weight and length. Ullendorf’s monster dethroned the previous record female killed by Jim and Richie Denson on the Pearl River in 2022.
A gator that measured over 10 feet 6 inches and weighed an impressive 375 pounds currently holds the female Florida record in a state famous for its alligators. That gator was hooked by Chester and Barrett Koerner of Woodland, Texas, in 2019.
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Although those measurements are impressive, they are dwarfed by the male record gators. During the 2023 Mississippi alligator season, a group of hunters tagged a 14-foot, 3-inch long, 802.5-pound gator with a 66-inch belly girth.
However, Alabama claims the world record alligator. The giant was killed in 2014 and measured 15 feet, 9 inches.