Hunters never know what kind of luck they’re going to have.
One man’s hunt was saved with some help from a snagged propeller.
And a hunter in Mississippi couldn’t believe his eyes when a storm washed up this creature.
Kyle Mallett of St. Martin, Mississippi, was on his final alligator hunt of the season, but it wasn’t turning out as he hoped.
“It was my last night to hunt,” Mallett told Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. “We really hadn’t seen anything big, just little gators. We’d caught some little gators, but nothing we wanted to kill.”
To make matters worse, a thunderstorm came in and forced him to leave the water.
Mallett went to his cousin’s house to get dry and regroup.
He and his hunting buddy Matthew Brooks returned to the marsh where they were at before when they saw a pair of eyes of an alligator peeking out from the water.
“We eased back in there about 400 yards,” Mallett said.
The hunt is on for the alligator
Mallett and Brooks searched for the alligator in the marsh and the canal next to it but didn’t turn anything up.
Their boat’s propeller got stuck on some grass, and Mallett noticed that an alligator had surfaced off the boat’s bow while he was untangling it.
“He was literally three feet in front of the boat,” Mallett said. “It startled me. I’m looking at this giant gator right at the front of the boat. He was massive.”
The alligator disappeared into the shallow water, but it was clear enough for Mallett to spot it.
He went to work snagging the alligator’s front leg with his fishing rod.
“He went nuts and took off,” Mallett said. “All I could do was hold the fishing pole and let him take line.”
The alligator was slowly taking line and eventually went under a log.
The storm came back while he was waiting.
“It was pouring down rain and lightning,” Mallett said. “It was kind of frantic. At one point, I thought I’d never get him.”
Going in for the kill on the alligator
Mallett called his cousin, Jarrod Davis, who was also out alligator hunting.
“Davis arrived along with hunting partner Josh Williams of Hurley. Davis was able to locate the alligator and got a handline on him. Mallett then tied a buoy to his rod and reel and tossed it in the water so he could retrieve it later. Mallett joined Davis and hooked the gator with a rod and reel,” The Clarion-Ledger reported.
“We basically had him at that point,” Mallett said. “He rolled and rolled. When we got the snares on him, it was basically over.”
The last thing they had to do was get the alligator on the boat.
“It took us another 30 minutes or so to get him in the boat,” Mallett said. “Getting an animal that big in the boat is hard. We were all worn out.”
The alligator weighed 650 pounds and measured 13 feet, 3 inches long, making it one of the biggest caught in the state.
“If there wasn’t grass in the prop, we would have already been out of the bayou when he popped up,” Mallett said. “It was like it was meant to be.”
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