Thought last week’s Mississippi monster was awesome?
A group of hunters put gator hunters to shame after hauling a more than 900-pound “dinosaur” gator from a Florida lake, as seen in stunning videos and photos online.
“I had a fear like I’ve never felt before,” Kevin Grotz, an outdoorsman who runs the Florida Gator Hunting outfit, told Orlando station WESH 2 about hooking the massive animal.
Weighing 920 pounds and measuring 13.3 feet long, the gatorzilla is the second largest specimen ever harvested in the state – with the largest weighing 1,000 pounds.
The lifelong Floridian said he had never “experienced anything like this” in 20 years as a charter boat captain.
Grotz and his team found the giant reptile in a lake near the population hub of Orlando and knew they had to move it to keep the public safe.
Gatorzilla is hoisted high by rope.WESH 2 News
“Ultimately, if an animal that size grabs you or, God forbid, a child, the odds are tough,” said Grotz, who immediately went to work removing the giant gator.
Battling reptiles is no small feat.
“Honestly, my first concern was safety because we were in a smaller boat,” Grotz said. “And then you add a gator with a head this big. All he has to do is turn around, and we’re in trouble.”
Like Captain Quint and his crew chasing the great white in “Jaws,” the extreme gator hunter knows he has to “smart” and “play it safe,” adding that he’s lucky he “couldn’t be with better people.”
“I had a fear that I had never felt before,” said Kevin Brotz.Facebook/FloridaGatorHunting
The gator was more than 13 feet long and weighed 920 pounds, making it the second largest ever harvested in the state. Facebook/FloridaGatorHunting
In the accompanying footage, Grotz and company can be seen battling the massive creature, which appears to be longer than their rickety fishing boat.
Finally, they tackled the beast and slammed it over the side of the ship so that its giant jaws glared at the camera.
“When we saw this gator, it was much bigger than anything we’d ever caught before,” exclaimed fellow gator hunter Darren Field, who compared their quarry to a “giant dinosaur.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and I think about gators, but I’ve never really experienced this,” said Kevin Brotz, a alligator charter captain who took the animals.WFLA
The battle reportedly took four hours for Grotz and his team to capture the monster – a tug of war that left them exhausted.
“I laid down in the front of the boat and said, ‘Well, I’ve got to lie down until we get back,’ because I thought I was going to die,” said friend Carson Gore, recalling the heavyweight fight between the species.
The accompanying photo shows the team using a rope to raise the modern-day dinosaur, which is so large it looks like it could have been Photoshopped.
“It’s not every day you get a giant dinosaur in your boat,” said Darren Field.WFLA
In fact, it’s more than a hundred pounds bigger than the 800-pound “nightmare” gator kept last week in Mississippi, where it set a new state record.
Meanwhile, the largest alligator ever recorded was a 15-foot, 1,011.5-pound giant caught in Alabama in 2014.
The team did not carry the crocodile to satisfy the primal sense of masculinity of the great white shark hunter. They have reportedly received alligator tags, which are earmarked to help balance the increasingly unruly population.
“I have never felt happy to kill an animal. But with that being said, I respect the harvest,” Grotz explained, adding that hunting gators also helps protect people from “killing machines.”
He referenced the horrific case of 2-year-old Lane Graves, who was killed by a gator in 2016 at a Disney World resort — not too far from where this latest specimen was caught.
Meanwhile, in June, a 13-year-old boy was mauled by a gator while swimming with friends in Winter Springs, Florida.
Fortunately, the beast let go, allowing the youngster to escape the deadly attack with only minor injuries.
The battle lasted four hours.WFLA
Unfortunately, the panhandle has seen a huge spike in alligator attacks over the past decade.
Experts attribute the increase to increased development in the region, which has brought people into closer contact with the reptiles.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
