A Florida alligator hunter shocked himself when he caught the second largest of its kind in the Sunshine State, measuring over 13 feet and 920 pounds, which he likened to a dinosaur.
Kevin Brotz, who runs an organization called Florida Gator Hunting and has been with it for nearly 20 years, was on the water near Orlando on Friday with two others.
The alligator – whose population the state of Florida is trying to control – appeared seemingly out of nowhere, its size causing visible shock among the men on board.
“When we saw this alligator, it was much larger than anything we had ever caught before,” he said.
“It was a huge dinosaur,” Brotz added. “It’s not every day you have a giant dinosaur in your boat.”
Kevin Brotz (pictured above right), an alligator hunter from Florida, shocked himself when he caught the second largest of its kind in the Sunshine State, measuring over 13 feet and 920 pounds and comparing it to a dinosaur
It took Brotz and his boatmates Darren Field and Carson Gore four hours to deal with the gator, which ultimately weighed 920 pounds and 13.3 and three-quarter inches.
“I laid down in the front of the boat and said, ‘Okay, I have to lie down until we get back,’ because I thought I was going to die. “That thing was huge,” Gore said.
“I was scared like never before,” Brotz added.
Brotz noted that he has been involved in alligator hunting for a long time and even made it his mission, but this is something new.
“I’ve lived here my whole life and I think about alligators, but I’ve never really experienced anything like this,” he said.
He also worried about the safety of Field and Gore, who are close friends.
“Honestly, my first concern was safety because we were in a smaller boat,” Brotz said.
“And then you add an alligator with a head that big.” All he has to do is turn around and we’re in trouble. All we said right away was all I kept saying: ‘Guys, we have to be smart.’ We have to be safe.’ And I couldn’t have been with better people.’
Kevin Brotz, who runs an organization called Florida Gator Hunting and has been with it for nearly 20 years, was on the water near Orlando on Friday with two others
The alligator – whose population the state of Florida is trying to control – appeared seemingly out of nowhere, its size causing visible shock among the men on board
“It was a huge dinosaur,” Brotz said. “It’s not every day you have a giant dinosaur in your boat.”
According to the state wildlife commission, this alligator was the second largest in Florida history behind an alligator weighing over 1,000 pounds.
According to the New York Post, the largest alligator known to date is a 1,011-pound giant found in Alabama in 2014.
Brotz doesn’t want people to know the exact location where they caught the alligator for fear that more people might visit and interact with alligators themselves.
“At the end of the day, if an animal that size gets you or, God forbid, a child, the odds are stacked against you,” he told WESH.
He also expressed ambivalence about the need to kill the alligator, which was done to maintain control over the local population.
It took Brotz and his boatmates Darren Field and Carson Gore four hours to deal with the gator, which ultimately weighed 920 pounds and 13.3 and three-quarter inches
According to the state wildlife commission, this alligator was the second largest in Florida history behind an alligator weighing over 1,000 pounds
Brotz noted that he has been involved in alligator hunting for a long time and even made it his mission, but this is something new
“I never feel good about killing an animal.” “But I still respect the crops,” he said. “Tags are assigned to balance the out-of-control population.”
He also referenced an alligator that killed a 2-year-old boy at Disney World in 2016.
“They are killing machines.” They can do it, not that they want to, but it happens. “So we also need to balance the population, so that’s how we look at it.”