On Friday, buddies Jimmy Appleton and Blake Daugherty were scouting just before the season opened at noon. The two men, both of whom live in Pope, Mississippi, were cruising in Appleton’s 17-foot aluminum boat, along with Blake’s two sons, 11-year-old Cruz and 9-year-old Cash. They were checking out an oxbow lake off the Mississippi River near Natchez.
“We’ve all hunted gators together for years, including Cruz and Cash,” Appleton says. “We were looking for a big 12-foot gator we knew about that morning. We found him and backed off a bit watching him, waiting until noon.”
But as the hunters watched and waited, another alligator let out a hair-raising roar — loud and deep, and one that Appleton says he’ll never forget. The growl came a dozen times, and the men concluded it must belong to a giant alligator.
They pinned the spot where they had last seen the 12-footer and went looking for the source of the growling instead. They soon found it
“It was the size of a floating tree,” said Appleton, a 56-year-old mechanic for Kroger. “We watched it until almost noon, then it submerged. We found it easily, though, by using forward-facing sonar.”
Appleton made an accurate cast and hooked the gator on his first try. He snagged the reptile using an 8-foot Shakespeare Ugly Stix rod, fitted with a Penn 8000 spinning reel spooled with 150-pound test braided line and no leader.
“It about snatched me out of the boat when I hooked it,” said Appleton. “I tried to move him off the bottom with my rod, but he wouldn’t budge. Then Blake got a big hook in him with a hand line, and the gator started to roll.”
The gator rose to the surface, and Appleton got another hook with a handline in it. They cut the line and battled it with the two handlines and hooks as the gator towed them around the lake.
“I was really surprised that we pretty much whipped that gator in about 35 minutes,” said Appleton. “A couple years ago we had a 11-footer that took us three hours to beat. I think that bigger one was just a tired old man.”
As the gator wore down Blake got a snare around it and worked it toward their boat. Appleton finished it with a bang stick.
They muscled the alligator into their 17-foot boat, that barely was big enough to contain it. They ran back to the ramp and trailered the boat with the gator still loaded, and drove to Red Antler Processing in Yazoo City.
“At the processor we learned how huge it really was,” says Appleton, noting that his gator is the third largest in the state. The state record for public-access alligators is 14 feet 3 inches. Appleton’s taped out at 14 feet ¼ inch, and weighed 662 pounds.
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Red Antler processed the meat for him, the hide is being tanned, and the skull mounted.
“My wife is trying to find a wall big enough to hang that hide for display,” Appleton says. “The head mount will go in the house right under my TV set. That way I can sit there and watch football and see that gator any time I want and remember what an incredible time we had.”