On a soggy opening day of the 2024 alligator season in Mississippi, a team of six determined hunters took to the Yazoo River with high hopes and they were not disappointed. The group managed to reel in one of the largest gators ever captured in the state: a 14-foot, 802-pound giant estimated to be over 60 years old, according to measurements from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.

“We are still over the moon with this fairy tale hunt,” shared hunter Megan Sasser in a social media post. Fellow team member Brandi Robinson took to Facebook to reveal that she hadn’t even planned to be on the water that day. “The captain just had a feeling we were gonna get our tag on day one,” she wrote.

It wasn’t an easy catch. The team had several gators slip through their fingers and endured hours of heavy rain. But once the skies cleared, one of the hunters spotted something in the distance, about 250 yards away. “Everyone’s binoculars were immediately glued! It was a big one, and we all knew that,” Robinson recalled.

As their boat drew closer, the giant gator sank beneath the water, forcing the hunters to wait a nerve-wracking 45 minutes until it resurfaced. Then began an intense hour-long struggle to bring the gator in. “That ol’ dinosaur gave us the ride and fight of our life,” Robinson said, with Sasser adding that the battle bent two poles and sent gear flying all over the boat.

After a tough 20-minute effort to load the massive gator onto their boat, the team headed to Red Antler, a local meat processing company that had processed the state’s longest alligator catch in 2023.

This epic hunt is sure to go down in the books, not just for the size of the catch, but for the sheer determination and grit of the hunters who braved the elements to bring in a true Mississippi monster.