Now THIS is a gator

Y-Body · 03-03-2019, 4:37pm

Quote:

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“You’re perfectly safe. These animals exist. They’ve been here for centuries, they’ve been existing with people for centuries and they’re gonna continue to,” said Brent Howze, a wildlife biologist for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
...it really was caught on the Sumter County side of Lake Blackshear in GA... A farmer called DNR after finding it in an irrigation ditch.

“He was 13 feet, four inches long, 57 inches in circumference to the chest and we estimate his weight between 700 and 750 pounds,” said Howze.

DNR believes the gator may have been 50 years old but researches are working to find the exact age.

He’d been in the ditch for about a week. It’s not common for gators to stay in a spot that long. He was found in poor condition and was believed to be dying, so he had to be euthanized.

“Once we got him on bank and could assess him, we noticed he had several injuries including previous gunshot wounds,” said Howze.
DNR said gators only get that big when they stay away from people.
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04 commemorative · 03-03-2019, 5:25pm

Were they too scared to weigh him

simpleman68 · 03-03-2019, 6:54pm

VITE1 · 03-03-2019, 7:19pm

That's a big set of luggage.

mrvette · 03-04-2019, 5:29am

5 years ago, wife got me a trip we made to Key West, and after that tour witch was first for both of us, we left Homestead, just south of Miami, last town before the Keys/bridges.....and headed west picked up the swamp highway, otherwise known as the Tamiami Trail....sp? and along there we stopped at an airboat place, good size, lots of parking, and there on the way to the tour boats on the swamp.....was this gator, posted up on a wall....damn thing was over TWO STORIES TALL.....as usual, wife and I up front in these tour boats, call me a bow rider......and so on way back in after the trip, he slowed down one hell of a lot, turns out the operator spotted a ~8' gator ahead of us, and he didn't want to take a chance on hitting it with the prop.....

We follow the trail straight ahead until the Gulf coast shore......took some pix, then headed north......took almost a week for the entire loop.....just one day walking KW though...but we got an EARLY start, and so made all the sites.....