ORLANDO, Fla. — A Central Florida hunting guide said he and his team caught what could be the second-heaviest alligator ever harvested in the state.
Kevin Brotz and his group recently captured a gator that weighed 920 pounds and measured 13 feet 3 ¼ inches long.
"I had fear like I never felt before," Brotz said.
Brotz runs Florida Gator Hunting and has been a guide and licensed charter captain for almost 20 years.
"I've lived here my whole life, and I think about gators, but I've never really experienced this," he said.
Brotz had his two buddies with him.
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"Honestly, my first concern was safety because we were in a smaller boat," he said. "And then you add a gator whose head is this big. All he has to do is turn, and we're in trouble. So, immediately, all we kept saying, all I kept saying was, 'Guys, we have to be smart. We have to play this safe.' And I couldn't have been with better people."
Darren Field was also on board.
"When we saw this gator, it was way bigger than anything we've ever caught before," he said. "It was a giant dinosaur. Not every day you get a giant dinosaur in your boat."
It took Brotz, Field, and their friend Carson Gore four hours to get the gator.
"I laid down in the front of the boat and said, 'Alright, I have to lay down until we get back,' because I thought I was going to die. That thing was huge," Gore said.
Brotz said they found the alligator in a lake in the Orlando area where people are.
"Ultimately, if a beast of that size gets a hold of you or, God forbid, a child, the odds are tough," he said.
As a hunting guide and licensed captain, Brotz weighed in on the harvesting of alligators.
"I don't ever feel good about killing an animal. But with that being said, I respect the harvest," he said. "Tags are allocated to balance the population out of control. We've all seen what happened at Disney. We've all seen what happened elsewhere. These are killing machines. They can, not that they want to, but it does happen. So, we need to balance the population as well, so that’s how we look at it."
Brotz said this alligator could be the second heaviest ever harvested in Florida. According to FWC, the heaviest on record is more than 1,000 pounds.
As for specifically where the gator was caught, Brotz declined to say because he doesn't want a ton of people scrambling to get tags for that lake.
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