Recently caught, massive gator once a nuisance
At 14 feet, 3 inches long, it’s the longest alligator ever officially recorded in Mississippi. However, it wasn’t the first time the alligator had been captured.
The alligator had a metal tag on his right rear foot and a history to go along with it.
“I thought it was pretty cool,” said Donald Woods of Oxford. “The first thing I did was text Ricky (Flynt).
“I think he was more excited about it than anyone. When I called Ricky and told him about it, he was fired up.”
The alligator was caught by Woods, the permitholder who is credited with the new state record for longest alligator in Mississippi, along with Joey Clark of Jackson, Will Thomas of Madison and Tanner White of Flora.
The call Woods made was to Ricky Flynt, former head of the Alligator Program at the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.
It was caught Saturday morning in the Yazoo River. The alligator weighed 802.5 pounds with a belly girth of 66 inches and tail girth of 46.5 inches. The tag he was wearing dated back to when he was initially captured 16 years ago.
A nuisance when he was younger
“It was May 31, 2007,” said Ricky Flynt, who was head of the head of the Alligator Program at the time. “It was in a small private pond behind a house off Redbone Road south of Vicksburg.
“I remember we borrowed their 10-foot jon boat to get in the pond because it was surrounded by trees. When we hooked the alligator we realized it was bigger than we thought it was.”
In fact, the alligator was 10 feet, 11 inches long – 11 inches longer than the boat.
“We had our hands full,” Flynt said.
Flynt put tags on the alligator for research purposes and because it was considered a nuisance, released it almost 30 miles away in the Yazoo River.
“They harvested it 22.4 miles from where we released it,” Flynt said.
For an alligator to travel that far after being tagged isn’t unusual. Flynt said some stay in place, but he’s had one relocate 50 miles away. To grow 40 inches in 16 years, an average of 2.5 inches per year, also isn’t unusual for alligators in that size range.
Tagged gators provide valuable data
What is unusual is that it became a state record. “I would have never imagined 16 years ago that any of the alligators I was tagging would become a state record,” Flynt said. “It’s just so cool that it happened.”
Flynt said tagging alligators and other species of animals provides biologists with valuable insight into their lives and recovering that data is dependent on hunters like Woods harvesting them.
“It is extremely interesting,” Flynt said. Woods feels the same.
“It was cool to know back then he was 11 feet and that he’d grown 3 feet,” Woods said. “It was also interesting to know he’d traveled 22 miles.”
Do you have a story idea? Contact Brian Broom at 601-961-7225 or bbroom@gannett.com.