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When you think you have a big one on the other end of that line it might be more than you asked for.



Lufkin man and three friends bag 880-pound, 13-foot, 10 1/2-inch-long
gator near Trinity

By STACY FAISON
The Lufkin Daily News
Monday, September 24, 2007


They say everything's bigger in Texas, and apparently
alligators are no exception.
A Lufkin man and three of his friends have a potential state
record on their hands after capturing a gargantuan gator
Friday morning near Trinity.

From left to right, Justin Wells, Jarret Hanus, Tom Bass
and Ryan Haltom pose in Trinity with their 880-pound gator
that measured 13 feet, 10 1/2 inches long.

Justin Wells of Lufkin, Tom Bass of Dallas, Jarrett Hanus of
Spring and Ryan Haltom of Houston set the baits together
Thursday night at the Gospel Ranch, which is about five miles
outside of Trinity.

"It was the experience of a lifetime, and I'm glad (Ryan)
took me out there on it," said Wells, a Lufkin High School
graduate and SFA forestry student. "I don't think we'll ever
catch one bigger than that."

"We'd gotten word back in the spring time that there was a
big gator out there," said Haltom, a wildlife biologist and
land management consultant, "so me and Tommy had gone out
there several times and scouted and seen quite a bit of gator
activity and videotapes of gators."


Ranch manager Larry Denson had spotted the big gator,
prompting them to get tags for the season, and Thursday night
was just "kind of a last-minute deal before the season was
over," Haltom said.

Using the hook-and-line method, the group anchored a rope to
a tree, left enough rope so the gator could run with it, and
hung a 14-ought treble hook about a foot above the water with
their own "secret recipe of chicken and some other stuff."

"We can't let too many secrets out of the bag," Haltom said.

When they showed up Friday morning, they had a line in the
water, but when they started pulling on it, it was tangled.
Not knowing whether the gator was dead or alive, the four
slowly made their way through the 6- to 7-foot-deep water to
untangle the gator and tie some ropes around him to drag him
out. But they quickly discovered it wasn't going to be that easy

"He drowned himself," Wells said. "We believe he just dove
underneath the water and got tangled up in a stump, and
gators have to come up for air every 15 minutes, so we were
pretty sure he was dead, but we still weren't sure."

"Once we figured out he was dead and he wasn't going to get
us," Haltom said, "we started diving down and feeling on him
and we realized he was big. We could stand on top of him and
we were head and shoulders above the water. That's when we
knew he had to be a big guy.

"The scales kind of change. On his belly there's big, slick
scales, or tiles, and as you get toward their mouth it gets
into some softer leather, and we got to feeling around and
thought, 'OK, this is his mouth.' But when we got to tying
him up, we realized it wasn't his mouth - it was his leg."

They broke a 400-pound test rope before realizing that "a
truck and a rope wouldn't do it," eventually enlisting the
help of a tractor and some chains to finally get the gator
out of the water. Next it was off to ranch headquarters to
clean him up, hang him for a measurement by Texas Parks
and
Wildlife, then place him in the bed of a truck filled with
ice for the trip to the taxidermist for a full life-size
mount.

"You couldn't tell what we had in the bed of the truck
because we had a ton of ice on him," Haltom said. "We went
and cleaned Brookshire Brothers out. We had 400 pounds of
ice on him."

"I get excited right now just thinking about it," Haltom
said. "When I reached down there and grabbed that claw and
we got to looking at each other, we were jumping around,
high-fiving, and we were actually saying the words, 'state
record.'"

The gator wound up weighing in at 13 feet, 101/2 inches
long and 880 pounds. And while they don't know yet whether their
gator is an official state record - "Until I see it on a
piece of paper from Parks and Wildlife, I'm just going to say
it's a potential," Haltom said - the guys had some heavy
celebrating to take care of over the weekend.

"We immediately drove to Houston and went to Beeville to go
dove hunting and celebrate," Haltom said. "And we were tired
puppies, let me tell you.

"It's going to be in the record books. We just don't know if
it's going to be the state (hook-and-line) record."

"Not knowing what we were getting into when we were walking
into the water, it was an adrenaline rush," Wells said, "and
when we finally figured out how big it was, you just can't
even describe the feeling."

Although Haltom said the four set the baits together and
worked to get the gator out, Bass will be written down as
the
hunter. Once the mount is done, the guys intend to donate
it
to a museum or find some place to display it.

"I must say, you do have big horny-toads around these parts!"
-Bugs Bunny