I'm with ealong59. We had two on our 6 acre pond that we attempted to cohabitate with. They came with the property and we thought of it as a novelty. Never fed them or did anything to try to attract them. I guess they are curious as it did not take very long before they started following us around the pond. Everything was well and good until one of them took down my 55 lb bird dog. They broke the truce and I "relocated" them. The one I estimated to be about 6 - 7 feet long while in the water turned out to be 10.5'.
I learned a valuable lesson. As hard as it was on us, I'm thankfull it was not one of my two boys.
Eddie, the answer is "yes" they are that far north. I am a good 30 miles north of you outside of Quitman.
