How do you fit 13-foot alligator in 15-foot boat? It wasn’t easy, Florida hunter says
Florida hunting guide Kevin Brotz has gotten national attention for a wild alligator hunt that ended with he and two other men paddling to shore with a 13-foot, 920-pound alligator in their jon boat.
That boat was 15 feet long, which begs the question: How on earth did they all fit without it sinking?
“It had about 8 inches of water in it,” Brotz told McClatchy News. “Some people would say it was swamped, because they’re not used to it. It wasn’t in danger of sinking.”
As for how three men and a gator squeezed into such a small boat, Brotz said he rode part of the way to shore sitting on the alligator.
“On the head,” he said, when pressed for details.
The hunt took place early Friday, Aug. 25, and the alligator counts as one of the heaviest captured in Florida — a state known to have 1.3 million alligators. The heaviest on record in Florida is 1,043 pounds for a male caught in Alachua County’s Orange Lake.
Brotz hasn’t divulged where he caught the gator, but the water was about 12 feet deep, he says.
A four-hour fight
It took four hours to bring the alligator to heel and it was more of a tug-of-war than a chase.
The trio of hunters, which included Darren Field and Carson Gore, initially believed they hooked a 10- to 11-foot alligator, then it “breached up and out of the water 3 feet high,” Brotz said.
“We could tell the gator was way bigger than we thought. It feels like you got a log with legs when the alligator is that big. Often times, when you get a giant, they don’t take off like a marlin. They want to stand their ground and fight,” he said.
“We knew if we made a mistake or the gator decided to do something crazy, we could be in trouble. We were operating with a lot of confidence and a little bit of crazy.”
It was about noon when they dispatched the alligator with a harpoon-like weapon known as a bang stick.
Then the men had to figure out how to get it in their boat. They settled on pulling the alligator closer to shore, where the men stood in the water and worked out the perfect balance of beast and boat.
“The back of the boat did go under water at one time,” Brotz says. “We had to try a couple of methods to get it to fit.”
The three men then climbed in with the gator and spent another hour getting to the nearest boat landing.
What happens now?
The alligator was measured at 13 feet, 3 inches, which is big but still a foot shy of the 14-feet, 3.5-inch state record.
Alligator hunting for population control is a cottage industry in Florida, and it begins with harvesting the meat for consumption. In this case, Brotz says the alligator was so big they had enough meat for his family, his friends and “people in need” in the community.
As for what was left, Brotz is having the alligator mounted for display at his home in Oviedo, an Orlando suburb.
It will go up in the living room, he says.
“We have a corner fireplace and he’ll go on the wall above the fireplace. We’ll have to re-enforce the wall first,” Brotz says.
“This dinosaur will live forever.”
This story was originally published September 7, 2023 at 12:32 PM with the headline "How do you fit 13-foot alligator in 15-foot boat? It wasn’t easy, Florida hunter says."