CLARION LEDGER (Jackson, Mississippi) 17 September 06 Ratcliff gets new record gator, but... (Bobby Cleveland)
Just after 4 a.m. Saturday, Mississippi had a new state record for an alligator caught during a hunting season.
John Ratcliff's 13-foot, 571-pound gator caught in a slough just south of the River Bend area of Barnett Reservoir was a monster.
But alligator experts, like agent trappers Woodie Reeves and Corey Hunt, were still talking about one obviously still lurking in the river.
While looking at another of the 10 gators caught Friday night, an 11-footer brought in at midnight, they noticed bite marks on its tail.
"Imagine the size of the gator that bit that one," Reeves said. "I don't know that I've seen too many, if any, gators that have had a jaw big enough to leave that mark."
That comes from a man who has caught a gator in a Flowood apartment lake weighing over 700 pounds and another in a Mississippi River lake that topped 900.
If there's one that big swimming in Barnett Reservoir - the only place that an open season exists in Mississippi - it would be tough for an amateur gator hunter to handle, judging by what Ratcliff and his five hunting partners endured.
They first hooked up at 11:15 p.m. and hooked up for good at 11:30. It wasn't boated until after 3 a.m., and only then with help from wildlife officials.
"We had scouted the area Tuesday and Wednesday and had seen a big gator, probably him, but we had no idea it was this big," Ratcliff said. "We were in this dead-end chute looking at a 4-footer when this one poked his head up.
"It went down quickly and I made a blind cast at it and got lucky. I hooked it."
Hunting with his wife Jennifer and daughter Molly, and with friends Eric Bowers and Ashley and Raye Harris, Ratcliff had no idea what he had gotten them into.
"He started running and pulled the hook loose twice, but I saw his bubble trail and the third time I hooked him, I got him for good," Ratcliff said. "Then he went deep and sucked the bottom."
There it stayed, even after the team got a second hook in it.
The midnight deadline passed and they started calling the checkout station to report the situation.
After several calls and three hours, they finally asked for help.
Fortunately, Ricky Flynt, the alligator coordinator for the state wildlife agency, was on the water and had his equipment with him.
"I was able to get a hook in him with my big offshore rod and then we could pull him up and noose him," Flynt said. "With the rods they had, I don't know if they had enough to pull him up."
After the alligator was killed with two shotgun blasts, it was pulled to a nearby sandbar and hoisted into the boat.
When weighed at 4:05, it beat the previous record (11-8, 393), set just a week earlier by Robin Dukes, by 16 inches and 178 pounds.
The season, the second of two weekend segments, ends tonight.
Ratcliff gets new record gator, but...