After five-hour struggle, Alabama family reels in massive, 1000-pound alligator

It took them more than five hours, but early Saturday morning, an Alabama family finally killed the 15-foot "monster" alligator they hooked late Friday night.

The catch was record-worthy. The gator weighed in an 1,011.5 pounds, a state record. (The first attempt to weigh the reptile destroyed the usually-used winch. Biologists eventually used a backhoe to weigh it.)

The previous Alabama record was a 14-foot, 2-inch, 838-pound alligator caught in 2011.

Mandy and John Stokes, their brother-in-law Kevin Jenkins and his children, 16-year-old Savannah and 14-year-old Parker, were gator-hunting in a creek several miles west of Montgomery, Alabama, when they hooked the gator.

It was their first gator hunt, though the family regularly fishes and hunts on the Alabama River, Weather.com reported.

They battled with the gator for hours, losing hooks and lines, eventually managing to get some large hooks into the gator.

Mandy Stokes attempted to shoot the alligator in the "sweet spot" behind the eyes with her 2-gauge shotgun as she was instructed in a training class, but its head was too far beneath the surface to the water.

Instead of dying, the gator just got mad, lurching forward and taking the 17-boat with it. The gator towed the boat until the vessel smashed into a tree stump, sending all five passengers flying on top of each other.

Only then did they realize the enormity of their catch.

"By then, we all knew what we had tied to that boat. We talked about it and decided that we were either going to have to kill this gator pretty quick or we were going to cut him loose," Kevin Jenkins told al.com.

Using their last few hooks and some nylon trotline cord, the family managed to coax the gator to the surface.

Mandy got another shot. She didn't miss this time.

The alligator was dead.

It took them an hour to get back to their truck, pulling the heavy alligator strapped to the side of the boat. They recruited help to lift the alligator onto a trailer once they reached the shore.

"The whole time we were out there, we thought we were in a 16-foot boat. So doing some comparison to the size of the boat, we figured the gator might be 13 feet," John Stokes said. "Then Kevin found out it was a 17-foot boat, and we started looking at that gator again."

What do you do with a 15-foot alligator? The family is planning to send it to the taxidermy shop where it will be skinned out. Beyond that, they're still weighing their options.

According to al.com, the massive "Stokes Gator," as it's now being called, might be the largest American alligator ever legally killed by a hunter.

"That's the largest living alligator I've ever heard of," said Dr. Kent Vliet, a reptilian biologist and coordinator of laboratories in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida.

Mandy Stokes is proud of their catch — but isn't sure if she's up for doing it again.

"Right now the fairest way for me to say it is that we'll apply again, but I can assure you, I have no desire to hook into anything like this again. I truly don't," she said.

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