Mandy Stokes put her pearls on Friday night. No, she wasn’t going out to dinner with the family. She was going alligator hunting. Ever since Keith Fancher and his crew pulled a 14-foot, 2-inch, 838-pound alligator from the Alabama River in 2011 to set the standard for the largest ever legally killed by an Alabama hunter, Stokes had jokingly told friends and family that if she was ever drawn for a tag, she would wear the necklace so she’d look good when being interviewed after breaking the record.
Stokes got her tag this year and the pearls still hung around her neck Saturday afternoon.
It was about 10 hours after she and husband John Stokes, brother-in-law Kevin Jenkins and his children Savannah, 16, and Parker, 14, brought a monster alligator to the check-in station at Roland Cooper State Park near Camden in Wilcox County.
Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Biologists had no trouble measuring the beast at 15 feet even, but they had to call for some relief when trying to weigh it.
The first attempt completely destroyed the winch assembly used to easily hoist most average gators. It was the same mechanism used to weigh the Fancher alligator.
Enlisting the assistance of a park backhoe to lift it, a WFF biologist officially called the weight at 1,011.5 pounds.
Continue reading this article at this LINK…..
—–
Join ODU Magazine on Facebook here at this LINK…..
Join ODU Magazine on our Twitter fishing site here at this LINK…..
Join ODU Magazine on our Twitter hunting site here at this LINK…..
.