‘A living dinosaur.’ Boater reels in 12-foot, 450-pound gator in Mississippi Coast river

A boater recalled the moment he spotted a set of eyes peeking above the surface of the Jourdan River before disappearing under the water again. Then, there was another.

John Ladner chased the eyes up the river near Diamondhead, Mississippi, thinking he was tailing a 7- or 8-foot alligator. What he came across was far bigger: a “once-in-a-lifetime” catch weighing 477 pounds and stretching exactly 12 feet long.

“We weren’t expecting something that big,” Ladner told McClatchy News of the massive gator he reeled in with a friend. “We were nervous because ... we knew we had a dinosaur of a gator underneath us.”

The Mississippi man shared news of his legendary catch on Facebook, thanking those who helped unload the scaly, green giant from his small jonboat. Ladner said he was grateful for the experience and marveled at how everything fell into place that day.

“From bringing boats out in the middle of the night to help load it in the boat, emptying your ice coolers and bringing over ice, processing the alligator for many hours and even bringing over scales to weigh the giant,” he wrote. “I’m very thankful ... and I know I had a lot of luck on this one because everything worked out perfect.”

Ladner said they were blind casting in shallow waters when his friend, Derek Stiglet, hooked what they initially thought was a log. They soon realized it was an alligator when the creature finally resurfaced.

“It was definitely a dinosaur, a living dinosaur,” he recalled, adding that the game warden believes it’s one of the largest alligators to come out of the Jourdan River in the last 15 years.

Ladner was thrilled to have caught the legendary gator, which he said only had one eye. “A lot of people knew of the large one-eyed alligator on the river,” he said, also noting the reptile’s large teeth and back paws that were three times the size of his hand.

After the pair dispatched the animal and secured its head and tail, they had to call a friend to meet them out on the water because the load was too large for the small boat they were in.

“Between all three of us, it took about three-and-a-half hours to get that thing into the boat,” Ladner told McClatchy News. “We had to tie a rope around it, a little at a time, from the tail all the way down to the head. “

Later, the friends had to use a tractor to lift the gator out of the boat and take it home for cleaning.

Ladner said he plans to keep the head for a European mount, and now has his freezer stocked with more than 100 pounds of fresh alligator meat.

“It was definitely an adventure,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime catch.”