The next time Sgt. Jesse Phillips has to train in the swamp, he’ll be all too familiar with the type of beasts that might be slithering around his boots.
The mortarman with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines, an Alabama-based Reserve unit, made history on Sept. 2 when he and his friends caught a 792-pound alligator in Mississippi. The gator measured in at nearly 13 ½ feet from nose to tail, had a belly that was 69 ¼ inches in girth, and a tail that spanned 51 inches around.
It was the first time the sergeant went alligator hunting, and it paid off. According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, their alligator was the largest male ever caught in the state.
“During my swamp training I’m going to think about it a lot different now that I’ve snagged a 13-foot, five-inch gator,” Phillips told Marine Corps Times. “I don’t like snakes and I don’t like gators. But it ended up good — I faced my fears.”
The hunt went down at about midnight on the Mississippi River. Phillips was in a 16-foot aluminum boat with two friends, Brian Montgomery and Scott Berry.
They used deep sea fishing rods and reels with giant hooks to snag the alligator — but that’s when the similarities to fishing ended. While anglers try and hook a fish through its mouth, alligator hunters try and snag an alligator’s body and pull it in.
The three fought to wrangle the giant reptile toward their boat, breaking a pole and six hooks in the process, Phillips said. The gator even did a bit of damage to their watercraft’s hull, he said. The fight was so intense that Phillips, a photographer, had to put down his camera and help out.
Overall, it was nearly 70 minutes before they were able to get a noose around the reptile’s neck. Once they did, they shot it and with that, they had set a new state record.
They brought the alligator aboard, and it took up most of the space in their boat.
“It was shocking, a little scary,” Phillips said.
The gator hunters are going to eat the meat and get the trophy stuffed, Phillips said. They haven’t decided where to put it on display, but he said they want it to be somewhere public so that people can see the massive reptile.
The record-breaking catch was one of several alligators that they got that night, but they threw the others back, including a 12 ½-footer and one that was about five feet long. Phillips said he was more nervous while reeling in the smaller one than the record-setter. For the bigger one, he was cool and calm and just went into auto-pilot and fought to bring it in, similar to how he reacts instinctively in the Marines through years of training, he said.
Next time he has to do some amphibious training, though, he said it’ll be tough not to remember what might be lurking underneath.
“Swamp training is going to be a totally different animal now,” he said.
