650-Pound Alligator Vs. Arkansas Woman: Guess Who Wins

A 650-pound alligator learned the hard way that you don’t challenge an Arkansas woman.

Denise Smillie, pictured above from Prescott, Arkansas, was hunting with her husband and sons at a private lake near the Red River when they ran afoul of the giant creature, which measured an impressive 10-and-a-half feet.

Smillie said it took two harpoons and around 45 minutes of wrestling it to the surface before she could finish the job with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Taking it back to shore also proved difficult as the alligator was too large to fit on the boat, so the couple had to hold it in the water until making it back to land.

Plans for the alligator do not include fashion accessories, though Smillie told 40/29 News that they would be bleaching the skull and keeping it as a trophy. As for the rest, she said, “The meat tastes good.”

(And at 650 pounds, I hope they have a deep freeze.)

As impressive of an accomplishment as this is for a woman of Denise’s size, it pales in comparison to a recent story The Inquisitr reported on.

It was in Alabama where John and Mandy Stokes, Kevin Jenkins and his children, Parker, 14, and Savannah, 16, landed a record-breaking 15-foot, 1,000-pound alligator.

According to the news source, the half-ton alligator in Alabama was so heavy that a winch used initially to weigh the gator in was completely disabled. Next, a backhoe was brought in to weigh the large reptile. At 1,011.5 pounds, the bulk of the lifeless animal completely destroyed the piece of heavy equipment.

Prior to the catch of the 1,000-pound gator, Keith Fancher held bragging rights for landing Alabama’s largest alligator ever legally captured. His prized catch was 14-foot, 2-inches long and tipped the scales at 838-pounds.

The elated hunters told of a harrowing adventure that sounds like something out of Swamp People. Their odyssey began about 10:30 p.m. Friday night when John and Kevin managed to hook the 15-foot alligator with a special hook. After two hours elapsed, there was calm and the gator was not in sight. They soon realized that their taut lines, thought to be snared on their quarry, were snagged on a saturated water log instead.

Their struggles continued well into the early morning hours, and the hunters soon realized they may need a bigger boat; their vessel was only 17-feet-long.

The hunters’ strategy was to get as many hooks into the animal as possible and disable it with a humane shot to the head. However, the 1,000-pound alligator — unbeknownst to the hunters at the time — had other plans. The first shot didn’t find its mark, and the massive animal submerged into the murky deep.

Hours went by and the hunters soon got the break they needed. Kevin and John managed to harness several more hooks into the struggling reptile and coaxed it to the surface. There, Mandy aimed her 20-gauge shotgun square at a section between its eyes and fired. Voila! Seven hours into the ordeal, and the prized jewel of the Alabama River was dead, all 15-feet of it.

So what about it, readers? Do you think you could hang with a 650-pound or 1,000-pound alligator?

[Image via Texarkana Gazette]