Alabama family catches record-setting, 1,000-pound alligator

last updated 8 January 2015

What did you do this weekend? Hang out with your friends and family? Maybe get outside for a few hours to enjoy the sunshine?

Whatever you did to fill those 48 hours, it can't possibly compare to how these Alabama families spent their free time.

It's gator-hunting season in Alabama and one brave group — Mandy and John Stokes as well as Kevin Jenkins and his two teenage kids — scored the jackpot, pulling a 1,000-pound alligator from the water in south Alabama on Saturday.

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The thing was so enormous that when biologists attempted to weigh the 15-foot beast the first time, it destroyed the winch assembly that was used to hoist your average gator. A backhoe lift had to be brought in for the weigh-in. Officially, the alligator came in at 1,011.5 pounds, easily beating the 2010 record — a gator 13.4 feet long and a mere 742 pounds.

For more jaw-dropping photos of the new champion, check out The Associated Press.

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Lauren Hansen produces The Weekâ€™s podcasts and videos and edits the photo blog, Captured. She also manages the production of the magazine's iPad app. A graduate of Kenyon College and Northwestern University, she previously worked at the BBC and Frontline. She knows a thing or two about pretty pictures and cute puppies, both of which she tweets about @mylaurenhansen.