I’m putting her down because it’s a phony story. A five foot woman didn’t catch and kill a gator- she, her husband and who knows how many other people did it. And considering she’s from MA. and not South Carolina, I’m beginning to wonder if she and her friends did this on their own or are they just some tourists who hired a professional gator hunter to “help” them.
Mass. woman bags 1,025-pound alligator in SC lake
COLUMBIA, S.C. --Experienced hunter Maryellen Mara-Christian of Massachusetts says she was excited to get her first alligator on a hunt this week in South Carolina.
Hooking and killing the 1,025 pound, 13 1/2-foot gator has made her something of a celebrity.
"He was just a big old gator," she said Friday by phone from a hotel in Washington, D.C., where she will be interviewed on a morning news show Saturday. "The hunt of a lifetime, I'd say."
The 48-year-old laid-off bank marketing officer from Fitchburg, Mass., was hunting Wednesday with her husband, Mark, who is a firefighter in Massachusetts and a part-time hunting guide in Maine, and Lake Moultrie guide Kevin Davis.
"I came down to South Carolina hoping for a 10-footer and I just lucked out to may have gotten one of the biggest ones people have ever seen," Mara-Christian said.
Alligator hunting is part hunting, part fishing. Hunters use a regular fishing pole with a heavy line and a large snatch hook. They try to get several hooks in the alligator to get him close to the boat so they can shoot or harpoon them. It is illegal in South Carolina for a hunter to shoot a free swimming alligator.
It took about two hours for Mara-Christian's party to secure the gator before they could shoot it. But the .22-caliber gun they had wasn't powerful enough to put the animal down so Mara-Christian used a knife to sever the animal's spinal cord at the base of its head...