![Kevin Brotz and his colleagues of the Florida Gator Hunting with their 920-pound alligator captured in a lake in Orlando, Florida, on August 25, 2023. [Screenshot/WESH 2 News]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Screenshot-2023-09-01-172145-e1693603604943.jpg "Kevin Brotz and his colleagues of the Florida Gator Hunting with their 920-pound alligator captured in a lake in Orlando, Florida, on August 25, 2023. [Screenshot/WESH 2 News]")
A Central Florida blast of hunters captured potentially the second-largest alligator on record in the state August 25, according to a local report.
Florida Gator Hunting captured the 92o-pound, almost 14 foot long alligator in a lake near a residential area in Orlando, WESH reported.
“I had fear like I never felt before, in all honesty,” Kevin Brotz, the hunting group’s leader, told WESH. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I think about gators, but I’ve never really experienced this,” Brotz added.
He has been a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed charter captain and hunting guide for almost 20 years, according to Florida Gator Hunting’s website.
“It was a giant dinosaur. Not every day you get a giant dinosaur in your boat,” Brotz’s friend Darren Field said
Brotz, Field and Carson Gore reportedly toiled for four hours to haul the reptile up into their boat.
“Honestly, my first concern was safety, because we were in a smaller boat. And then you add a gator whose head is this big. All he has to do is turn, and we’re in trouble. So immediately, all we kept saying, all I kept saying was, ‘Guys, we have to be smart. We have to play this safe.’ And I couldn’t have been with better people,” Brotz said. (RELATED: Hunters Bag Longest Gator In State History)
“Ultimately, if a beast of that size gets a hold of you or, God forbid, a child, the odds are tough,” Brotz added, referring to the presence of the alligator in a lake close to where people are.
Brotz reportedly called alligators “killing machines,” alluding to a seven-foot long alligator’s fatal predatory attack on Nebraska toddler Lane Graves at Disney World in June 2016.
Bortz said he did not feel good about killing the alligator, but their population needs to be controlled, and alligator harvest tags serve that purpose. Brotz declined to reveal the precise location of the lake where they captured the alligator to prevent other people from scrambling to get tags for the lake, per WESH.
The largest alligator harvested in Florida weighed 1,043 pounds and was captured in Orange Lake on April 17, 1989, during a statewide nuisance alligator program, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.