Hunter lands ‘record’ 755-pound gator in Lake Marion

After three hours of tracking alligators through the murky waters of Lake Marion near Stumphole Landing on Saturday afternoon, Zack Derrick said he finally saw one through his binoculars.

Derrick, flanked by his 8-year-old son Chaz Derrick, who was getting a little restless after three hours of waiting, and his uncle Peewee Derrick, thought the eyes he spied were attached to maybe a 10- to 12-foot alligator. But just beneath the surface those eyes belonged to a 13-foot-5-inch monster of a gator weighing 755 pounds.

Derrick, a Cairo, Ga., resident who is a South Carolina native, knew his plan of attack; he had gone on alligator hunts before with his father and uncle: cast a line out, wait for him to take the bait, and be prepared for the ensuing hour-long battle with an animal that traces its lineage to the dinosaurs.

“You hook him with rod and reel, and you want to get a second line in him because at least one of them is going to pop out,” Derrick said.

Derrick said it was only when he was able to draw the alligator close to the boat that he realized just how big the animal he was fighting really was.

As the two men wrestled to keep the alligator at the surface, a tactic used to tire the animal out, Chaz leaped into action. The boy handed his father and great uncle bullets for the bang sticks – think of a .44-magnum bullet attached to the end of a pole that fires when struck against an object – that they needed to finish off the creature.

“We fought him for over an hour using snatch hooks and rods and reels, and Chaz just kept handing us the bullets” Zack Derrick said.

Derrick told The State newspaper Tuesday that it took three long years for him to finally get the chance to go on an alligator hunt in South Carolina. Only a certain number of hunters win tags to hunt alligators in the state during alligator season. The tags are given out through a lottery drawing. Other members of Derrick’s family have been selected before, but now it was his turn.

“I got drawn after that long wait and was able to get a gator,” Derrick said.

But what do you do with 755 pounds of gator?

You take it to Derrick Matherly at Claussen Alligator and Deer Processing in Florence. Matherly has been in the deer- and alligator-meat processing business since 1988 and has seen his fair share of large animals. He said he has caught a 1,000-pound alligator in Lake Marion before and recently processed a 200-pound deer for a hunter.

But Matherly said Derrick’s catch was one of the largest alligators he has processed this season.

“It’s not like skinning a deer, where you can pull some of the hide off,” Matherly said. “You have to cut everything very carefully to not damage the hide. You’ll get about 18 percent yield (of meat). The rest of the weight is bone and intestines, while some of the meat just isn’t useable.”

Derrick said when he took the alligator to Matherly, a hunter had recently bagged an eight-point buck on a hunting trip and brought it in to get processed, and show off a little.

“He saw my gator and he wasn’t feeling so confident anymore,” Derrick said. “He’s a record in my book.”

This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 12:07 PM with the headline "Hunter lands ‘record’ 755-pound gator in Lake Marion."