When they pulled their first alligator of the season alongside their boat Saturday night in Bayou Pierre, Tiffany Wienke and her hunting crew knew they had something special.

They just didn’t know how special.

Wienke, along with her husband William, Tim and Krissie Gibson, Dusty Ouvre and Brandice Nowell, harvested a male gator that broke the state record for length.

The gator measured 13 feet and 7 7/8 inches long, breaking the old record by 1/8 inch.

It weighed 686 pounds, which was well short of the state record of 822 pounds.

“I did not want to let myself get too excited before finding out if we had a record breaker, but the thought of ‘what if’ was there,” Tiffany Wienke said.

The big night started when Wienke and the rest of the crew had planned on hunting in the same area of the bayou as they had the night before, but after finding out it was already crowded with boats, they decided to move to a different spot.

Once there, the group sat for about an hour, but came up empty handed.

They then decided it was time to move on, but after a short troll, one of the crewmembers spotted a gator, Weinke said.

“We started heading his way and got to him and then another member of the crew said, ‘Hey, what about this one over here.’ We took a look and knew he was bigger and decided he was the one we wanted to catch,” Weinke said.

As soon as they were able to get the boat close enough to the gator, the reptile disappeared under the water.

When he resurfaced, Weinke’s husband was able to hook the gator with a fishing line, and eventually got another line in too, she said.

Weinke said they were hoping to get a third line in, but could not. All they could do now was work hard to hang on.

“He pulled the entire boat like nothing from bank to bank, literally crashing into some trees,” Wienke said. “He then went back out to the middle, and he got tired and so he went up under some limbs for about 5 to 10 minutes. This is when we got our first really good look at him and realized he was a really big alligator.”

Before the gator could be shot, a snare had to be placed around its neck, Weinke said, but with it floating in an area with tree debris this was difficult to accomplish.

“We tried to place the noose around the alligator, but there were just so many sticks and limbs in the way, and then when we went to put it over his head it spooked him,” she said.

This unfortunately set the gator to moving again and in doing so, he broke the lines.

We were all devastated and emotionally worn out, Weinke said, but they did not give up the hunt.

About 30 minutes later he was spotted and this time they were able to secure him with three hooks.

Weinke said the gator tried to get away by continuing to descend below the surface, but after awhile he wore out.

“Three of us were able to pull the alligator to the top of the water,” Weinke said, which allowed her husband to snare him and then Gibson took the shot.

“At that point in time we were excited, but we still had no idea what we had,” she said.

An hour later, which is what it took to secure the alligator in the 20-foot aluminum boat, the crew headed back to the landing.

Game wardens were at the post, which is typical during gator season Weinke said, and they did an unofficial measure of the alligator, and it was at this point, the crew for the first time realized they might have a record breaker.

The next day at the B&L Meat Processing plant in Vicksburg, the Mississippi Wildlife Fisheries and Parks alligator program coordinator, Ricky Flynt made the official measurement putting Weinke, who had the lottery winning number in the alligator harvest program, and her crew in the record books.

Many people have asked Weinke if they made a lot of money off the sale of the gator’s hide and meat. She said the cash they received barely covered the cost of her harvest tag and hunting license.

However, while Weinke and her crew may not have profited off the record-breaking alligator, the crew will certainly have plenty of bragging rights and stories to tell.