‘It was a monster’: Hunters kill enormous 360kg alligator that was feasting on farm cattle

Two Florida hunters said they bagged a 360kg alligator that had been feasting on their farm cattle.

Lee Lightsey, who owns the hunting business Outwest Farms in Okeechobee, spotted 4.6 metre alligator over the weekend in a cattle pond while on a gator hunt with his guide, Blake Godwin, according to news reports.

“Although this animal is huge, I was not that surprised it existed,” Lightsey told BBC News. “We have come across lots over the last 20 years that have been only a little smaller.

“But what really drew our attention to this animal was the fact that it seems to have been feasting on the cattle on my farm, because mutilated body parts were found in the water. It was a monster which needed to be removed.”

Godwin told a Fox affiliate that the giant gator came to the surface about six metres in front of them and Lightsey shot it.

The alligator was so enormous, Godwin said, the hunters had to use a farm tractor to pull it from the cattle pond.

Lightsey calls himself a lifetime hunter who has been in the business for more than 18 years. After Saturday’s kill, the group posted a picture on Facebook, saying it was “the largest gator we have ever killed in the wild!”