Alligator season is officially underway in Mississippi, and a state record has already been broken.
“Last night, I got a call that an alligator was at one of the meat processors and they were convinced that it was a female alligator and it was going to be a new state record,” MDWFP Alligator Program Director Ricky Flynt said during a Monday appearance on Good Things with Rebecca Turner. “During that process, they told me that it had some tags on it that the MDWFP had put on it.”
Flynt immediately knew which alligator had been caught.
“That’s got to be Yellow 410,” he replied on the phone.
Indeed it was the gator tagged as “Yellow 410,” one that Flynt had caught himself back in 2009. At that time, she was was 10 feet, 2 inches long (3.1 meters) from head to tail, already long enough to tie the world record for a wild female alligator.
“All these years, I kind of hoped or expected that she might get caught again by one of our alligator hunters,” Flynt continued.
When Yellow 410 was caught on Sunday five miles north of the Ross Barnett Reservoir by Jim Denson and Richie Denson, the massive gator was still the same length with lesser belly girth than what Flynt measured in 2009. This body digression combined with the lack of growth over a 14-year period tells him that the gator could be as old as 100 years.
“I think it’s very possible that this alligator could easily exceed 75 to 100 years old,” Flynt said.
Yellow 410 breaks the state record for longest female alligator captured in Mississippi and is tied for the second-longest female ever captured, just behind a 10-feet-6.75-inch alligator that was caught in Florida in 2021.
Alligator season in Mississippi will close on Monday, September 5 at noon.
