Near-record 14-foot alligator caught on opening day.

A group of Mississippi alligator hunters opened the season last Friday by capturing a monstrous gator that revealed its location by “roaring like a dinosaur.”

The group, hoping to fill a tag acquired by Jimmy Appleton, had spotted a 12-foot gator before the noon start of the season.

But a different alligator, making what Appleton described to the Clarion Ledger as a “guttural growl,” turned out to be significantly larger.

ALSO: Wyoming man accused of running down wolf with snowmobile charged

“It’ll make the hair on your neck stand up just hearing it,” Appleton declared.

His hunting partner, Blake Daughtery, added: "It was a roaring growl. It was like a dinosaur.”

Just after noon, with the massive alligator visible on the bottom of a lake in the Southwest Zone, the group hooked the reptile via rod and reel, then with a hand line.

"It almost snatched me out of the boat” during its initial run, Appleton told the Clarion Ledger.

Another hand-line hook was then set into the gator, which started dragging Appleton’s 17-foot boat “like it was nothing.”

Once at the surface, the gator was subdued with a snare and bang stick before it was hauled by four people into the boat.

The enormous reptile was delivered to Red Antler Processing in Yazoo City, where it measured 14 feet, 1/4 inches, and weighed 662 pounds. The length was just shy of the state record for male gators caught in public waters (14 feet, 3 inches).

During Mississippi’s alligator season, which ends Sept. 8, permit holders can harvest two gators measuring at least 4 feet, only one of which can measure more than 7 feet.

According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries & Parks, “the bag limit restrictions are intended to distribute harvest among adult and juvenile alligators.”

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Massive alligator bagged in Mississippi falls just shy of record

Reporting by Pete Thomas, For The Win / For The Win

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect