Quick Take
- A hunter spotted this gator years before he could legally touch it, and what kept him coming back season after season goes beyond just the catch. See the multi-year chase →
- Both of South Carolina's record-breaking alligators came from the exact same lake, which keeps producing monsters for a specific reason. Why Lake Moultrie dominates →
- Snaggletooth falls short of the state record by a surprisingly wide margin, even though it still dwarfs almost every other alligator ever confirmed in the state. See how the size stacks up →
- Most tag holders in South Carolina's alligator lottery never come close to a catch like this, because the system is designed to make it nearly impossible.
Cole Poplin first spotted the alligator roughly four years ago, cruising through Lake Moultrie in Berkeley County, South Carolina. He could only legally pursue it during the state’s alligator season each year, and he spent three or four seasons trying. On the night of September 28, that pursuit finally ended: Poplin and fellow guide William Ard of Renegade Bowfishing, working with tag holder Chris Webb and his father Craig Webb, hauled in an alligator weighing 844 pounds and measuring about 14 feet long.
The animal, nicknamed Snaggletooth, is now the second-largest alligator ever confirmed caught in South Carolina.
A Four-Year Pursuit Finally Pays Off
Poplin told reporters he had hunted the alligator “a lot over the last three or four years,” catching glimpses of it on the lake without ever closing the distance during legal hunting hours. South Carolina’s alligator season runs for a limited stretch each fall, which meant each failed attempt cost Poplin and his clients a full year’s wait before they could try again, Hoodline reported. South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resources has not independently verified the animal’s exact weight and length, which were recorded by the hunting team.
How Snaggletooth Compares To The State Record
Snaggletooth still falls short of South Carolina’s benchmark alligator. That record belongs to a 1,025-pound, roughly 13-foot alligator caught in the same lake on September 25, 2010, by Maryellen Mara-Christian, a hunter from Massachusetts. Sixteen years later, Snaggletooth is the closest any confirmed catch has come to that mark, short by about 180 pounds but still well ahead of nearly every other alligator ever recorded in the state.
Why Lake Moultrie Grows Such Big Alligators
Both record-setting alligators came from the same lake for a reason. Lake Moultrie covers more than 60,000 acres as part of the Santee Cooper reservoir system, with shallow, vegetated coves and backwaters that give alligators the warm, slow-moving water they favor. The lake’s fish, turtles, birds and small mammals provide a steady food supply, and males in the Santee Cooper system are known to regularly reach 13.5 feet and more than 800 pounds, according to wildlife accounts of the lake’s population.
That combination of space, food and protected habitat has made Lake Moultrie one of the most reliable spots in South Carolina for alligators to grow old, and large, undisturbed for years at a time, exactly the kind of place where a hunter might spend four seasons chasing the same animal before finally succeeding.
South Carolina issues a limited number of alligator tags each season through an online lottery system run by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, which is part of why a confirmed giant like Snaggletooth doesn’t turn up every year. Most tag holders never encounter an alligator anywhere close to this size, let alone one they have already been watching grow for years. For Poplin, the real payoff wasn’t just the catch itself but the end of a years-long standoff with one specific animal he had learned to recognize on sight, long before he ever got close enough to bring it in.
