LAFAYETTE, La. (KPEL News) — Louisiana has more alligators than any other state in the country, and it is not even close. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries puts the wild population at more than 3 million, with another million on farms. That is roughly three times Florida’s gator population.
Numbers like that mean Louisiana has always produced some absolute giants. But the biggest one of all time? That story starts more than 130 years ago on a cold January night in the marshes south of Avery Island.
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The 19-Foot Legend: Edward McIlhenny and the Marsh Island Giant
On January 2, 1890, a 17-year-old named Edward “Ned” Avery McIlhenny set out from Avery Island with two companions to hunt geese. They sailed south through the bayous into Vermilion Bay and got becalmed near the mouth of a shallow, silted-in bayou close to Marsh Island.
Walking the bank with his shotgun at dusk, McIlhenny shot two mallards and waded into the marsh to retrieve them. He spotted what he thought was a partially submerged log. It was not a log. It was an enormous alligator, sluggish and dying from exposure to the cold air. McIlhenny shot it in the head, according to a detailed account published in Country Roads Magazine…