For a moment Josh McAteer and his friends thought they might have caught a new world record American alligator early Friday morning on the Alabama River.

On the first night of the season’s second weekend, McAteer and four others hauled in a 901-pound alligator that measured in at 14-foot and 6.25 inches, the biggest one caught so far in the West-Central Zone this year and the second biggest in the state.

“We knew he was a pretty decent sized gator, but we didn’t realize he was nearly that big,” McAteer said.

“We kind of did a rough measurement with our eyes by putting him up against the boat. We held his tail up, and his tail was going past the end of the boat, so we knew he was big then.”

While some alligators take hours to hook, kill and pull up onto the boat, McAteer’s only took about 30 minutes.

“Josh was the first one to hook him, and he pretty much fought him by himself for 75 percent of the fight,” said Zack Hughey, who helped McAteer catch and tag the 901-pound gator.

“We wound up getting two more hooks in him about 20 minutes later, and 10 minutes later after that we had the snare around him up to the boat and were able to make a clean kill. It really was the quickest gator hunt we’ve ever had.”

Jason Howell, Ware Cox and Jim Kilpatrick helped catch the gator as well.

The group caught a 14-foot alligator two years ago and a 12-foot alligator the year before that.

“We were pretty surprised,” Hughey said. “Since we had caught that big one two years ago … we were really just looking for something 12 foot or better. We were not expecting him to be that big.”

The 901-pound alligator was caught around two miles south of White’s Bluff.

While the group is no stranger to hunting alligators, McAteer said this year’s catch was pure luck.

“We almost passed him up, and as soon as we went past him Zach saw how big he was and snatched the light and the spotlight went out. I threw [the reel] about four times. I threw it three times in the trees, and then the last shot was lucky,” McAteer said.

“We’ve gotten lucky every time we’ve gotten a tag. We killed one two years ago that was 14-foot and 725 pounds. I never thought about or had intentions of beating it, but I guess we just got lucky.”

McAteer said he plans to have the head mounted to go along with the 14-foot alligator he had mounted on his wall two years ago.