‘I just paddled and paddled, it came within probably 5 feet of the back of my kayak like up on a plane surging,’ the kayaker said.
Bo Storey sat in his kayak, floating in an Augusta, Georgia, pond Monday hoping to land a big one. Storey later told authorities he was practicing for an upcoming bass fishing tournament. But the big one he found wasn’t a fish — it was a 10-and-a-half-foot, 360-pound alligator.
And he didn’t catch it. It came for him.
“I was just going down the bank fishing, and all of a sudden about 10 feet away I seen the big gator,” Storey told WDRW. He said the leviathan swam toward his kayak and chased him as he paddled furiously away.
“I just nonstop paddled ’til I got to my truck,” he said.
Richmond County deputies arrived at the pond after Storey called in the encounter. Because of the encounter, officers at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) deemed the massive reptile a “nuisance,” meaning it had no fear of humans and must be euthanized.
Deputies enlisted the help of two passersby, Trey Durant and Robby Amerson, and “wrestled” the gator out of the pond, the Associated Press reported. Amerson, who had a legal alligator hunting tag, received authorization from the DNR to kill the animal.
