An 844-pound alligator was hauled out of Lake Moultrie in Berkeley County, capping off a hunt that one of the men chasing it says lasted three or four years. The catch has been described as the second-largest alligator ever caught in South Carolina, putting it in rare company for a state where thousands of gators have been pulled from the water since public hunting began.
According to the Post and Courier, the alligator was hauled in from Lake Moultrie the night of Sept. 28 and weighed 844 pounds, measuring 14 feet long. A separate account from FITSNews puts the catch a day later, on Sept. 29, and describes the same 844-pound animal as 13 feet 8 inches long. Either way, it's an enormous gator by any South Carolina standard.
Cole Poplin and William Ard of Renegade Bowfishing captured the animal along with clients Chris Webb, who held the hunting tag, and Webb's father Craig Webb, the Post and Courier reported. Poplin, who runs the charter company, said this wasn't some lucky first encounter with the animal. “I've hunted this gator a lot over the last three or four years,” he said, according to the same report, with the paper noting he'd first spotted the alligator roughly four years before it was finally captured.
Lake Moultrie's Reputation for Giants
The capture happened in Berkeley County, where Lake Moultrie sits inside South Carolina's Middle Coast alligator hunting zone, also known as Unit 2, per the Post and Courier's reporting. That's the same body of water that produced the state's long-standing benchmark catch: in 2010, Maryellen Mara-Christian of Massachusetts pulled a 1,025-pound alligator from Lake Moultrie, a catch the Post and Courier put at 13 feet, while FITSNews reported it as 13 feet 6 inches and dated the harvest to Sept. 25, 2010. Either way, FITSNews calls that 2010 animal the benchmark for confirmed South Carolina gator harvests, and the Post and Courier notes Mara-Christian was already an experienced hunter even though it was the first alligator she'd ever caught.
Poplin's season had already produced one serious trophy before the 844-pounder. Earlier in 2026, he and Ard harvested a 12-foot-9-inch, 769-pound alligator while hunting the Santee Cooper lakes, the same report from FITSNews noted. Lake Moultrie has a track record of yielding hefty gators most years, including a 12-foot, 612-pound animal recorded during a prior hunting season, per the Post and Courier.
A Season Defined by Big Numbers
South Carolina's 2026 public alligator hunting season opened at noon on Sept. 12 and runs through Oct. 10, FITSNews reported, consistent with the structure the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources lays out for the public hunt, which runs from noon on the second Saturday of September to noon on the second Saturday of October each year. As of Oct. 1, hunters had reported killing 207 alligators statewide, including 12 that topped 12 feet and four logged as 13-footers, according to the Post and Courier's season coverage. Demand for the hunt remains fierce — nearly 12,000 hunters applied for just 1,200 allotted permits in a prior season, the paper reported, and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources says successful applicants receive a permit and a single tag good for one alligator in their designated management unit.
Since the state began its public alligator season in 2008, 6,024 alligators have been killed in South Carolina, per the Post and Courier's tally. Other big catches have turned up around the Santee Cooper lakes system over the years, including a 625-pound, 13-foot alligator pulled from the upper portion of Lake Marion, as reported by The State, and an 806-pound, 12-foot-10-inch gator caught by Jonathan Smith and Melissa Davis in that same lake in 2016, according to ABC News 4. The State also reported that one local processor, Cordray's Processing and Taxidermy, typically takes in 90 to 100 alligators each hunting season — a sign of just how many hunters are out on the water chasing their own version of Poplin's four-year pursuit.
Rules Hunters Must Follow
Once an alligator is harvested, state guidance requires hunters to act fast. The SCDNR's hunting guide states that a harvested alligator must be tagged immediately and that hunters must complete a harvest report within 24 hours. Whether this particular 844-pound Lake Moultrie alligator ultimately settles the question of exactly how it ranks among the state's biggest catches may remain open, but for Poplin and his crew, the years-long chase has already ended with one very large gator on the bank.
