Nascar drivers are known for racing around a track at 200 miles per hour, but one driver got quite an adrenaline rush when he went gator hunting with some Calhoun and Liberty countians recently.
Race car driver Sterling Marlin was on a hunt team with Andy Bailey, Vic Williams, and Jared Roberts when they headed to River Stix south of Bristol on the prowl for an alligator. This was Marlin’s first time and Bailey took him aside before the hunt to explain everyone’s role. By night’s end, they had bagged a 12 foot, 3 inch, 500 pound alligator!
“When Sterling harpooned him, the gator got hung up in some stumps for about 30 minutes,” Bailey recalls. “When the gator came up, he about came in the boat with us.” Bailey looked back to see Marlin and Roberts in the back of the boat.
He and Williams had no where to run as the gator fought to climb aboard. The gator lost his balance and slipped back into the water at which point Bailey pulled the team together to finish the job. Once the gator was in their grip and under control, Bailey held the beast’s mouth and they taped it together to keep it from biting them.
In the heat of the moment, with the adrenaline rushing, Marlin remarked, “Ya’ll are crazy.”
