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[bud]

A five-year-old boy in the US has shot dead an alligator 20 times his size.

Simon Hughes from Texas was on a hunting trip with his father when he saw the giant 3.7m-long, 365kg reptile.

The schoolboy shouted "holy moly" and grabbed his junior-sized .410-gauge shotgun before killing the massive alligator with a single shot, the Houston Chronicle reports.

"I wasn't afraid for a second — next year I'm going to kill me a bigger alligator," he told a local TV network.

Simon said he planned to take the alligator's mounted head into his school for show-and-tell.

“My friends were proud of me and I was proud of myself ... it's humungous,” he said.

Simon's father taught his son to shoot when he was four years old and he also knows how to drive a four-wheel-drive.

His mother, Toni Hughes, said she was not as comfortable with reptiles as her son.

"It sort of scares you to death because there are alligators, there are snakes, all sorts of things out there," she said.

"What we thought was massive was a [3m] alligator, and this one just dwarfs the [3m] ... it's just so massive and prehistoric looking."

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Pathetic a 5 year old learns to love the outdoors by killing stuff. Great parenting!
Im not a fan of Trophy hunting, it is pointless and pathetic if you ask me, besides if you really want to call yourself a hunter! use your bare hands!!!

[pilotfriend]

Damn right but it is the land of loonies!

This is what some do to their pets.








These paint jobs can cost several thousand dollars and are redone very three months or so.

Ho Hum
God bless America!

[Amanda]

Pathetic a 5 year old learns to love the outdoors by killing stuff. Great parenting!
Im not a fan of Trophy hunting, it is pointless and pathetic if you ask me, besides if you really want to call yourself a hunter! use your bare hands!!!

I could see it happenening in Australia. It reminded me of bit of Crocodile Dundee when I read it

[bud]

Pathetic a 5 year old learns to love the outdoors by killing stuff. Great parenting!
Im not a fan of Trophy hunting, it is pointless and pathetic if you ask me, besides if you really want to call yourself a hunter! use your bare hands!!!

I could see it happenening in Australia. It reminded me of bit of Crocodile Dundee when I read it

na firstly we dont have Alligators here besides Crocs are protected. You cant hunt them. though they are farmed for their meat and skin.

[vaptin]

If I saw an Alligator I would kill it too. Ok thats what I would want to do.

[stonemonkey]

If it's to eat or sell it's meat I don't have a problem (unless it's endangered or protected which in this case I'm assuming not) If it's just to chop it's head off then I find it disgusting.

[chemax]

Hunting is a big topic around here. I've never hunted, but most people I know have a better mentality about it, and not just a "shoot anything that moves" objective about it. Hard to call it pathetic if you don't really know what they do with the gator afterward. Cut off it's head and just show it off??? Yeah, not that great. Skin it and use the meat and skin for something else? That's probably better and whatt hunting is supposed be. I think every hunter know makes some really great food with their trophy...

As far as those cats go, I have NEVER seen anything like that before. I'm sure I could surf the web and come up with weird photos form all over the world, not just Texas and/or America. That's kind of a bad example to use. Not to say people don't do weird stuff around here, really weird and dumb stuff...

[Gaz]

Yeh but you get those rich business men going over to africa and shooting endangered animals there because they have paid to do it.

For what a few Jollys its not even hard you just aim and pull the trigger.

Its pathetic.

[texasmr2]

I have issues with it aswell but to stipulate this sort of thing only happens in America is simply biased and ignorant. There you go once again bashing us americans with your self-righteous opinion, simply pathetic behavior imo and something I thought you had 'out grown', I guess not .

[texasmr2]

Yeh but you get those rich business men going over to africa and shooting endangered animals there because they have paid to do it.

For what a few Jollys its not even hard you just aim and pull the trigger.

Its pathetic.

Check your facts mate because if a species is on the 'endangered list', which is an international list, they cannot be legally hunted/killed and that is a WORLWIDE rule.

Now back to buds topic I agree with him in the sense that it was a senseless killing of such a majestic animal and to reach 800lb's that gator was very old and should have been respected.

[Jabberwocky]

I am amazed that anyone with a child would trust them at 5 with a gun. I don't even trust my 5 1/2 year old with the hose as he will find it funny to spray dad. I could even think of a few of my mates who I would not trust with a rifle and they are all over 4 times the kids age

[Gaz]

Yeh but you get those rich business men going over to africa and shooting endangered animals there because they have paid to do it.

For what a few Jollys its not even hard you just aim and pull the trigger.

Its pathetic.

Check your facts mate because if a species is on the 'endangered list', which is an international list, they cannot be legally hunted/killed and that is a WORLWIDE rule.

Now back to buds topic I agree with him in the sense that it was a senseless killing of such a majestic animal and to reach 800lb's that gator was very old and should have been respected.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 760855238#

http://www.bornfree.org.uk/campaigns/fu ... d-hunting/

Should i include a Citation with every post i make tex?

[bud]

I have issues with it aswell but to stipulate this sort of thing only happens in America is simply biased and ignorant. There you go once again bashing us americans with your self-righteous opinion, simply pathetic behavior imo and something I thought you had 'out grown', I guess not .

ok sorry maybe i should have said only in Texas?

i dunno of many places in the 1st world where they give their 4 year old a gun, im stating the obvious America has a really bad gun culture!

[texasmr2]

Should i include a Citation with every post i make tex?

I was under the assumption that you and I were debating the topic of hunting endangered species? The lion is not an endangered species but I as you do find that sort of killing, depicted in your links, to be be grossly disgusting, pathetic and cruel. It makes me very sad that sort of thing takes place. I am not a hunter but my family member's who are do not hunt high fence, we have ethics.

I have issues with it aswell but to stipulate this sort of thing only happens in America is simply biased and ignorant. There you go once again bashing us americans with your self-righteous opinion, simply pathetic behavior imo and something I thought you had 'out grown', I guess not .

ok sorry maybe i should have said only in Texas?

i dunno of many places in the 1st world where they give their 4 year old a gun, im stating the obvious America has a really bad gun culture!

You are entitled to your opinion.

Now back to the alligator. On the news it showed that the alligators meat was taken to a local diner and cooked and the whole town enjoyed the meat. One thing that should be understood is that the alligator was a 'no kill' species for many years and do to that they became over populated. That led them to completely extinguish their nature food supply so they started looking and roaming for other food sources such as cats, dogs and even people. In Texas you must posses a license to harvest an alligator and the number of license's alotted each year is very very low compared to other hunting license's. Each state govern's it's own hunting rules and regulations.

[bud]

more to the fact a 5 year old shoots stuff..... i dunno maybe thats the norm in texas but just shows the gun culture in the states and its nothing to be proud of!