Update:
al.com - AUTAUGAVILLE, Alabama -- "Ken Owens has skinned and mounted an untold number of wild animals at his Autaugaville taxidermy shop. This week, he put his knife to what is believed to be a world-record alligator killed on the Alabama River during this year's state gator hunt.
Owens said that when he cut open the gator's stomach, he saw a pair of ears. He pulled on them, and out came the carcass of a fully intact, yet deteriorated, adult female deer.
The gator had caught it and gulped it down whole.
Owens used the doe's lower jawbone to age it at about 3 years old. An average mature doe from Wilcox County will weigh in the neighborhood of 115 pounds.
The doe was one of the last meals consumed by the 15-foot, 1,011.5-pound alligator killed by Mandy Stokes and her crew on Saturday, Aug. 16. The huge gator is being preserved by Owens and ultimately will be put on public display.
Owens said all of the deer's hair was gone and some of the meat, though much of the cartilage and the hooves were still intact.
Owens also found a collection of bones from some sort of water bird such as a duck, skull plates from other deer unlucky enough to have crossed the reptile's path, good-size rocks, teeth and an unexpected amount of greenery.
A couple of the molars most likely once resided in the mouth of a small cow.
Vliet said there are many instances in scientific literature that describe larger alligators taking small cows and calves."
