Two fishermen in Mississippi snagged the second-largest alligator gar ever caught with a bow in state history — a 182-pound, 7-foot-long behemoth.

Kevin Meacham, of Clinton, and guide Hughes Skinner were taping a segment for “Mississippi Outdoors” recently on an oxbow lake off the Mississippi River north of Vicksburg when they spotted something out of the ordinary, the Clarion Ledger reports.

“We were shooting gar left and right,” Skinner told the newspaper. “Before we shot that gar we put two in the boat over 100 pounds and we thought we had done something. I looked to my right and I said, ‘Dude, I think that’s a tree in the water, but I want to go look at it.'”

Skinner then edged their boat closer to what appeared to be a log as wide as a utility pole, but what they thought was wood turned out to be a jumbo-size alligator gar, a torpedo-shaped fish often referred to as “living fossils” due to their prehistoric look.

“We knew it was a pretty good-sized one,” Meacham told the newspaper. “Of course, we didn’t know it was that big, but we knew it was big.”

Both Meacham and Hughes then fired off an arrow, hitting the fish, though the creature snapped off Meacham’s line. But the “fight was on” once Meacham reloaded and fired a second arrow into the fish, which can reach up to 10 feet long.

“Once we got the second arrow in him and got him to the surface, we both knew it was the biggest we’d ever seen,” Meacham said. “We both knew he was pushing 200 pounds.”

After it dragged the boat for up to a half-mile, Meacham and Hughes finally caught the massive freshwater fish after about an hour. The 7-foot, 1-inch beast weighed 182 pounds, short of the state’s bowfishing record of 234 pounds.

“He was out of the water for four hours before we got him on the scales,” Skinner said. “He would have been a lot heavier. He would have been at the least 205.”

The massive fish is now slated to be mounted in a museum, Meacham said.