BAY MINETTE, Ala. — When alligator season began last Thursday night in Alabama, those lucky enough to receive one of the state’s 260 prized hunting permits wondered if they might do what Mandy Stokes did last year. She and four others captured and killed the largest American alligator on record.

With the sky’s last light flickering like dying fire on the Tensaw River, people slipped their boats into the still water, disappeared into the dark maze of creeks and bayous, and went looking for the biggest alligator they could find.

Spotting them is the easy part. Alligators generally hug the shores at night, their reptilian bodies hidden beneath the murky surface, often deathly still. But their eyes, usually just above the waterline, reflect light. A flashlight with a strong beam creates a sparkle from hundreds of yards away, like headlights igniting a reflector far ahead on a lonely road.

The trick is not finding an alligator, but finding one worthy of the time and effort required to capture it. Most want a 10-footer. The one Stokes found, 100 miles north of here, was 15 feet long, and it weighed more than 1,000 pounds. Its stomach contained the front and rear halves of an adult white-tailed deer, a pair of squirrel carcasses, the bones of a duck, and teeth believed to be from a young cow.