The REAL Crocodile Dundee

The 57-year-old, from Darwin in the Northern Territory, was taught all he knows by his stepfather and mentor German Jack, who was famous for catching four of the largest crocodiles ever held in captivity.

While Mick has yet to beat German Jack's record, he has notched up a pretty impressive haul of crocodiles himself, and recently took down a 4.9m long beast in a billabong with two gun shots to the back of the neck, after spending four weeks staking it out in the dead of the night.

The crocodile had to be killed as it was massacring cattle from a nearby station. The owners were at their wit's end, with the crocodile preying on up to two animals each day. 

It was very late at night Crocodile Mick spotted the beast on the bank of a billabong, eating yet another of the scores of cows he had already devoured. He pounced gun in hand - and found the crocodile surrounded by the bones of dozens of dead animals.

'I sat in a bit of a 'hide' there for nearly four weeks. I waited close enough that he couldn’t smell me and I actually witnessed him taking down a beast,' Crocodile Mick told Daily Mail Australia.

'I waited for my opportunity and kept going until the time was right because it’s like everything - if you’re going to shoot something, don’t shoot it unless you’re going to do the job right.'

While that kill went off without any drama, Mick found five crocodile tags in crocodile's stomach when he slashed it open - proof the beast was killing more animals than he needed to. 

Mick, who admits to being an adrenaline junkie, said one out of every ten crocodiles he has tried to kill has put up a pretty terrifying fight.

'We’ve had crocodiles zoom straight past,' he said.  

'Not long ago a four metre zoomed straight past. He would have been half a metre away and just missed our cameraman by a couple of millimeters and he came out of the bush, out of nowhere.'

'It happens quite regularly when you’re walking along the river bank, you’re in their world.'

'I’ve had lots of close calls, you’ll be put in a position where it’s you or them.

'I always look at it at the end of the day and have a bit of a laugh about it or else it’s like that Mick Fanning and the shark you won’t go back in.'

The biggest crocodile he has ever caught was 4.9 metres, but even a couple of inches bigger can add an extra 80kg to size of the animal.

Despite facing monster beasts, Mick only ever bring one offsider to help him, and he can't understand why other hunters need to bring a whole team together when stalking crocodiles.

 'Unlike other people, we don’t jump all over them when we catch them, because it’s like laying an 80- year-old man down on the ground and having his six grankids jumping up and down on him.'  

One of his closest calls happened when Mick was scoping out a creek in his 12 foot dingy.

After setting eyes on a 3.8 metre crocodile, which had been preying on nearby cattle, Mick stuck a harpoon into the animal, but to his surprise it took off like a rocket. 

In an instant it had dragged the tiny dingy up onto a mudbank. After that, the clever animal launched itself over the side of the boat and Mick was forced to use makeshift bamboo sword he keeps on the dingy as a weapon, sticking it on top of the crocodile's nose, before pushing himself off the bank and back into the billabong.

(dailymail.co.uk)