Huge crocodile rumoured to have eaten 300 people escapes capture in dramatic footage

There's a giant man-eating crocodile which is rumoured to have eaten over 300 people and has evaded all attempts at capture.

Meet Gustave, a notorious Nile crocodile from Burundi who is thought to be up to six metres long and weighing close to a tonne.

This absolute unit of a crocodile is believed to be the biggest in Africa and has left people living close to his river island habitat near Lake Tanganyika absolutely terrified.

A fearsome presence for several decades, when it comes to catching this huge crocodile, many have tried but none have succeeded.

His body bears at least three bullet wounds from where hunters have tried to kill him, all of them unsuccessfully, while teams of people trying to capture him have failed too.

YouTube/MagellanTV

A major effort to capture Gustave was seen in TV documentary Capturing the Killer Croc, although they never did manage to nab him.

Led by French crocodile hunter Patrice Faye, the team laid out a giant cage trap full of bait and waited for Gustave to get in, only he never did.

Instead, he seemed wise to their efforts to trap him, and their later attempts at setting up snares only managed to snag smaller crocodiles.

In the end, the team of hunters made one final effort to capture the croc, setting a giant cage with live animals inside in the hopes that living, moving prey would finally trick him into it.

Those efforts were yet again met with failure, until after one dark and stormy night when the hunters checked the cage only to find the goat they tied up inside it gone, and the trap itself dragged into the water.

Unsure whether the storm allowed the goat to somehow get free or whether Gustave snapped it up and proved strong enough to wreck the trap the hunters thought would snare him, they had no option but to admit defeat.

YouTube/MagellanTV

Faye spent years studying Gustave, describing him to the BBC in 2002 as 'three times as big as other crocodiles in Burundi' and 'very dangerous'.

He also said killing the mighty croc should be 'out of the question', and noted that Gustave was most dangerous when he left his island home to find a mate, often supposedly eating people along the way.

Plenty have been mightily impressed by Gustave, especially when it comes to his massive size and seeming ability to survive multiple attempts to kill or capture him.

Others joked that fewer people might get eaten by Gustave if there were some 'no swimming' signs up around his habitat, while others quipped that the huge crocodile was probably 'eating the guy who put up the sign'.

Plenty reckoned that the massive crocodile had earned a bit of peace and quiet, agreeing with the sentiment that we ought to 'leave him be' from now on since we can't seem to capture him.