The terrifying moment a North Carolina man escapes an alligator attack

Terrifying video footage shows a North Carolina man narrowly escaping the deadly chomp of an alligator as the creature launches a sneak attack on his kayak.

Peter Joyce, an experienced paddler, was floating down a section of the Waccamaw River he had never explored before last weekend, when he came face-to-face with the aggressive reptile.

At first, he couldn’t make out what the commotion was.

“I thought I heard a fish jump to my left — turned out not to be a fish,” the surprisingly calm and collected Joyce tells WECT News. “About 3 feet from the kayak I made out the head of the gator and that was it, I had no time to react.”

In the blink of an eye, the lurking gator rapidly charged at Joyce’s kayak and flipped it over, the YouTube video shows.

”My mind was playing catch-up at that point,” says Joyce. “Basically, when I made out the head of the gator towards the front end of the kayak it was kind of just a state of shock. As soon as it hit the kayak, I went, ‘What just happened?’ ”

Joyce’s camera shows him submerged entirely underwater before grabbing the branch of a tree in order to get himself upright again and out of the dangerous waters.

“If it hit and there was nothing to grab on the right side of me, I would have inverted. It could’ve been a lot worse,” he says.

Joyce then managed to get back inside the boat and paddle away without a scratch.

But the experience certainly left a mark — and made him rethink the reptile’s deadly force.

“Usually they make a splash or move and make a ruckus in the water,” says Joyce. “But this was a continuous charge from about 20 feet away. It definitely made me think a little bit differently what their capabilities are.”

Joyce, who mentioned that he has seen gators on previous excursions, believes the alligator became aggressive since mating season lasts from June until early July.

And though he plans to explore that section of the river again, he certainly won’t do it this time of year.

The incident comes less than a month after a Florida Frisbee gold player nearly had his face torn off by a gator while trying to retrieve a disk from the lake at a Largo park.

The man, Travis Spitzer, 40, was hospitalized with cuts to his hands and face, but is expected to recover.