Big Spider! What is it?

I have seen Wolf spiders and "Wood" spiders that size and bigger here in CT, but they weren't jet black like that. The biggest and scariest spiders I have ever seen, though, were in the swamps of my native southern Louisiana. I have actually seen webs woven between trees, and one day while squirrel hunting I snagged the barrel of my shotgun in a web and the big (huge!) bastard spider came at me (apparently), but disappeared down inside the gun barrel (he wasn't coming at me, actually, he was looking for a place to hide from me). Regardless, it creeped me out anyway and he was vaporized when I touched the trigger.

I hate spiders (have had some nasty spider bites in the past) and generally kill them on sight regardless of size.

Not at the point of arachnophobia quite yet, just hate the buggers.

Ignore the following post, I shall be making an April Fools joke... but I need to post it somewhere first.