The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 941: The Life and Times of a Gator Man

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with alligator hunter Bob Stafford after a successful Florida hunt. They discuss Bob's experiences as one of Florida's first gator hunters; how gator hunting continues to evolve and the ways in which gators respond to hunting pressure; Bob's experiences a commercial gator egg collector; the difference between catching baby gators and giant gators; the markets for meat and hides; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. If you hunt in Canada, you know just how far you can get from help. Whether you're chasing moose deep in the bush, heading into the mountains or hunting a piece of crown land miles from the nearest road, when something goes wrong, help can be a long way away. That's exactly why Anex now offers AnexSOS powered by Overwatch Rescue, and add on to your Anex membership.

For $49.99 a year, you get a direct connection to Overwatch Rescue's Crisis Response Center. Hit the SOS button. Your GPS coordinates go out immediately, and a trained coordinator manages the response, search and rescue, or medical evacuation, and covers those costs directly. No claims, no deductibles, no surprise bill after the fact. OnXSOS works alongside Garmin, Spot, Zolio, satellite communicators, as well as compatible iPhones and Android phones you already carry. Add OnXSOS to your OnX Hunt membership for peace of mind. The hard rock bat casino app is here, Ontario.

It's safe, secure, and crystal clear with fast payouts and 24-7 local support. You can play over 3,000 games right here, including hard. Hard Rock Bet Casino Exclusives. The Hard Rock Bat Casino app is here, Ontario. Roll with us. Must be 19 years of age or older to play. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned about your gambling or that of someone close to you, visit connectsonterio.ca.

The best part of a white-tail sit is often the part you have to earn. The temperature drops. Nothing's moving. And climbing down starts sounding pretty good. The difference between seeing it through and climbing down early is about hard. but it's also about heat. That's why First Light built Whisper Down. With 900 fill power Moscovy down, box baffle construction,

in quiet, water-resistant fabric. It delivers serious warmth without weighing you down. First Light whispered down. Pack light, stay longer. Check it out now at firstlight.com. This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely bug-bbedding, and in my case, underwearless.

We hunt. You'll meet a podcast. You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds. No compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works.

Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Welcome, everybody. Today I'm joined by Florida Man. Captain Bob Stafford, like the actual Florida man. When you see a headline says Florida man, this guy, Captain Bob Stafford. No, in all serious,

this Bob Stafford's a guide. He guides in Lake Okeechobee, Florida. He guides for ducks, largemouth bass, Cropies, snipe. But we're here to, to talk about one of the things he does,

which he's a gator hunter. Guides gator hunts in Okachobie, Lake Okeechobee. I met Bob. I've been thinking about talking to this man for many years because I met you maybe six, five years ago. About six years ago. We were out and I was doing a different unrelated work project.

Kind of like ancillary to the stuff I do, kind of ancillary to what I do at meat eater. But we were working on a project and we were out in Lake Okeechobee and we were shooting Tlappia with bows and arrows one night. And we were in Bob's, your buddy's airboat. Yeah. You clarified it was not this airboat. No, this one was being worked on.

It was your buddy's airboat. And we were talking a bunch about gators. And what's stuck in my head is he was telling me about baiting gators with chickens. And it's buried in my head. and we became kind of like, you know, text message friends. And I had planned on, anticipated that I was like, someday I'm going to come down and go gator hunting with you, which I've never done.

Yeah. And it's funny because more than any other, you know, you get a question like, have you ever done blank? Have you ever done blank? For questions for me, it would be the number one thing people say to me is have you ever gone gator hunting more than any other like kind of animal i'm not kidding you have you ever gone gator hunting and my answer's always no and i kind of wanted to remedy that but i had

in my head that when i remedied that i was going to remedy it with you because i got a kick out of talking to you and the chicken thing stuck in my head yeah so finally here we are and we got some gators yesterday we got like a well one of the gators we got was 11 feet seven inches yeah a friend to mine another Florida man I texted it to him and he said that's a gator of a lifetime or a lifetime gator something to that effect yeah it's like catching a 10 pound bow yeah so we got a big old gator um but I want to go back to the I want to go back to in terms of your experiences with gators and the market of gators and gator hunting and you're involved in all kinds of gator businesses. Gator eggs, like wild

Gator Egg collection, baby gator collection. Like this is sanctioned stuff, not like law breaking stuff, but like... No, it's all completely licensed. Yeah, licensed activities. But in getting into this, I want to step back first. And can you explain what, like, when you were being brought up, what you were you born? I was born in 59. Okay, 1959. When you were brought up,

and you were a little kid and back then like gators were protected by the Endangered Species Act when you were a little kid what was your awareness of gators how were people in your community how did they view alligators

like what are kind of your early memories about alligators and how alligators and man interacted well a lot of it was my father was a he was a fishing guide also, but he was a sport fish captain, but he didn't like the ocean as much. When he had free time,

we spent a lot of time in the Everglades and on Lake Okeechobee, and we live south down by Fort Lauderdale and Pompidon. And he also, the game commission has a big part of it because there was this place that's not even there anymore down. It was a place called Loxahatchie National Wildlife Refuge. And there was a building in a store there, and they literally had programs where these game wardens would come for kids and all and show videos of the Everglades and alligators and stuff like that. And I just took a shine to it, you know. I just loved being in the Everglades. My dad brought me up out there running the little kicker boats, duck hunting.

And, you know, and that's kind of where it started. I love the Everglades. I love Lake Okeechobee. It's all, it all used to be all connected, you know, until they diked. everything in and separated everything. Yeah. Okochovee is really the top of the Everglades. What,

when they were an ESA animal, so even back then, like say, so let's say around 1960, you'd have been kind of old enough to know what was going, sorry, 1970, you'd been old enough to go, when what's going on. Was it rare to see one? No, they were around,

but there weren't as many then. Because we used to weighed fishing Lake Okeechobee and there wasn't that many gaiters when I was growing up in my you know adolescent years even teenage years yeah there wasn't that many I was not afraid to jump in the water we didn't have trolling motors and stuff then you know tie a rope on my waist and drag my boat around with my dad fishing for boughs I wouldn't do that now because the program they had it really worked yeah it didn't start opening up until 1988's when it became legal they started allow an alligator hunting.

Did you jump right into it in the 80s when it was 88 when they opened it up? I tried to apply for permits the first year and it was different back then. I didn't get them. I didn't know much about it at that point. I always messed with gators. My dad was always mad at me because I would catch him, bring him home. My dad was always mad. But I've always been fascinated with alligators.

Yeah. Yeah, because at that time, like they had been protected for so long. there wasn't like a it was so it was 1988 when they opened it up yeah they'd been protected so long there wasn't sort of like a class

or an existing community of gator hunters no there was no gator hunting yeah so what did that look like as people what do that look like as people awesome were like man we're allowed to go get some of these

what do it look like for people that were going out and trying to learn how to do it Well, they did it. They made a class when they started to teach people how to do it. But what happened is a lot of the people, because when they first came out, they were given 15 alligator tags to one person. Nobody was guiding for hunts.

And the hide buyers were really wanting the hides because there wasn't hardly any gator farms and stuff. Okay, yeah. So people started seeing dollar signs on them. That's one thing that turns me off with alligator hunting because everybody that gets tags or now, even now, they see dollar signs. They think they're going to get rich off alligators. Because at a time, it was good money.

Yeah, well, yeah, because they were getting $60 to $80 a foot for a hide. And if you applied for a permit in those days, like now in this area, I don't know by everywhere, but I know that the permit we applied for in this area, if you draw the permit, you get two alligator tags. Yeah. But back then, if you drew, it's 15 gator tags. Yeah. And gators were worth how much a foot? like $60 to $80 for the hide.

And plus you got meat too. But you weren't allowed to sell the meat unless it went through a licensed processor. But if you had, in those days, if you got 15 gator tags, was it full of huge gators? I mean, could guys honestly go out and make like a sizable chunk of money killing 15 gators and selling the leather? Yeah, they were not trophy hunting like what we were doing on our deal. Okay.

They were going out and getting $6.000. to eight footers. I mean, I didn't get involved in it at that point. You know, I still wanted to. I didn't get picked the first few years. I see, yeah. But I'd see guys on gas stations in an airboat and gators just piled up in the... I mean, they're 15, yeah. Yeah, they're going, they might not get all 15, but they had to six, eight, ten gators. And you had to sit on your hides and wait for for the hide validation program where they have a meeting and the people would inspect the hides and bid on them and pay you the money for them then. So what was the first year that you were able to go on a gator hunt?

Probably around early 90s, maybe 90, 92 is when I finally started, and they started cutting the tag numbers back. Oh, really? Yeah, so they started giving more tags out, more licenses out, to more people, but cut the numbers that you could get back. Got it. And in those days, when you started there, in those days, was it still like a commercial endeavor for people to go gator hunting? For me, it wasn't. I started out just, I really wasn't a guide then.

Yep. I just started because I love gators. I started hunting gators. And then people knew that I hunted gators. And it's weird. It's like an evolution in the way we hunted them. In the beginning, we would take airboats with harpoons with a buoy with a buoy on a rope. and then you would just shine the light and the gators were not used to it. You could run right over to the gator and throw the harpoon. The buoy would go out and you'd turn around,

go pull them in, bang, stick them, and go get another one. That was the early days. Yeah, that was the early days. And then after a few years of that, alligators evolved too. They started getting smart. You start an airboat up

and every gator within a half a mile would go down. That was the thing that... That was the thing that surprised me over to spend in a couple days with you out was, I mean, I shouldn't say surprise me because I didn't think about it before, but an observation I had and you validated it was that they are very aware that they're being hunted. Yes. And they are skittish.

Yes. And they see a boat come around the bend in the river and the big ones are like, I'm out. Yep. And the little ones that haven't been around long, don't know. If you're going around a river bend and the big gator hears you, he's going down before you even come around the bend. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's funny to think about at a time that they wouldn't have had that response. Yeah, no, yeah, they wouldn't. You could just ride right up to him. Yeah. Every once in a while you can do it now. But I'm not that good at harpooning. I don't like it as much. You know, that's why I hunt the way I do.

What did you do with the first gators you got when you started getting some tags and stuff? What were you doing with them? i wasn't even selling the hides we were just like cleaning them ourselves we would do our own processing okay we would skin them ourselves you know and then cut the meat up we would keep the meat for ourselves and salt the hides and get the hides okay from a tannery got it i didn't really get involved in selling the gators like they did in the beginning got it yeah and you were telling me like walk through how you used to like another another thing that i shouldn't say surprised about I hadn't thought about it before is I'm very aware of if you kill a deer, right?

You got a real problem on your hands when it's hot out. Yeah. Like you got to get deer cooled off. Yeah. And I don't know, man, I hadn't really thought about that now a sudden you got this 300, 400 pound reptile. It's 90 degrees out. It's like an issue. Oh, it's a major issue.

If you want to do something with the hides, and it's hot out, the scales will start flaking off. Like you saw that one in the office the other day where they didn't take care of it right. Yeah. And the meat could go bad. So you had to get it cooled off right away. Yeah, and you used to use tell people that you used to use a canoe. Yeah, I had an old canoe and an ice machine. And we were only killing two a night when they got down to the two per license. I would bring them home. You know, we'd be tired because we're hunting all night. In the beginning, you had to hunt at night. Like, it was like a half hour before sunset to a half hour after sunrise. Oh, that was the rule.

Yeah, that was a rule. It might have been an hour. I don't remember, but either way, I would come over here, put them in the cooler, and bury them in ice, and go try to get a couple hours to sleep. And then you wake up during gator season, it's in the 90s usually every day. So I'd like take one at a time and try to clean them as fast as I could and then get salt on the hides right away, and still some of the scales would slip. We call it slipping.

Yeah. And were you guys, were you selling some of that gator meat? No, I never did. Giving away to friends and stuff. You know, when I first started doing it, I didn't have a bunch of money. And I couldn't afford to bring them to a processor. So we did it all ourselves. Yeah.

Just made it. What was the, I had no idea until you just said it right now. Because I know a lot of your old gator hunting stories are night stories. Yeah. I had no idea that it was that you were supposed to hunt at night. Yeah. I don't even know what the reasoning was in the beginning. I swear, it was like the movie, the Jaws, that Jaws movie.

We would go to the boat ramp, and we would have to drive through protesters spitting on our trucks. The game wardens were there trying to make sure, you know, they had signs screaming at us where, you know, if you think you're macho, go kill a Gator with a knife, you know, without a boat. I mean, they were screaming all kinds of stuff at us, you know. It was just, I don't know why the night thing was. I think they did it because they didn't want people seeing us doing it. I don't know. I got you.

I don't know what the reasoning was. Talk about that evolution. Like you said, in the early days, guys were throwing harpoons from airboats. Yeah, and there's still guys that do it that are really good at it. I've never been that great at it. So, you know, I learned how to, I'm a fisherman, and I can casket, and I started learning how to snag him with treble hooks. And it gets hard.

to do that too. Like they keep going down. You know, you have to just keep fan casting. And sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you wouldn't. But how do you know, if you're watching a gator 100 yards down the river and the gator goes under, how do you even begin to have an idea where to cast? Well, you got to kind of watch the way they go down.

If they go down and their noses up there and they just go down easy, backwards, like that they're usually going right down and laying on the bottom and they know they're safe there and that's when we would fan cast but like if they blow really hard then they take off fast and you know your chances of snagin them are slim got it yeah tell people to set up you use the snaggator yeah i just use like i use a i use bay casting kind of reels bigger ocean reels but we use like 150 to 200 pound test line with a weighted treble hook on it and try to throw it over them we try to get over their neck if we can you want to hook them 50% from the body to the forward okay if you hook them in the back it makes it a harder

fight you're dragging the just like tailhooking up fish you know it's a harder fight yeah and when you do that I never like I saw you do it but you're cast now you're retrieving real slow and eventually just feel the hook find its spot a and then, yeah, tighten into them. It depends on if they're laying on the bottom or if they're on the top. If they're on the top, I don't reel slow. I try to reel fast. I want the

gator to be there, and the hooks here. I want to set the hook when it's getting close. I don't want them to feel it. I want to drive it into them really fast. Because he's going to explode. Yeah. You'll get a better hook set. But if they're on the bottom, you literally

have to reel slow until you see him, and then you've got to hope it's not a rock or a log, but, you know, and set the hook. Yeah. As hard as you can. And you messed around in the past. Like,

I know that that's your preferred way now is running the rods with snagging hooks, but you've messed around in the past all kinds of ways of hunting gators. Yeah, no, like that's what I was saying. It's an evolution. Like, I mean, the guy that runs our local processing plant, he actually helped me a bunch when I was really starting to guide

and get into it. And I'm like, man, I'm just having a hard time getting these bigger gators. You know, and I got into bow hunting with a crossbow. We did that at night. And in the beginning when we did it, we were like the only ones out there. We would make our lights red.

I'd take a red magic marker on an aircraft landing light. Really? And we make our own, there's a light right here. Make your own red lights. Yeah, we would just go around and it was really tricky. You couldn't shine the light right at the gator. You'd want to shine it above them. I would cut like a beer can or a Coke can so that the halo,

wouldn't be as bright on the bottom. And he'd hold it like on a maybe a 20 degree angle over top of you, you're shining the beam up. You know. I've ever been in the woods. If somebody's shining a light at you, you can't tell up they're 10 feet or 10 miles away. You know, and that's, if you just take it really slow and you can't have anybody else shining lights around,

then we would just troll and motor close with a, with a crossbow. With that thing lit by kind of the periphery of the light. Yeah, you're just wanting to barely see the little bit of red in their eye. And I would not touch it on them at all until I got within range of shooting the crossbow at them. And then when they were ready, I would lower it down on the thing. And then you could shoot the crossbow. At what distance? From 30 yards in.

We could shoot from 30 yards in. We made our own arrows and we had our broomstick with a little float. And out of that crossbow, how are you attached? you running a line attached to that bolt? We would just take the fiberglass fish bolts and get a piece of aluminum arrow that slid over it perfectly and an epoxy that in there an epoxy half moon knock in the end of it. Yep. And then we would drill a hole in the side of the aluminum and into the thing and I would epoxy a swivel in there with the ring sticking out so you could run the line through the swivel down to like a muzzly point or like those

points I used for the harpoons. So it was removable. Like, the arrow would go into the gator and it would fall off, but it was on your line. And then you had them on a buoy. Whatever we do has to have a line attached. You can't just shoot an arrow at a gator without a line on it. That's the law part. And what was that line then on, an external spool? Yeah, I was using Zepko 808s. Okay. There's a friend of mine that was really good at it. He really coached me in it, and I started getting pretty good at it. But that was hard hunting. You were like, you get out at dark and you were watching the sun come up. I mean, a lot of stuff could go wrong. Sometimes if the line dried out, you know, before we even hunt, we would shoot it into the water, get the line wet, and reel it back up.

Okay. Make it all moist and all. And then if we went too long or didn't reel up right, sometimes it would shoot out, it would break the line and you would lose the whole rig. Sure, yeah. Or if a lot of of times my customers would shoot at what they can see. I try to coach them. You can't shoot at what you can see because you're seeing the head. You have to visualize like behind the head where the valley is. That's what we call it. You'll see the back in the head and there'll be a little valley. You want to aim at the valley. If the, if the arrow hit the water in front of it, it was perfect because it would level out like a torpedo and just hub up right in them.

Yeah. And then that would be the best shot. But nine times out of ten, people would shoot at the head. It would skip off the head and you'd lose another arrow. Yeah. Why did you guys move away from that crossbow style hunting? Because everybody started doing it. And it was getting harder. Like all of a sudden, we're going out gator hunting, you know.

And then that's when I was really starting to get in the guide. And then everybody in their brothers, there's red lights everywhere. Gators were getting really spooky. They evolved with the harpooning deal. And then they started learning about the red lights. they got light shy. Oh, you could hit a,

you could hit a gator a quarter of a mile away with your light, soon, gone. Got it, got it. It was just hard. It's like a gator arms race. Yeah,

so we had to figure out something else. Would you move to from there? We moved to baiting then. You know, I was, for years thinking about, there's got to be a better way.

It's got to be a better way. And it wears you out. My wife would answer my phone for me because I was nocturnal. I would be up all night, gator hunting and I'd sleep most of the day. So I'm like talking

to the once again that processor and there was these two old guys that kept bringing in these huge gators all the time to the processor. I'm like, I'm like, what in the world are they doing? He said, Bob, they're doing something with chicken.

And I'm like, really? He goes, I think they're putting spray foam in them. I'm like, really? And then a light bulb went off of my head because I'd been playing around bait but I was taking like pieces of conduit out in the lake with a sledgehammer and pounding conduit into the bottom of the lake yeah and and attach them like with a you know a clothespin or something hanging like pieces of chicken out yeah but I'd have gators swim right up to it I'm like oh

here we go here we go and they swim up to and see the metal and look at the device we had there and then they didn't have nothing to do so they're like but so they're smart enough to know something's I know everybody thinks a gator has a pea brain size their brains the size of a pea and I think they're dumb there's but they're not dumb they have that god-given natural will to live and like to see a PVC pipe or whatever in the ground there's a chunk of chicken hanging on it he sees that and he knows it ain't right yeah but I mean that in a way yeah I think that's part of it but like the the catfish guys that put the big trot lines out they don't like them

and my other buddy that bass guides with us he kept telling us we need to put they have little buoys with these little flags like they use in sprinkler companies or whatever that's a little metal flag they put it on there where they can see their buoy to mark their catfish trot lines well on there for them the gators are tuning in on that

they'll go right to it I mean it's I don't know they're just smarter than we think like they'll go and work over those catfish trot lines yes I've been my younger son James, we watched one one day. It was a big gator. The lake was low. It was like three foot deep. And there was a really long catfish.

We were bass fishing watching this. This big gator was literally backing up down the trot line. He would get to the fish. He would go under. He would come up, throw his head up, chomp that fish, rip it off the hook. And then he would start backing up to the next one. And the catfish guys hate them because their lines are extremely long.

And when they get out there, they're all tangled up in big knots. And, you know, they almost have to redo the whole entire thing. Okay. The Hard Rock Bet Casino app is here, Ontario. It's safe, secure, and crystal clear with fast payouts and 24-7 local support. You can play over 3,000 games right here, including Hard Rock Bet Casino exclusives. The Hard Rock Bet Casino app is here, Ontario. Roll with us.

Must be 19 years of age or older to play. Only. Please play responsibly. Concerned about your gambling or that of someone close to you, visit connectsonterio.ca. Most lameos in the world get their meat at the grocery store, but we prefer to pack ours out of the field. That's why we made the meat eater grocery bags. Ultra lightweight, breathable nylon game bags that cool your meat fast and keep it clean from the field to the cooler. With reflective print and features to help you find your game bags in the dark, meaning like reflective stuff. So you're your flashlight shines off it, even when you got it hang it way up in a tree. We have two sets, okay? We got sets for whether you're packing out a deer or whether you're packing out an elk or moose. And they're reusable season after season. I've had some of mine for many years. I give them a good rinse, run them through my wash machine, hang them up to dry.

These are your grocery bags. These are a thinking man's grocery bags. Head over to the meat eater store.com and get yourself a brand new set of excellent game bags for this coming season. So continue that story of that you were trying that. You were trying staking a bait out and hanging it from something. Yeah, I did that for a while. And then, yeah, it was later on when that man told me,

oh, I think they're, there's spray foam in them and sewing a chicken up. And I'm like, wow, it just went off in my head. So when I first started doing it, I was using like regular size chickens. But when you put the spray foam in, they go from, they just went too big. I mean, if you want a really big gator, it was okay. But, like, you know,

it'd have to be a big gator to eat it right away. Yeah. And there's a lot of tricks to it. Like, I started going to Cornish game hens, which are small, and then you could blow them up. And you got to have, the law is, you have to,

you can't, we can't use a hook in the state. Yeah, I think it's important to people understand. You're not talking about a conventional J hook or a treble hook. No. Buried into a chicken.

No. And I asked, I asked an old timer, what would make the state come up with these rules like this? Because I used to say, our rules, you might as well tell us to tie one hand behind our back and try to catch a gator. One, we got a hunt at night. Two, we can't use a hook in our bait. I'm like, what's the purpose of that?

And he said, Bob, there was this old family, trapping family. I knew some of them, an old man named Norman Padgett. and his family they were, I'm talking about 50s, 60s or whatever, they did, they did a lot of trapping. They did a lot, they sold a lot of gator hide. There was a black market for gator hives. They made a living doing that. Poach and gators. Turtle trapping, gator trapping, you know, all that stuff. Well, they said the reason they used, they, what our rule is we got to use a two inch wooden peg, but I don't know why they came up your hook. Yeah, they came up with that. We'd make a leader with the two inch wooden peg. thing. He said the reason they used the wood peg is like, Bob, these guys were like poor.

They didn't have no money. They would go kill an old marsh rabbit and go find a little stick and will it down like a point on each end and stick it up in the rabbit and have a little tether on the end of it. And that way when the gators swallowed it, he couldn't burp it out and they would catch the gator and kill it with it. And those guys, the game commission, got them in the meeting when they were when they were starting the program and they asked them how they do it and that's how they

they wrote it they said they don't use a hook they use this wooden peg and according to that man that's how it happened got it and to this day we're not allowed to use a hook we have to use a two inch wooden dow yeah we we sent one down to a gator

the Cornish game hand down to a gator yeah and we were at We were in a situation we were able to play the current. Like we're in a river. Yeah. Swamp on each side river, no one around. And we knew there was a gator way down the river. And we just sent that thing floating down like a presented bait.

Yeah. And it got even with him. And man, that sucker comes out. And I thought he'd go think about it for a minute or something. No, he didn't think about it. Comes out. And you had said to me, if he takes it, you'll see his tail. come out and his head come out as he gulps back and he swam out and suck that thing down immediately yeah

we just barely got set up sometimes we got to sit for an hour or more and mess with it but that one there he was wanting it yeah so then when you do that explain like how that then works out like explain what your rig is i know you're giving away all your trade secrets here i don't really care anymore you know the tail end of my career and i don't really care and everybody's but he's figuring it out but in the beginning i was very secretive uh-huh and i wouldn't i wouldn't tell people stuff and then when i see people with the trying to imitate the baits we're doing and i was getting mad like oh my god well then i realized there's more to it than just knowing how to make the bait yeah there's also you got to be far enough away from them where they don't think that

the boat has anything to do with it and my old gate we ran into that too we ran into where we kind of accidentally got by one to close and presented that baits and that baits and that boat to him that dude was like uh-uh man he wasn't having it no he's like no way dude he's like he put together in his head like that noise up there has something to do with that bait and i don't want nothing to do with that bait and then and then the other problem you'll have if you're too close yeah sometimes they might shoot out and grab it like that one we did and but they won't you have to have them swallow it right away yeah if they think that they got something to do with the boat or it's not right they don't know what it is they'll grab the bait and they'll

turn around and they'll just start swimming. I've had them do it before. And they'll go and go and go and they'll swim through trees or in vegetation. And I've had them do it before where I have to lay in the boat and just dig vegetation for hours. Probably why my back's messed up. I don't understand. Dig vegetation.

Like, well, we used to have really thick weeds in the lake. They would swim through thick hydrilla. There's so much all. Like, I mean, carrying that bait. Yeah, and I would have to pull the line and dig, dig, dig, and I could go, like, I would have somebody else driving the boat. I'm laying on my belly in the front, just dig and dig and digging, digging, and then I move the boat three feet, dig, dig, dig, it might take me an hour to get close enough to the gator. Yeah. To get to them.

And you got that rod rigged up where you got how many, like, how many yards of, explain the setup? Well, I mean, that's the way I do it. A lot of people do it different. Some people braided line is expensive. And we're using reels that hold three, four hundred yards of line. And the original reason I did it was because I didn't want to spend all that money, you know, putting that much line on the reel. So I started, I used to do a lot of ocean fishing and I used my ocean technology.

I just used 30-pound high visibility yellow line. It was at night. It's easy to see it with the spotlight. So at the last 60 to 80 yards, I would have 150 pound test, like Power Pro line. Yeah. And like when we were going to get the Gator, if he swallowed it, you got to make sure they swallow it. I would just, we would just recover the line with hardly any tension. Yeah.

Until we get all the way down onto the braid and get a good, nice route. Yeah, you're basically just tracking him when you're pulling that line up. Yeah. Like he doesn't know yet something's going on. No. Oh, yeah, he kind of does, but you don't want to. put pressure. Like I'm always telling everybody,

do not pressure them until we get on the main line, you know? And the other advantage of that is I try to tell people not hunt on weekends. You know, we have a lot of bass tournaments here. I used to fish them all the time too,

but, you know, we'd be out set up on a gator and we're 150, 200 yards away, and here comes a bass tournament and all these bass boats hauling butt, and they're going across our line. Well, the mono would sink. You know,

they would run right over it. I've never had a boat hit my line. Okay. But, you know, a lot of people just go straight braid all the way. Yeah. I think there's advantages to the model. And how secure, like if he takes that Cornish game hen and he swallows it, how secure is that thing in there? It's really secure. Like, that's a one-way passage. Yeah. I mean, very rarely I've ever had one burp it out. Yeah. And most of the time, if they do burp it out, it's like at the end. end of the fight when they're really tired and they're blowing air out and it's over and all said, the bait will pop out.

Got it. But I've taken a 12 footer on a table before when we're cleaning it and put a welding glove. A lot of people use parachute cord, but like I said, I use my old ocean technology. I used like braided cable leader, probably about three foot. I took a welding glove and wrapped my hand around it in the beginning to see if it would come out. we open the gator's mouth and you could not pull that bait out of that gator yeah yeah um that kind of like that's kind of where you landed on your strategy yeah which is the snagging hook oh yeah my all of a sudden i went from killing mediocre gators to killing trophy gators a lot

people are like how are you killing all these gators yeah and the new evolution now and you should talk about the new evolution now it's forward facing sonar electronics Yeah, explain that. I mean, you bet you're a bass fisherman. I mean, you've always used electronics to fish. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's people have been doing it for probably three or four years now. Okay.

I've only, this is only my second or third year doing it. I'm still learning. And it's some places are easier than others. When you get in a river or a channel where there's moving water, there's a little bit of turbulence. It's harder to see good and more defined. but like last year it was like taking candy from a baby like it was like three to five foot deep in the lake and i could find a gator like 70 to 80 yards away and go all the way up to them within i would get within 30 to 50 feet and start zooming in he thinks he's hidden yeah he's not moving

and i've seen it before too where i hit him with the hooks and they come off and they'll shoot one way I see the surge of the water and the bubbles go. And I'll just, you know, calm down, get my hook back. And I'm just kind of trolling motor over there and keep looking. Sometimes my customers start yakking. They get bored back there. And I turn on, I got two units, they can see it in the back. They'll all be talking, talking.

I'm just up there concentrating. And then I'm like, hey, I'm getting ready to cast on a big gator if you guys are interested. But the thing about that, I don't know if you realize this. probably do the two days we just hunted and we hunted hard for two days

very hard yeah so I should point out though you file your treble hubes barbless

you pinch your barbs yeah and I thought you're pinched your barbs to be nice to the gator but you're pinched your barbs one reason is they're high the skin's hard

and it's hard to get it in there it's hard to get a purchase on it yeah but I want to point out that the barb was pinched The barbs were pinched. You did find a gator with forward-facing sonar. Early on, you found a gator with it, had a good idea how big it was, hooked it, we got it up, and popped the hook and let it go.

The other gators, the two gators we killed and another gator we wrestled with, it didn't come into play. yeah I mean as far as coming out no no I'm saying it those weren't forward facing sonar gators oh yeah the two good ones we killed yeah we did it without it yeah but I feel good about that too yeah but I mean we like I saw how effective it was and I and I was in my mind like well that that must be how it is now yeah but then the way circumstances played out on our other on the gators that were like the big the big nice gators we got how circumstances played out it was totally old school yeah that's why i think i mean the first year i had it it was the first time of the year i got this guy i think he was from ohio and i hadn't even got the scout because i was i just got my

boat rigged up it was when i got my my boat we used it was brand new and i got all the electronics hooked up and i didn't get the scout but i know the area good i've been killing gators there for years and i looked with my binoculars and i'm like oh my god it was like a big gator every 50 yards as far as you could see. So I turned on the sonar thing, and I'm trolling motor over there, and I'm looking for the thing. And I can't figure nothing out.

No, I just remember saying, I've never killed a gator with this electronic bull crap. I'm just going back to the old way. Yeah. And I troll and motored over where I saw a big gator go down, and I threw a bait out and just troll and motored away. And he came up, and it was just like that one you saw. He popped up, said, ooh, he ate it right away.

We were, the whole hunt was over in like 25 minutes. Yeah, yeah. Nowadays, how many, how many gator hunts are you doing nowadays? And I know you're actually, you're kind of half joking, but you keep talking about that you're not going to do this forever. But how many gator hunts are you doing? Right now, I think last year I killed like 16. And I used to kill, I didn't kill a whole bunch ever.

I killed like 20 to 25 a year. Okay. And now I'm killing like 14 to 16 a year. And I don't even know if I'll hit that this year. So you turn business down now? Yeah, not really turn it down. I'm just more selective. You know, a lot of my customers are repeat customers.

But they got to draw the tag. Here's another thing I'd like you to explain is how the tag, like, a tag holder, because it's a bit, getting a gator is a group effort. Oh, yeah. So when someone has a tag, the tag holder needs to be present. But it's not like the tag holder is themselves the only person participating. It's like the boat has a tag holder. Because everybody in the boat is going to come into play.

Yeah. Fighting the gator, right? So when you have clients, you have clients who have one lottery draw gator tags. Yeah. That's the first step that has to happen. Some of them draw their own tags. And, you know, I don't need a tag holder. them. And then sometimes I got people that want to go that don't, maybe they didn't like,

you didn't get tags this year. I didn't either. But I had friends and I put in a lot of people to get them. And the tag holder has to be in the boat. Yeah. And everybody else has to buy an alligator trapping agent license. Yeah. Yeah. To be legal. Anybody touching any of the equipment has to have a license. Yeah. So that's what we all had. We had that trapping agent license. I even have one because I don't have a trapping license. Got it, got it. Um, So that's what you're doing now. You're doing 14, 15 gators. Yeah.

I didn't know this until recently, and I was kind of surprised by it as well. Explain this egg thing you're involved in, egg collection. Yeah, I don't know if they'll like it a whole lot. They don't like publicity, but I mean, it's not, it's all legal.

We just try to fly under the radar. We hit, we're, it's almost like a military operation. Uh-huh. We hit a lake. We're in, we're moving fast and we're out. But, but what though? Well, the guys that I work for have been doing it since 1988 when it started. Okay. And there was one of the biologists that was in the beginning, he's retired now. He candles the eggs for us. And we have to have a biologist from the state overseeing us to make sure that we're not breaking laws and the numbers. It's all about the

money. Yeah. They're always checking the count. I'll make sure. It's all about the money. The state makes a lot of money off of the eggs. Okay. But we use airboats. We have two crews. We cover the whole state, but not everybody in water. Every year they give us a license and we have designated lakes we can go to and quote is for each lake. Yep. Some lake are, you know, you could get 100% of the nest. Some are 50, some are 25. We have like three or four airboats on each crew, a pontoon boat, we call it the egg boat, and a helicopter. The helicopter has the two guys that run it that have been doing it since the beginning. They hire a helicopter guy, and they spot the nest from the air. And we all wear radio equipment like we got on here.

And they're like, I need a boat. And we got to go take off and we're moving fast. We got to hall but to the helicopter. Some of the places we go are not where people ride. We got our airboats are designed to go in places that are bad. We carry chainsaws, machetes, axes. We get stuck a lot. We got to turn around and go back out the same way we came in. They look for the nest.

The nests can be like that high. It's just piled up vegetation like a dome. So when you held your hand up, you're saying it could be four feet above the water. Yeah, three to four feet. Yeah. So they'll find the nest, call us to them, and then when we go to them, and they also have, every nest has to be GPS, and they keep a list.

They're constantly checking with the guy, the biologist on the pontoon boat, where are we at with the numbers? Like, how many do we have it? They call it in the bank. Okay. Like if we break even, then we got to find some more nests and not open them. But he'll tell us, hey, we got 10 in the bank. Okay, so we can get 10 more.

when we keep going. And he finds some that we would waste too much time trying to get to. They're in really bad places. So he puts them in the bank. But when we get there, we all carry a helper. And I just carry it like a parting stick for cattle. Because there's usually mama on every nest. Probably about 50, 60% of the time there's no gators there.

Okay. Between the helicopter noise, because sometimes the helicopter comes, way down low to look and make sure it's a nest. Yeah. And then when he calls us in, he gets up a little bit and backs away because their air will mess us up. He'll just sit there and point out the window. You know, we get there.

Then we gotta open up the nest. We take a little basket and put some of the nesting material in about maybe four inches deep, you know, packing it all down. And how many eggs would be in there? The average nest is like 20, about 30, 20 to 30 eggs in a nest. Okay.

But it's not unusual to find one with 40 or 50 eggs in it. Okay. They say only one in ten in the wild will survive. That's what I imagine on this egg deal is you get like, there's a carrying capacity to the lake. Like the lake's going to support, or the body of water is going to support a certain number of gators. And if you remove some percentage of eggs,

it's not going to affect that end number of how many adult gators can be. some people think oh we're taking all the eggs we're not going to have any gators but just take lake ok chobie for instance i mean that we get a lot of eggs off okachovie oh and the numbers are always way up yeah it's not really making a dent in no i can i can understand that yeah like like when salmon go up and spawn it's not like every one of those eggs turns into a salmon like the system is going to support so many yeah and it's that's what the system is going to support and there's an excess of eggs in some way. Plus, we're not finding every single nest.

Yeah. I mean, we try to go around the edge of the lake and stay within 100 yards of the edge. Okay. They can nest miles back in there. We don't know. So you get the eggs in a basket, then what happens? Like, what, what, yeah, so they don't need to be incubated or they do? Yeah, they do.

They take them to an incubator, but we got to be really careful. They tell us it's like a hurry up and then slow down when we got a hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, but when we get to the nest, we got to slow down. Yeah. And you got to, our helper, we take really good magic markers. They got to, before they take the egg out of the nest, they got to mark it, a line across it where the top part is. Because there's an air bubble inside the egg, and that's where the embryo attaches to the shell. Okay.

So if you roll it over, it will drown that. Oh, so you need to orient that egg in the same position. Yeah, they have to be. And every year, the first couple of days. the biologist on the boat, he's always, you know, somebody's not marking them right, you know. And like, okay, okay, okay. Well, we get them all in there lined up right,

and then we cover them back up with material. And we try not to haul too many, like in my boat, I mean, if the pontiff boat's way out of position, I'd put as many as eight, 10 crates of eggs in my boat, but we don't want too many because we're riding in rough areas and bouncing. We don't want to bounce them around. Yeah.

And all that. We run them out to a pontoon boat. And then what happens to them? Then that's where that retired biologist is. They got a big box with like a curtain over it, and he sticks his head in there. And he has to candle every egg. And not every egg is good.

Like we might bring in a nest. There might not be any good eggs in it. Oh, really? Yeah. He's got some corrugated little pipe, and he looks at them, and if they're no good, they go right out that pipe, you know. And then the other ones, they re-box them again.

Into another cardboard box. Yeah, then they line them all up, and that's when they come up with their numbers, and that's when the biologist is there, and they know exactly how many numbers. Yeah. It came out of that nest. And those eggs are going to supply gator farms.

That's correct. Yeah. There's some really large gator farms. And they're buying them. They bought, yeah. They're buying them from the state. Yeah. Yep, they're buying them.

That's where they get their... you know what they need they they buy them and they buy the hatchlings also and you're working like um i don't i don't even know the exact money but like you're working on a day rate you're working on a percentage of of the profit like what's your how what's your take yeah they pay us per egg okay and like i said there's two crews north and south so in the beginning they had a problem with competition guys are like i found this many i got this many and then i guess they were paying I wasn't in it then. I think there was controversy and people almost fighting

and everybody's trying to get more eggs to make more money. And then they said, enough of that, enough of that. So now they got it level playing field. We all get the same money. The two crews combined, we all get paid the same money. Got it. But ultimately, who sells the egg? The state sells the egg or the people that have the contract sell the egg?

The people that have the contract, they are the ones with the license, but they're licensed by the state. And there's a board of the gator farmers every year they have to vote. We're never guaranteed we're going to do it every year. They could say, no, we don't want those guys anymore. I got it. They could fire us. But as long as we're doing good and their hatch rates, 80% are better, then we don't have nothing to worry about. And there's also, in some areas, there's also a.

market for like a baby gator yeah the same the same people that buy them okay do that you know and that and that's another collection thing that happens roughly around the same time of season yeah well like eggs all hatch like in september like we do the egg collection in july usually all the nests are made we start in the first of july or last day of june and we do it for like two or three weeks solid you know we're going every day we're traveling all over the state yeah getting them And then there's a little bit of a break. September 1st is when we're allowed to get the hatchlings. Yeah.

And usually by September 11th or 12th, according to the guys I work for, that's when all of them are hatched. Got it. And then we go looking and we can't wait too long because everything eats them. Snakes eat them, blue herons, bass will eat them. Because they're cute. They're just little, small little babies. The hard rock bat casino app is here, Ontario.

It's safe, secure, and crystal clear with fast payouts and 24-7 local support. You can play over 3,000 games right here, including Hard Rock Bet Casino Exclusives. The Hard Rock Bet Casino app is here, Ontario. Roll with us. Must be 19 years of age or older to play. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned about your gambling or that of someone close to you, visit connectsonterio.ca. Whether your season's already open or you're still counting down the days, the meat,

store has what you need to get ready. We're talking first light, FHF, SIGS sour, moldry, Phelps, the brands we actually run in the field, plus brand new T's, hoodies, and hats that just dropped with more dropping every month. Also check out our new meat eater grocery game bags. These game bags are ultra-light, breathable nylon. They cool your meat fast and keep it clean from the kill site to the cooler.

They got reflective trim on them, so you can keep working after dark and find your bags, even if you got them hanging way up in a tree in the middle of the night. And once you've got meat in the cooler, we've got you covered there too. Seasonings, cookbooks, and knives to cook up everything you bring home. To check it all out, head to the meat eater store.com. Do you feel that gator numbers,

are gator numbers still going up? I mean, I know that maybe there's concern that, that there's fewer giant gators around or people see fewer giant gators but it just seems to me that there are this is just anecdotal from my perspective it seems that there's a staggering number of alligators and I cannot picture

how the systems can support the pounds of alligators meaning you look at a bend in the river well let me put it another way first the first day we were out I was I told a couple of friends of mine I was like

they're they're literally literally during the the time I was there there was no time when you weren't seeing there was no time when you weren't looking at gators yeah for hours and hours

and hours on the end there was always gators yeah and it'd be that you'll look down the riverbank in some places in some places especially the place we went the first time, down the riverbank, you look and there's nine, just lined up,

like cars parked in a driveway. We went through a lock, and there's sort of like this rock wall area of a lock. We went through the lock in this park, and there's six. Yeah. And it's a lock,

loud. Yeah. They're not. afraid of that well there's also water flowing through you know and gators always congregate or water's coming through a structure or whatever they're drawn to that movement there's a lot of garfish there's a lot of food there dead fish coming through turtles and you know they'll eat the garfish the garfish are so thick they catch them and eat them yeah but but the main point out's making it's just it seems like

there's so many i remember turkey hunting down here a couple years and we just go for a little drive now and then and there's a ditch like a drainage ditch and no big body of water around but it's a long drainage ditch and that's lined with gators I mean it's like does it seem to you like there's more and more and more or is it or is it our population is kind of like flat and stable by this point I think the numbers are there's more gators now than when I was young sure because of the you know the way they protect them and all but there's tons of seven to nine foot gators okay but because of the hunting and everybody evolving with the hunting more people

are baiting gators and stuff, it is getting harder to find gators over 10 foot. You think so? Yeah, I mean, look at how many gators we looked at. Yeah, but we had a lot of gators give us the slip. Yeah, I mean, you see him way off. Yeah. But, I mean, you can't run a tape measure on them all,

but like we saw a lot of gators that were like, well, there's a nice gator, and he's gone because he's 100 yards away and he's... Yeah, like you said, the bigger gators are smart. And then we hunted two days and got two gators that were over 10 feet. Yeah. But you feel like even with that, you feel like there's a lower number. Oh, yeah.

Back in the early 2000s, the water was low at the mouth of the Kissimmee River where we went out yesterday. And we had like 14 foot surf rods with those same treble hooks. And we could wing them almost all the way across the river. And it was nothing to catch a 12-foot alligator. Okay. You could catch them all the time. I mean, I killed them up to 13. There's a couple buddies of mine got 12 footers mounted in their houses in Wyoming.

Yeah. It was easy. But now looking back, I'm like, wow, I miss those days. Yeah. We should establish that. That, explain what a top end gator is. You mean like a trophy gator? Well, what is the biggest that makes sense?

Like you hear people say numbers, but it's probably not true. Like you even said, people say, oh, it's 15 feet. I was in 15 p. Well, you know, I'm around bass boaters. I've fished bass tournaments forever. And I can't tell you how many people have said, I saw this gator as long as my 21-foot bass boat. And I'm like, okay, yeah.

But the state record's only 14-foot. I think it's like six and a half or something right now. Okay. So it's not, I mean, I wouldn't. But a 13-foot gator is. A massive, a massive gator. Yes. A 12-foot gator is achievable.

Yes. you know an 11-foot gator if you work hard you'll find one yeah you know and like you're saying the eight or nine-foot gator they're just everywhere yeah if you want to just a meat and a hide gator

you know at eight to nine-foot gator seven to nine-foot gator or even six the smaller they are the better they eat and the smaller they are their hides aren't all beat up because the old gators they get cancer they've been fighting

they're missing limbs they got you know they got all kind of blemishes in their hide yeah the best hides are like probably a six to eight foot gator yeah that's that's the thing i want to touch on real quick we went to a gator we dropped our gators at a gator processor so what's the name of that outfit we went to florida trophy gators okay this guy he's primarily he was explaining

wade was explaining primarily we're a gator taxidermy business. But we skin gaiters, we process meat, we do all the other stuff, but kind of our focus is gator tax germany. Yeah. But you don't need to do that. You can drop off a gator.

One, they got big walking coolers. Yeah. Get your gator taken care of and cool. Processing a hurry. Butchered. They portion the meat out. They run the meat through a tenderizer. They defat it.

And you get back. you get back one pound packages of ready to eat gator meat. Yep. We dropped off that one. It was 117, am I remember right? Yeah. 117. And I can't remember what he said.

We were expecting, like, maybe we're going to wind up with 70, 80 pounds of gator meat. Yeah. Off that gator. But he's got all over there, there's signs right now and Magic Marker. Yeah. Not buying gators. Yeah. Okay.

Tell people what's up with why there's signs saying not buying gators. I know some of it, not all of it, but I know that this is the first year I've ever seen that. This is the first year. Yeah, it's never seen this in my life before. I mean, the gator market is getting flooded. Okay. Because all the gator farms and there's more processors, there's more people doing it. And I know Wade was telling us that his freezers were full of meat.

They supply restaurants and stuff around here too. Yeah. And I don't know for what reason or whatever, but the meat markets like flooded. He was sitting on meat from last year. So, you know, he's like, that's it. We can't buy any more gators. And the hides, because of the gator farms and the hide market,

the hides are not even worth anything anymore. Yeah. I had another guy. I just met randomly, a guy from Florida that hunts gators used to hunt gators. And he was explaining to me, he says, man, the whole wild gator hide thing, the market's dead. Yeah.

He said it's dead because of farm gators. Because farm gators can produce a consistent, perfect product. Yeah. And wild gators can't compete with farm gators. So he says, we used to kill wild gators and make good money on hides, good money on meat. But now you got these people making cookie cutter perfect gaiters. gators and no one wants the gator leather from a wild gator some of the gator farms are huge and one of them

i know of they kill 500 to a thousand gators every day monday through friday they're processing that many alligators yeah and they still have a good market because they're dealing with the the hide buyers are like the tanneries in italy and stuff yeah yeah so when he has that so here's a guy that he does some restaurant supply stuff. And, you know, you can drop it off. You get a form. You're like, I want my skull all cleaned up. I want my meat.

They'll ship the meat to you. I want it to get the gator stuffed. I want it made for leather, for boots. Like, you can get all this kind of stuff taking care of. But he's not buying. When they, like, if you go back a few years and tell me some of the ways that, like, what would be some of the prices that you could bring in? Like, you go on a gator hunt.

You just don't want nothing to do with the gator. You get a 10-foot gator. You'd go in and it'd be, he'd buy it for what per foot or what per foot? Not just him, but the market in general. Yeah, before the gator farms got really big, they wanted the bigger gators. Okay. You know, like 10, 11, 12-footers, they were paying more. And, you know, I had problems with my business years ago and got down on money and we weren't,

we weren't guiding as much. We were, I was selling the hides to Wade's dad. Yeah. And that was what was putting bread on the table for me. I mean, we were getting like $20, $30 a foot or more. The bigger the gator, the more we got. Got it. You know, and he was just...

So you could go out some night, get a 10-footer and just walk in. I get $500 or $600 cash money in my hand right there. Right now, like the other couple of years ago, I had one tag left. Wade and I went and killed a nine-foot gator. I think I got, I think $180 or something. Got it. And you don't got to, after you get it, you don't do nothing. No, you just bring it there.

They buy the whole thing. They lift it off, throw a tape measure on it, and pay you by foot. Yeah. Yeah. So do you feel that since he's now like not buying gators in the market's different, do you feel that that is going to reduce interest in gator hunting? Or do you think there's such a recreational gator hunting culture that it doesn't matter? that they're valueless no i don't think it's ever the hunting's ever going to go down i think it's a

novelty kind of a hunt uh-huh a buddy of mine sam heathen he he helps me sometimes he tells everybody he's hunting all over the world like you and he's like this is the most unique hunting the north american continent there's nothing else like it yeah it's it's like it's hunting and fishing combined yeah people are like amazed by it and in the danger element you know yeah i've been doing it for a long time do you think it's dangerous? It can be. I didn't get like a danger vibe off of it,

but you've been doing it a long time. You scared me. When you were climbing in that tree when that one was hung up and you almost fell, I was like, like he'll grab you. Yeah, I'm like, he's kind of upset. You know, he's got hooks in him and

you were in a bad spot. Yeah. But you've never had a, like I was saying it didn't seem dangerous because you know what, because you've seen it a bunch. Yeah. So you're like, well, don't do that,

don't do that, don't do that. but I could see if I just went out and I had never done it before. I could see snagging one of them suckers and getting in real trouble. Yeah. But you're like, okay, step one is this. Step two is that.

Step three is this. And there's a lot of like checks along the way. Yeah. Until toward the end, you're like taping his, you know, you got his mouth tape shut. You sever his spinal cord. You know, when he comes on the boat, he's cashed.

But it's like, it's a process. You know. And you, so. I didn't get a danger vibe off it because you just had a way that you know how you do it. It's more dangerous when we do the eggs than it is the hunt. I'm sure, yeah. Because the females,

they have that natural maternity thing or they're going to protect their young. Yeah, yeah. Do guys come to you, do you have clients that come to you and they're like, hey, I'm going to try to get these tags. I'm going to apply for the lottery draw for Okachobie.

and when I do it, I'll come find you. Yeah, a lot of people call me up because they want to know because there's so many areas we can put in for gator tags. They want to know where to put it. Yeah, so I tell them the areas that I like to hunt and they'll call me and put in for those areas. And you've kind of, like I said, I can't tell how much you're joking or not. How many years more of gator hunting are you going to do?

Oh, shoot. I don't know, man. Like, take a stab, man. like in 20 years? You've seen me, man. Are you going to be gator hunting in 20 years? No, I'm not going to be gator hunting in 20 years. I'll be lucky to be alive in 20 years.

Okay, you're going to be gator hunting in 10 years? Well, you've seen my helper, Garrett. That's the thing. Now you've got a young guy rolled in. Well, James used to hunt my son. He used to be my helper. Man, him could conquer the world and we're together in the Mars. But, like, Garrett, he has more time to do it, and he did awesome.

It's the first time. I used them this year, the first time. time. He's great. He's great. And I can't lift the gators. I can't. My back doctor's telling me, if I keep doing it, I'm going to end up in a wheelchair. Yeah. You know, I'm just, if long as I have a good helper, I'm going to keep going. Yeah. Because eventually you can just sit back and meet the brains. Yeah, that's kind of what I started doing with Garrett. I mean, he's, he's doing good. You just point this way, point that way. Yeah. That spot in stock we did yesterday. I used to love doing that stuff, you know, and I can't...

What you're talking about is what Captain Bob's talking about is we had a gator down the beach from us and this gator was no way no how going to take that bait. No, he wasn't going to do it. Got out of the boat, snuck down real tall grass and brush, snuck down and basically crept in on them. Yeah. And we were like easing ahead, ease in ahead, pretty soon you can see his head out there in the marsh and then planted a hook yeah hooked them then ran out waved the boat down the boat came down jumped on the boat and chased the gator down river because he was pulling drag man not very many people do this spot and stock on alligators but i like it that's a cool thing and yeah

you used to do that and you got some slower to it i just can't i have nerve damage in my back and i can't walk good so yeah so of all the stuff you guide for i asked you about this this morning you didn't give me a satisfactory answer of all the stuff you guide for it oh there it comes raining better check windows and cars i mentioned when i came in we're recording this i was telling the guys i was telling seth and max about this 1928 ok chobie flood yeah okay and i'm pulling it up reading about it and i'm reading about it and it happened to be today's date today's date today's date is the it's the 98th anniversary of the okechobee flood which they debate the numbers but drowned

about 2,500 people yeah south of lake okachovia yeah from cluiston all the way up to pahoki and i didn't know this either there's a mass grave near here that has about 1600 people in it it was really close to where we went fishing today you know yeah i actually knew a guy that was alive not in that flood maybe it was no when they you know it was when they know it was when they were building the lock in cluiston before they had the die complete he was a young boy yet that guy's passed away now but the the army corps engineers have this big it was kind of like a it was like a houseboat kind of of a thing and there was a hurricane coming there was no really good paved roads the

The roads going into the Everglades that are paved now. They weren't there yet. Yeah. And they were, they had a little settlement there. They were living in like a little makeshift house thing down there. The Army Corps people went down there and got the family because that boy, that guy that was telling me a story was a young boy then. They got them over there and got them in that boat with them.

And they tied the boat up. The lock wasn't even complete, but it has two big concrete walls. You know, the doors weren't on or nothing. And they tied the boat up really good in the middle of it. because of the hurricane and he all he remembered was like for half the hurricane the boat was tilted one way and then the eye of the storm came and it went like upright and then it went back the other way that was yeah no that was after the flood that was after the flood it uh we'll get off the subject but just i'm just bringing up because it's raining on the anniversary of that flood but i was reading

too that a lot of people were killed by water moccasins that were because people were up on rooftops and stuff. Hanging on the trees. All these snakes are also up. And they're trying to crawl out of the water and they're crawling out of the water where there are people. And people are getting killed by moccasins.

Yeah. Terrible. There's an island down down between Bell Glade and Cluiston. It's called Rida Island. And there was a settlement there. There was no heavy equipment then. You know, and everybody,

they were just old school. They had meat. mules and stuff and they're disking up muck making an earthen barrier to have a farm and they built houses there was a post office there and that's one of the areas where you're saying there houses got trashed and the people had to keep going up in the house and holding on in the attics holding on to trees it was really a bad situation you see this hat says bear grease yeah that's a podcast we do in our network's hosted by guy named clay newcomb who's a southerner I texted him today.

It's a podcast about Southern culture, Southern history. I texted him today and told him he needs to do a bear grease series or an episode on the Okachobi flood. And I think that he will. That's all you don't want to comes out. You let's listen to it. Let's get back to my last question. You've got it ducks, snipe, crappies, bluegills, or shell, crackers.

Yeah. Gators. I ask you, what do you like more? Like, what one do you wake up and you're most excited about the day? For guiding, or me personally?

Just how good of a time you're going to have that day. I like guiding hunters more than fishermen. Really? But I am a fisherman. I like fishing. People ask me, do you ever get burnout with fishing? I'm like,

no. I get burnout taking people fishing. but I don't get burned out personally fishing. Yeah. But, I mean, if I had to give everything up, I would fish. Okay. Is that a sound of fight? Yeah.

But you like gator hunting? I love gator hunting. I've been messing with gaiters ever since I was a little kid. My dad used to whip me with his fishing run. Yeah. I do got one last question for you. What would be as a guide? If you could convey one message to the clients out there in the world,

it's like you're the guide and you're able to speak like this is the guide i wish all you people understood this hmm i don't know that's a hard one i'm like kind of a guide that i try to accommodate everybody no matter where they're at okay i would go out of my way to do that i think that's one of the reasons why i've been a successful guide you don't have a single you don't have one pet peeve that you could pass along to America's clients. No, no, I don't think so. Really? That's a polite guy, man.

I am very, people always tell me, why are you so nice? I don't know. Oh, you're a nice guy. I just like to see people get what they're after, and I work my tail off to do it. So, like, sometimes people are out of the... We did a little fishing today,

and Seth over here behind them, you can't see him over here. He was having a heck of the time getting that hook hung up on them rocks. What'd you think about that? I knew it was going to happen. It was all right. You were fine with that.

All them rocks he was hooking. I guess the thing that ticks me off, if you want to really know what ticks me off, okay? Please, yeah, I do want to know what it takes me up. Seth out fished me. I don't know if you noticed that. Yeah, he did good. He jumped off a couple tarpun and had some hits.

Okay, anyhow. Here's the pet peeve. I want to end on a negative. We get people in the bait shot. I'm half awake. I got my coffee. I'm trying to think about where I'm going, what I'm doing.

And they get in the boat and they start telling me stories. They're fishing stories. Oh, they're fishing stories. And like that I don't like. None of the guys like, I mean, my buddy. You know why they're doing that?

They're doing that because they want you to take them seriously. But then when you see them handle the equipment, you're like, it's a miracle. It has to be a common. call the fish. Yeah, because they're sitting there. They're like, here it is. He's like the guide. He probably thinks I'm some rube. I need to tell him that I'm a man's man too. I'm going to show him my fishing pictures. It could be. But they don't realize we're stressing in the morning. People don't

realize this. They think, oh, you're a fishing guy. What a dream job. You just take people fishing. I'm like, yeah, but it's not a dream job. We're stressing. Right now, the lake is not fishing the best that it ever did. And when they're coming, they're introducing themselves and telling their stories, and I'm thinking, my mind's going, I'm 90 miles, should I go here, should I go there? Where should I go?

You know, I need to get this done. And I'm trying to listen to them and remember their name. And I'm like, you know, but it's stressful. Let's roll play for a minute. You don't say nothing. I'm the guide. You're the client. We get in the boat. I go, listen. Okay, you're the client. I'm the guide. I'm like, listen.

I know. I know you are a fantastic fisherman. I already know. You don't need to tell me. Maybe you just kill that whole thing right then and there. If you just come clean and be like, I know you're the best fisherman that's ever walked. You're the greatest fisherman that's ever walked. I'm blessed to be in a boat with you.

I don't even need to see the proof because I just know. What really cracks those up, we always laugh about the other guys too. like the guys that get in the boat and they're all jazzed up and all they're coming to lake ok chobovi 10 pounders are jumping in the boat i'm feeling that 10 pounder today and right away i'm like probably ain't going to happen but the guys that come and are all amped up and they're bouncing off the wall about catching a 10 pounder they don't do too great the guy that comes and just wants to relax and is enjoying being out there and all laid back they're the ones that have the best days

Yeah. It never fails. Yeah. Got it. So that's ultimately, to seriously end it on a positive note, to clients out there, relax. Yeah. Take in the experience. Yeah.

You don't need to prove nothing to me. I'm going to try to help you have a great day fishing. That's what our job is. Let's just keep it simple. Yeah. We're just going to showdown. We're not having to showdown here. Yeah.

I do enjoy it, though. No, you must. You've been doing it a long time. You're good at it, man. It's fun to hang out with you in the boat. Tell people real quick how to find you. My business name is Okachobee Charters. You can find it on the web, Okachovycharters.

com. And I'm also hooked up with Gerard's tackle and Okachovie. You can call them. Well, it's Gerrards. Well, their real name is Garred's. Everybody calls it Gerard. Oh, Garred. It is.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I read that wrong. And that's where you go to get your morning coffee. Yeah, in our bait and all, in our ice. We get all our supplies for the day. So for the gator end of things, when is the gator draw in Florida? The gator draw is usually in May, around May 1st, we got to get ready to draw.

I don't know, sometimes they change it a little bit, but. So someone might want to shoot you an email prior to that date? Yeah, but April to May, you need to contact me if you're in resident. You're walking through what they need to do. Yeah, and I can tell them, I help people fill out the form. because there's a lot of stuff to fill out. And then if anyone needs some Gator Meat, hit me and Seth up. Yeah, you guys got a bunch of meat.

We're sitting pretty rich on Gator Meat right now. All right, man, thanks for coming on the show, buddy. Appreciate it. It's been a real pleasure and a real pleasure to watch you do your thing. And, man, I learned a ton. We were talking about that before we came over, how much we learned over that couple days. Cool.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you. I want to get you on that airboat one day. I've been on your airboat. Not this one. I've been on a airboat with you. Yeah, not that airboat with you. Yeah.

Thanks, everybody. The best part of a white-tail sit is often the part you have to earn. The temperature drops. Nothing's moving. And climbing down starts sounding pretty good. The difference between seeing it through and climbing down early

is about heart, but it's also about heat. That's why First Light Built whispered down. With 900 fill-power Moscovy down, box baffle construction, and quiet, water-resistant fabric. It delivers serious warmth without weighing you down. First Light whisper down.

Pack light, stay longer. Check it out now at firstlight.com. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.