As gator season enters week two...
Good Lord. Come on.
Thanks to a relentless drought and sweltering temps,
the entire Atchafalaya Basin
faces record low water levels.
In some areas, the waters have plummeted
over ten feet from the year before.
-[thud] -Watch out.
Aah!
Stumps, logs, you're not gonna be
driving over them this year, you're gonna be
-running into them. -Oh...
Swampers' best honey holes are almost unreachable...
To get in this place, we gotta go through the woods.
But they'll do whatever it takes to fill tags...
There's only one way in, one way out.
We're gonna see what happens.
Or risk losing thousands of dollars...
He done chewed his tail off.
We got a big cannibal gator around here.
Calling on decades of experience,
making bold choices...
You got to shoot him again. That's a big one.
To keep their season alive.
Show him who's the boss, show him who's the boss!
Aah!
Watch your hands, watch your hands!
[gunshots]
As dawn of day eight approaches,
historically low water levels continue to drop,
forcing swampers to quickly change their plans
and target areas that could soon be inaccessible.
Just before dawn in Pierre Part...
facing pressure to fill a hundred tags
in one of the shallowest areas of Louisiana,
King of the Swamp Troy Landry calls an old friend
with a special boat for navigating low water,
veteran hunter Bruce Mitchell.
Troy Landry, what are you doing?
-Mr. Mitchell. -Ha-ha!
What's happening?
Not much.
What's going on, buddy?
-How you doing, man? -Just coming to see y'all.
And you said you was having a little trouble over here.
Got a few tags you need help with?
Listen, I appreciate you come and help me and the boys.
-Oh, man, no problem. -We got more tags than ever,
and I'm getting too old to fill all them tags.
We got a lot of tags this year,
and I'm not gonna let pride stop me from filling them.
If I feel I need help, I'm gonna ask,
and right now I feel Bruce is the right man for the job.
He's got a small boat with a gator tail.
You know, you don't have to have much water for it,
so this would be perfect.
I could send Bruce with his gator tail
in them real shallow areas.
Ooh, that's a lot of land, huh?
This is everything you can hunt.
We got over 100 tags for that area.
Oh, good.
That'll help us a lot
and keep you busy, keep you out of trouble.
Just make sure you stay where you're supposed
-to stay, okay? -Oh, you know that I will.
I got time to come over here
and help Troy fill probably 100, 150 tags,
and that'll take a lot of pressure off of him.
That's what we do down here in South Louisiana.
Somebody needs help, you go help them.
You have a question about your area, call me.
-Okay, Troy, appreciate it. -All right?
And we gonna get out of here.
All right, buddy, be careful.
Nearby, in Bayou Chene,
Jacob Landry and his deckhand Don Brewer
are hoping to use the low water to their advantage.
So many areas we normally can fish
we can't even think about going in right now.
What about all the deep holes
that's still in the woods though?
They not gonna go-- they won't stay in it?
No, they gonna come out
-to bayous like this. -They'll come out to here.
With backwater ponds completely dried up,
Jacob's betting the gators will be forced out
into the deeper bayous like this one.
That's normally deep sloughs,
and that's all choked up and dry.
All right.
They gonna be out of there. They gonna be in here.
You know, the area we going into today,
we got extremely low waters. It's completely dry,
there's no big holes for these alligators to go hide in
and hopefully have still water in them.
They have to come out to the bayou,
so it should make for a perfect recipe
for these areas to have big alligators in them.
Don, look over there to the right of that line.
Yeah, that's a good one there.
Yup, pretty good one.
-Just went down. -Damn it.
That's a good'un right there that went down.
-Let's go run this line. -All right.
And he'll pop back up.
Got a line down. See it right there?
Is he still fresh, D?
Man.
Dead, Fred?
I think so.
Oh, look at the end of its tail.
Whoa... damn.
We got a big cannibal gator around here.
It done chewed his tail off.
That big sucker chewed him up.
What you think, boss?
That might be why that big one was right there.
He must've been chewing on him.
Jacob's hunch that big gators would gather in this bayou
seems to be correct,
but one of them is taking a big bite out of their profits.
This was a seven-and-a-half, eight-foot gator.
By the time he got done,
he's a five-and-a-half-foot gator.
Look at that. Look at the teeth marks,
crushed his front skull.
You could see a big alligator's been on it,
and he ate it from one end to the other.
You know, with the lines we have out,
this big alligator can have-- I mean, he can wreck us.
He can really have a lot of these alligators
be basically useless because he's destroying 'em.
We gotta get this gator out of here because if not,
he's gonna ruin 50 alligators by the time the week's over.
Giant bull gators are known to be aggressive
toward smaller alligators,
and when hungry, they will attack their own kind,
taking bites out of tails, legs,
and even sometimes devouring them whole.
Louisiana state law mandates
every gator caught must get tagged,
even the half-eaten ones.
So, now he's costing us money.
We gonna take that red, white, and blue,
come up here, we gonna put a round right through him.
Last thing he's gonna see is me.
Meanwhile...
Troy and his deckhand Pickle Wheat
race to a proven spot known as the mud flats.
They have 14 tags to fill
in an area that's difficult to navigate during rainy years.
And with water levels so low,
Troy wants to hunt it before it's unreachable.
God... it's terrible.
The mud flats is an area that's real shallow.
It's on the edge of a big six-mile lake.
It's always rough there,
because it's always-- even when the water's high,
you drag bottom there.
But this year, the mud flats are
gonna be terrible.
I mean, it's gonna eat our lunch.
It's gonna be so slow, and we have to hunt there.
We got a bunch of tags for that area.
We have to hunt.
Look, look, look.
All right, I'll put-- we had some, but I'll put--
I don't know how big it is,
-but he's alive. -I'll put two more.
This sucker look like he's ready to fight, huh?
Oh.
Oh, yeah. He's a good one.
Whoo! Watch it, Peewee.
-Show him who's the boss. -Aah!
Hell yeah, it's a big one.
Whoo!
Bring him up, bring him up.
-Whoa! -Whoa!
Show him who's the boss. Whoo!
Whoo! You saw the size of that thing? Huh?
Oh, Peewee.
That's what I'm talking about.
Look at that.
Man, if that don't pump your blood up,
you're gonna go work for a dentist.
Oh.
Nice alligator.
It's a great start to the day,
but they need to keep the pace up
to stay ahead of the dropping water levels.
We're at a record low right now.
I don't think I've ever seen the water this low.
We gonna have a lot of challenges
because of this low water.
They gonna have sandbars, they gonna have stumps,
they gonna logs or stuff
that normally you would drive over,
you're not gonna be driving over them this year.
You're gonna be running into them.
[thud]
-Aw, damn. -Geez.
-[thud] -Watch out.
Stumps on top of stumps on top of stumps.
-[thud] -Aah!
Farther north in Bayou Sorrel,
veteran hunter Willie Edwards and his son Little Willie
know this is likely their last chance
to access a sweet spot
that produces giants every season.
The Flats is like gator heaven.
I mean, you go out there, they got alligators for sure.
You gonna definitely catch.
And, yeah, we're gonna go back there
and see if we can't load some alligators
in the boat right quick.
We go in this area, and it pays off every time.
There's alligators swimming everywhere,
but it's not a whole lot of water.
This year we think it's gonna be a lot worse
because you got all that water pulling out of there.
You might get stuck, you might end up on a mud flat,
you might end up up the bank. Who knows?
Come on, Betsy.
A little bit more, little bit more.
Good Lord. Come on.
[engine alarm sounds]
Damn.
It's shallow every time we go in there,
and we got a lot of trouble coming back out
with a boatload of alligators every year.
For Willie and Little Willie,
the risk of getting stuck is worth the reward,
but the low water means
they couldn't set lines ahead of time
and will have to rely on treble hooking or sniping
to fill their boat.
Right there. Just went down.
Nice gator right here, Willie.
Come on, come on, come on.
No, no.
Hoo-whoo!
The flats is already paying off,
and judging by how quickly he hooked this nine-footer,
Little Willie is confident that the risk of coming here
will be more than worth it.
Yeah, it's a risk you're taking.
You go out there and you might get stuck,
but filling all these tags and everything,
you feel the pressure, I mean, you got
a lot of weight on your shoulders
because you know if you don't fill these tags,
the landowner's taking them tags,
and you might not get them tags next year.
Over in Franklin,
Joey Edgar and his deckhand Zak Catchem
are tackling the low water problem
with the help of their new airboat.
They're heading for a hidden gem
that's only accessible by taking an airboat over land.
But with the record low water,
the only way to get in has doubled in length,
making entry nearly impossible.
We're going through the woods with an airboat?
We're going through the woods with an airboat.
That's a 20-foot hill.
Well, we're fixing to jump it.
Froggy Bayou's through the woods this way.
Zak and I are hunting a new spot
that Dad's handed down to me.
Dad's passing the torch, and it's special.
But to get in this place, we gotta go through the woods.
Landlocked lakes like Froggy Bayou
are fed by the waters of the Atchafalaya River.
During the rainy season, high water spills over
into these inland basins.
Their secluded nature makes them
prime alligator breeding grounds
because they are not disturbed
by the tidal flows or boat traffic.
The water's a little bit low. A lot low.
So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna cut
some of these little willows.
Get in the driver seat. Just bump me up.
I know what to do.
I don't know what's going on,
but it's gonna be tough.
The only way to get to it
is to go up a very steep bank,
climb up that bank with an airboat.
It's almost unreachable.
Can this old boat make it up there?
I don't know. We fixing to find out.
Airboats allow swampers to make short trips over flat land,
but their motors aren't designed to climb steep hills.
Roaring at over 5,000 RPM,
these engines can overheat when pushed too hard,
which could blow up their whole season.
It'll just us help slide when we come up that sand bank.
It's gonna be a challenge. And I gotta hit it
hard enough to get in this place.
Oh, my God.
Oh!
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
Good driving, Joey. That was tough.
Good job. Good job.
Now the hole is through the woods this way.
Hold on, bubba.
You know, just the fact that this airboat
can go through the woods on dry land
and the fact that Zak and I are moving like this
and we got plenty of power, I'm optimistic.
I'm thinking that, you know,
we got a good chance trying get these tags filled.
What?
It's like a whole different world back here, huh?
Another one of God's hidden jewels.
I hear a big bull growling. You hear him?
[growling]
-Yeah, I hear it. -Told you.
God's country.
Now let's find some alligators. Come on.
Yes, sir.
In Bloody Bayou,
Bruce is helping the Landrys fill tags
in one of the shallowest areas of the swamp,
but he's not flinching at the challenge
thanks to his special gator tail mud boat
that can navigate extremely low waters.
I see what Troy's talking about over here.
It is shallow.
They ain't gonna make it over here with a regular boat.
Bruce's surface drive motor
is specially designed to navigate shallow water.
Unlike typical boat motors
with propellers that drop a foot or more into the water,
the so-called mud motor propeller
skims the surface.
I got to jump these trees,
and I think that's why Troy sent me back here.
He knows a regular boat won't make it.
This Go Devil,
hopefully it'll make it through there.
Here goes nothing.
Hold on! Hold on!
Ain't nothing easy out here.
Once inside, Bruce can run the lines
that Troy's nephew set by foot yesterday.
But as Bruce loads in gators and the boat gets heavier,
getting back out will be much harder than going in.
Got a line right there.
Oh, yeah.
You fixing to come in the boat with Bruce.
Yes, indeed.
How these gators tangle themselves so much
I have no idea.
I got an idea.
Look what I got.
Gotta carry everything with you in the swamp.
You never know what you're gonna run into.
That made things easier.
Yeah, buddy.
Crap.
Oh, my goodness.
Come here, buddy.
Whoa!
Oh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Come on. Slow down, buddy.
I've got something for you.
Slow down.
Come on, man, come up here, give me a shot.
-Good night. -[gunshot]
Whoo!
This gun is a revolver rifle. Man, I love it.
As a solo hunter,
Bruce relies on a rancher carbine,
versatile, light, and equipped with a revolver mechanism
that's reliable in the toughest conditions.
This part rifle and part pistol was one of the firearms
preferred by Cajun settlers in the 19th century.
Come on, buddy.
That's a good nine-foot gator,
but literally I had to really take a saw
and cut the gator out.
It's just gonna be tough.
Now the only problem is
I got a tree blocking my entrance.
I mean, if they got as many gators
as Troy says they got back here,
I'm gonna have trouble getting out.
Whoo! Golly.
In the mud flats,
Troy and Pickle can barely navigate the shallow water
as they try to fill their nine remaining tags for the area
before it dries out completely.
Oh, you motherfricker.
The risk of me breaking something
or busting my motor is very high.
And if I bust this big motor up to pieces,
it's gonna cost me more money than I'm gonna make this year.
All right, we got just a little bit more to go.
The line's right there.
Oh! Whoo-hoo. We made it out alive.
Happy to get out of there.
I think he's under the boat.
Whoo! It's a big one.
Don't panic, don't panic.
Mm-hmm!
Give me a shot, give me a shot.
[grumbling]
-Oh! -Whoa.
Bring him up, bring him up!
Show him who's the boss, show him who's the boss.
Whoo, it's a big one, it's a big one.
Come on, Peewee, bring him up!
There he is, Mr. Troy. Shoot him, get him!
Get him, get him!
[gunshot]
Good job, Peewee.
Big alligator.
-Good Lord, huh? -What?
One, two, three.
That's good.
Putting another behemoth in the boat feels great,
but running their remaining lines will be a struggle.
I'm aggravated in the mud flats here.
We're having so much trouble.
The engine keeps overheating.
But we catching real good,
and when you got less tags, you can be more particular,
When you got a lot of tags, you can't be too particular.
So hopefully we can make it,
but it's gonna be a slow process.
In Bayou Chene,
the low water isn't the problem.
Jacob and Don are facing another adversary:
a cannibal gator feasting on their lines.
I mean, it's like four or five gators we lost right here
because of that one gator.
Yup. It ain't good.
Whenever we get into an area
where we have a real big cannibal alligator,
he doesn't just go and eat on one particular alligator.
Oh, man, there's been a big'un in here.
I think he about got his legs chewed off.
He'll kill that one,
he hears another one down the bayou, he'll go there.
He'll attack several alligators,
and then come back and eat them as he needs them.
So when you have a big bull alligator that's doing this
and wrecking all the alligators on your lines,
you really wanna try to catch him out of there
because he's just gonna ruin 20 to 30 alligators
by the end of the week.
Oh, my God, look at this.
You don't there ain't a big boy in here? Look.
Done chewed his leg clean off.
Chewed up bad, huh?
Oh, my God. That's that 12-footer here.
He's here. Guarantee he's even watching us.
Look, look at the bubbles.
Look at the bubbles just popped up.
That's gotta be him.
I hope you're ready.
Nice and steady.
He'll never hear the pop when I pull the trigger.
Yeah, this is the big gator.
Whoo.
There he goes. There he goes up there. Look.
Whoo, there he goes. There he goes, Jacob.
He is pissed!
Aah!
Damn it, I lost him. Son of a [bleep].
I see him, I see him. There he goes up there. Look.
He's going up there towards that big cypress.
Yup.
What you want me to do?
-Get your treble hook. -Okay.
I see where he's at.
Here, kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty, kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty.
Don, you should have him.
Throwing too close to him. You gotta throw past him.
Yeah, I know.
Whew. Damn.
He disappeared on us, didn't he?
Man, I should've been all over him.
I feel terrible. I'm sick to my stomach.
I know this was the gator.
It was the swamp donkey.
It's the alpha male that we're hunting for,
and I flat-ass missed.
That's all there is to it.
Jacob really didn't say nothing to me,
but I know he's not happy with me.
'Cause this gator needs to be gone,
and I screwed it up.
We'll get him.
We're gonna get him.
Back in Froggy Bayou,
Joey and Zak made it to their hidden honey hole,
but with the water levels dropping,
this might be their only day
to fill their tags here all season,
so they need to make the most of it.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
catch a tiger by the toe.
I don't know where to cast, there's so many gators.
They're everywhere.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Look at this.
I'm trying to pick out the biggest one, man.
Joey and I finally get on this island, Froggy Bayou,
and there are so many alligators
staring back at us.
I'm just hoping we can get out of here
with all the gators we're about to put in this boat.
No, the big one is the closest one to us right here.
See him? Right there.
-Yeah, stop, stop, stop. -See him?
Uh!
That time I got him. Oh, oh, God!
-Set that hook. -I'm trying.
I got him. I got him.
Oh, my God.
Yup, you got him now.
Lean back, lean back, lean back,
-lean back, lean back. -You got him?
-Yeah. -You got him?
-Yeah. -You better pull that weight
on that thing.
Don't hurt your hands.
I can't see him.
Oh, he's pulling the boat.
There it is, pop. He's grabbing.
-Just hold on to that thing. -Aah!
No, hold on, hold on, hold on!
Come on!
-You still got him? -Yeah.
-You still got him? -All right. Aah!
Watch your hands, watch your hands and my rod.
Damn.
Get the rifle. Shoot this thing.
Oh, my God, I'm coming, I'm coming.
I got you.
Here, bring him around. I got you.
Oh, my God.
You gotta shoot, you gotta shoot.
I'm ready. Come up.
Hurry!
I got him. Oh.
[laughs]
There he is.
Oh!
This ten-footer is a great start,
but with just one day to hunt here,
there's no time to celebrate.
There's a lot of alligators in here,
and we're gonna get our share, no doubt.
But we gotta watch that we don't kill too many.
Depending on how heavy we are,
it determines if we going home or not.
Let's go. Let's go hunt.
Let's get them.
These things are everywhere.
In Bloody Bayou,
Bruce is working solo to help the Landrys fill tags
in his special shallow water boat.
It is thick back here.
Now I see why they don't wanna take outboards back here.
Most people don't have boats like mine,
and the problem is if I get way in the back
and catch a bunch of gators,
I got to come out the same way.
So there's only one way in, one way out.
We gonna see what happens.
That looks like a nice gator there.
He must be hung up.
Oh, yeah, he's hung up.
That's good and bad.
[growls]
Oh, yeah.
He's not liking that at all.
Scared he's gonna break that line.
But I don't know how good he's hooked.
Whoa!
Slow down.
Golly.
Whoa!
Whoa.
Oh...
Whoa!
[gunshot]
Ha!
Good gator, man.
Another dinosaur captured in this hard-to-reach honey hole
is exactly why Troy wanted to bring Bruce along.
But for Bruce, catching the gators
is only half the problem.
Every gator I catch back here is a blessing,
and every gator I catch back here is a curse.
The more weight I get in that boat,
the harder it's gonna be to get out of here.
But I'm gonna worry about jumping that tree
on the way out later.
Just gonna have to wait and see.
Keep going. Don't stop.
Over in the mud flats,
Troy and Pickle still have to fill
six of their 14 lines for the area,
but the shallow water is constantly slowing them down
and threatening their plans.
Look, I'm kicking up mud. Look at the mud.
Middle of the bayou, I'm kicking up mud.
Hold on.
-We in trouble, Peewee. -We in a bind?
Got a net or something in my prop.
Oh, no.
Oh, we got somebody's crab trap.
Can you reach it?
Hold on.
When the water's this low,
people fish crabs, they fish crawfish,
they fish catfish, you know, they got trout lines.
So normally, when the water's high,
you go over all of that stuff. You don't touch it.
But when the water's low like this,
I'm trying to get to my alligator lines,
and I catch some man's crab trap in my propeller.
This could set us back for a while.
Wrapped real bad in the propeller.
I hope Peewee ain't gotta get out of the boat.
Need a pair of pliers or something.
Try to chop it off.
Feel bad because that's a $30 crab trap
that I just ruined by accident.
And, you know, then I gotta untangle it
and get it out of my propeller on top of that.
It makes the crabber mad
because we tore up his crab trap,
and it makes me mad because it takes me 45 minutes
to get it out of my propeller.
So it sets us way behind,
and we still got a lot of lines to run.
I got it.
All right, we got it.
Get your ass in the front the boat. Let's go.
-Let's roll. -We gotta catch up now.
-We late. -Now we gotta play catch up.
Watch out.
[thud]
Gotta go-- now we gotta play catch up.
Yeah, catch up time.
Twenty miles north, in the flats of Bayou Sorrel,
the shallow water is giving Willie and Little Willie
their own motor problems.
[tapping]
I heard a tapping, like it was in the powerhead,
and I knew then something was wrong bad, serious wrong.
With record low water levels
that continue to fall,
Willie knows today might be their last opportunity
to hunt the flats, so this veteran hunter
makes the risky decision to push on.
With the water this low,
going back and forth, it's gonna be rough.
It's hard to... hard to keep going
and stay on track and everything.
We just gotta keep going and keep pushing through.
Watch your hand, watch your hand, Willie! Let it out!
[gunshot]
Another solid gator in the boat
is exactly why Willie and Little Willie
return to the flats every season.
But they know another beast onboard means more weight
and more strain on their engine.
I don't know how to feel about it.
We catching alligators, the boat's filling up,
but you keep running a motor like that, it's a four stroke,
they got so much technology and so many things on that,
something serious gonna happen, it'll put a dent in the season.
If we don't stop it now and everything, then...
this big motor is gonna... it's gonna be bad.
Over in Bayou Chene,
Jacob and Don had a monster cannibal
slip through their fingers earlier,
and Don can't stop beating himself up about it.
I can't believe I missed the damn thing.
It happens.
This cannibal gator, he's running other gators out.
The other big gators, if he can whup them,
they're gonna leave, so we ain't gonna get a chance at them.
So we need to catch this cannibal gator
to let the other gators come in and to quit eating our gators
that we already got on the lines.
So I mean, we're literally-- we're getting nailed twice
on this guy, so he needs to come out to make it right.
-Oh, he's on the bank. Look. -Oh, yeah.
I hope he's still good.
Oh, no, no, he's alive. There's something on it.
He a good'un, boss. He good'un, he a good hook.
Aah, and he's heavy.
Oh, yeah, there he is, boss.
[laughs]
Damn.
Shoot him, Jacob.
I'm trying.
Shoot him! Shoot him!
Ten-plus.
Hell, yeah.
Big daddy.
One, two, three.
Oh, dang, look at his tail.
Look at his tail. Look at all the teeth marks.
Look, all the way down it.
That thing's gotta have a mouth that wide.
This nine-footer is a monster in his own right,
and the cannibal still attacked him,
fueling the hunters' urgency.
If we don't put this big cannibal gator
in the boat today, he's gonna kill
four or five more gators
on the line. They're gonna be junk.
There ain't gonna be nothing we can do with them
besides lose a tag on every gator.
So this guy needs to come out.
He needs to look at me and smile before I go home tonight.
In Froggy Bayou,
before making a final push
to fill their remaining tags for the area,
Joey and Zak stop down for a well-deserved break.
-Do you want some of this? -No, no.
-Huh? -No, that's cat food, brother.
I feed those to my fish.
That's my secret bait for pacu.
Yum.
No, yum. It's organic.
Oh, my God.
-Why it's not organic? -You need to go
get yourself a dictionary
and look up the meaning of that word.
Why it's not... it's not processed.
You think those things are hatched out of eggs?
That's not organic.
That's like 50 different animals.
Pop, what you talking about?
I don't understand how you think.
I'm just happy you're downwind right now.
[both laugh]
Zak's a gator hunter.
I turned him into a gator hunter,
but he's not quite a swamper.
He's not quite the people that we come from.
He's scared to eat anything.
He don't eat everything we eat, you know.
He's just not hungry enough.
Yummy for my tummy.
Hell, no.
That's organic as it comes, pop.
Back in Bloody Bayou,
after jumping a tree to reach this gator goldmine,
Bruce is worried he may not be able to get out
with a boat full of gators,
and he still has more lines to run.
Shallow here.
If you get hung up on a log,
you'll be stuck here for three days.
Troy sent me back here.
I had to jump a tree going in.
The problem is, I'm gonna have to jump this tree coming back.
With gators in the boat and more weight,
I don't know what's gonna happen.
I got a gator line right here.
See what we got.
Oh, oh, oh, that's a good one.
That's a good one.
Oh, yeah, that's a good gator there.
Oh, yeah, where's he at?
Let me load this gun.
[click]
Come on, buddy.
Ugh! Oh, my goodness.
Come on, Cletus.
Golly.
Damn!
Whoa! He almost bit my foot.
Whoa.
Still, still.
Get him up.
Hey!
Whoo, I'm racking them and stacking them today.
Come on, buddy, get up here.
Bruce adds this seven-footer
to his already impressive pile of gators,
but the boat's getting heavier
as the water levels continue to drop.
I know I'm doing good today.
I'm filling a lot of tags for Troy,
but if I can't get out of here with the gators,
I ain't done nothing.
Now it's even harder to get around out here.
But, hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to keep on going.
Over in the flats,
with a strained motor and receding water,
Willie and Little Willie
urgently look to fill tags and make it out.
But with 2,000 extra pounds of weight already in the boat,
each new gator may be the one that prevents their exit.
When you got this many tags to fill,
you gotta do what you gotta do.
Ah, [bleep].
Come on, motherfrigger.
Nine-foot.
Once again, the flats has paid off
with a boatload of giants,
and Willie and his son
are thinking about cashing in their chips
while they still can.
We got six or seven alligators in the boat
in just a short time,
and we had to get back out of there.
That's the biggest problem, getting back out of there.
And with the water this low, it's gonna be rough,
I mean, real rough, especially on my motor.
Back in the mud flats,
Troy and Pickle have been struggling
to get to their lines in the shallow water all day,
but are determined to run them all.
Have patience and stay the course.
Let's stick it out.
There's no option. You have to run all your lines.
We filling our tags,
and hopefully by tomorrow we'll be done here.
Gotta be patient and stay focused.
What we got, P?
Looks good.
It look tight, huh?
Yeah, it looks tight.
Oh, yeah.
-Heavy? -Yeah, he's heavy.
Come on, bring him up. Look at the bubbles,
look at the bubbles.
Whoo! You saw that?
Oh, yeah.
-Show him who's the boss. -Aah!
Show him who's the boss.
-Aah!
Oh, good Lord.
-You got him? -No. Ow!
Whoo, it's a big one!
Aah!
-Whoo! -Whoa!
Yeah. Good job.
Good alligator.
-Got him? -Yeah.
-Ready. -On three. Ready?
One, two, three.
Aah!
Come on.
Okay, one-two-three.
With this massive 11-footer in the boat,
Troy is ready to forget about the mud flats.
Just caught a nice alligator, but I got enough of this area.
I told Peewee, pick up the lines. Let's go.
We gonna move, try to find a deeper area, deep water.
I ain't never coming back to the mud flats.
Back in Bayou Chene,
with the day winding down,
Jacob and Don are still hunting
for the cannibal that's devouring their catch.
Hey, this looks like a perfect spot for a big gator.
One way in, one way out, too. Look.
We're coming to the end of the lines,
and I thought we would've done had this big gator.
I ain't got to see him again.
I'm sure he's out there looking at us,
but, I mean, literally we got
maybe a dozen lines left,
and this thing is nowhere to be found in sight.
Damn, he's floating.
Just when it seems like they've run out of luck,
Jacob spots the cannibal in action.
There's a big one chewing on the little one.
The little one's on the line and the big one's eating it.
Oh, look at the bubbles, look at the bubbles,
look at the bubbles next to him. Get your hook,
get your hook, get your hook. Throw it.
-I hit him. -A snag?
If nothing else, maybe I ran him out.
Oh, yeah, he took off, he took off.
There he goes. Look. On the other side.
There he goes, there he goes, there he goes.
Look at the bubbles out in the middle.
Right out in front the boat, look at the bubbles.
Right there, off the end of the willows.
-Right here. -Get 'im.
Got him!
Aah!
Got him!
He's a good'un?
Aah!
Tryin' to pull himself off of it.
Don't let it come out, don't let it come out.
Come on, big boy, come on, big boy, come up.
Don't give it no slack.
Oh, that's a big son of a...
Put a hole in that son of a [bleep]!
Phew!
Gotta love shallow water, huh?
Oh.
-One, two, three. -Three!
Yeah.
Capturing this 12-foot cannibal
is a major victory for Jacob and Don,
who can rest easy knowing their lines in Bayou Chene
are safe, at least for the next few days.
He's good.
With the amount of tags we have to fill,
we can't spend days like this often.
But when we have one big particular alligator like this
that's costing us gators and costing us money and time,
you have to get him out of there because, if you don't,
he's just gonna torture you the rest of the season.
Good job, Don Brewer.
Thank you, Mr. Landry.
Couldn't have done it without you, boss.
[Jacob laughs]
Back in Bloody Bayou,
Bruce has been filling Troy's tags all day,
but as he heads to his last line,
the pile of gators
and the fallen tree he jumped this morning
has him concerned.
If I get hung up...
it ain't gonna be good. It ain't gonna be good.
Line down.
Gator on, gator on.
Straight out, too. That's a good sign.
Oh, boy, gonna be a fun one.
Too many gators.
What we got?
All right, here we go.
Whoa!
Oh!
Get up here.
Whoa! Gol!
Ooh! Come on. Don't be biting my boat all up.
[gunshot]
That got him.
Whoo! That's a good one there.
[laughs] Oh!
This last gator's no giant, which has Bruce relieved.
He still needs to make the long journey
back to the landing and jump the fallen tree again,
but this time with a boat full of alligators.
There's only one way to find out if this is gonna work.
I gotta hit this thing hard and fast as I can.
It's either gonna work or it's not.
Here goes nothing.
Oh!
Dang it.
Crap. Now I'm done all hung up.
Crap. I'm in a bad situation here.
The motor's on one side of the tree,
and the boat's on the other side of the tree.
I got to figure out a way
to get the back of this boat picked up
and get the prop on the other side.
I got an idea.
Just need some rope.
All right.
Gotta be careful, because I don't wanna
grab that hot muffler.
Pull the string through there.
Now, let's see what happens.
Tell you what.
Look it there.
Heh-heh! I like it when a plan comes together.
Troy sent me to a place that was tough to get to.
Hard to get back there, hard to get out.
But I did it. Troy's gonna be impressed with this load.
Caught a lot of gators.
I'm pretty impressed with my own self.
Whew. Ain't nothing easy out here.
Seventeen miles north,
Willie and Little Willie have loaded
over 2,000 pounds of gators in their boat,
but getting back across the flats
may become a big problem.
Cutting grass.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Man, [bleep].
Wasn't 100 feet going down the ditch--
you look up the ditch,
you got another boat coming at us.
Ditch ain't but like this wide,
and I got a five-foot boat in that ditch.
And one of us had to go out on the bank to pass each other,
and I get around him, but I catch trash in the wheel,
and it... slows me down and stops me.
[groaning]
When you're fooling with this low of water
and you got this much weight in the boat,
we got seven, eight alligators in the boat.
Boat's picking up on the bank and we sliding back off the bank
because it's just pure mud.
We try to get up, and we try to get up.
We keep on trying and trying and trying.
Do or die, Willie.
Now or never.
Finally we burrowed a big enough hole
to where that motor catch and jump up.
Being hung up like that
and being able to get out and everything,
it takes experience to do that.
Somebody that ain't never been in there before
and don't know how to run a motor or nothing,
they would've been stuck right there.
In Froggy Bayou, Joey and Zak
continue to pile up the gators in their boat,
but they want to end the day with one more giant,
since this is likely their only day to hunt here.
Yeah, right under one of those trees over there,
and we'll maybe have a clear view
of where that big one went down over there,
if he does come back up.
I know how important it is to finish with these tags today.
We got one tag left, but we not giving up.
You know, we got a chance to finish off
with a really big alligator.
Look, his bubble's right in the front of you.
Right there to the left.
That's gonna get him. If he's still there,
that's gonna get him.
He's gonna be hard to track
in that white water. Just stay with him.
I might've cast ahead of him a little bit.
That's good, he stopped.
I believe.
That's what I'm talking about.
Damn, look at this. Look at this, damn.
You want me to tighten up on him?
Oh, my God! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Damn, this boy is flying. Damn.
I was gonna try to hook him.
Hit him with the treble hook. That's gonna get him.
Oh!
That's all you. That's all you, baby.
-Get your gun. -Come on.
He's bigger than you think.
Oh!
Hold on, hold on, hold on. No!
He come off, he come off. He come off!
There he is on the surface. He's on the surface over there.
Hit him with that big hook. We're not losing this thing.
I'm gonna lift him up for you.
-Get that hook underneath him. -All right.
I got him, I got him.
I got him now.
All right.
Okay, ready?
There he is, right there. That's a big alligator!
Aah! Get your rifle.
He's burning my hands.
Shoot him!
Shoot him! Shoot!
Oh, my God.
He's bigger than we thought.
He tried to get away from us, huh?
-Pssh. -I thought we lost him.
All right, hold on... hold on.
That's it. Wait.
There it is.
[laughs]
That is a solid alligator.
With this 11-foot leviathan,
Joey and Zak can head home knowing they made the most
out of their one day in Froggy Bayou.
Daniel's gonna be proud, that's for sure.
[laughs]
We got lucky. We got this big alligator.
We had a really good day. It's time to get out of here.
Oh. [laughs]
Well, that'll clean the boat out.
We made it out. I'm glad it was good to us,
but we'll let Froggy Bayou rest till next year.
Let's bring these gators home. Hell, yeah.
Back at Duffy's,
after a hard day's work,
Bruce arrives to show his haul
to the King of the Swamp.
How you did, Mr. Bruce?
-I did good. -Bruce.
It's like somebody just drove up and throw'd 'em in the boat.
-You did good, huh? -Oh, yeah. Shoot, man.
Peewee, look at the load this man got.
That's nice.
-Appreciate it. -Thank you.
Let's help Bruce unload.
Bruce and I, we do things the old way.
You know, Bruce, he's laid back.
He's very dependable, very honest guy.
He had a good load of gators, caught a bunch of them.
Saved me a lot of trouble.
I feel I can send him in an area and not even worry about him.
So that should speed us up a lot.
That should help us.
Where you get all that energy at?
-Me? -Yeah.
Oh, you ask him, I don't do nothing all day.
Boy, that's what I need. I need a Pickle in my boat.
Every day.
I set some goals. I made them happen.
We got a lot of gators to catch. Ain't no slacking out here.
You gotta hit it 110% every day.
Good job, Brucie.
That ain't a bad run, huh?
-You know how many you had? -All of them.
[both laugh]
That's right.
All of them.