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

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 https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key. And that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger. Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust. From paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers. Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering, so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate. An available multi-sensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit Lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off, or if any door is open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Football season is here. And if you're looking for the boldest bourbon on the roster, look no further than Wild Turkey Bourbon. Kentucky born with 100 years of know-how. Wild Turkey Bourbon never compromises. It's aged longer, never watered down. So enjoy a bourbon that's filled with character and bold flavor this football season. Wild Turkey. Go bold, go home. Copyright 2026, Campari America, New York, New York. Never compromise. Drink responsibly.

• 1:44Speaker 04

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We're hunting the Meat Eater Podcast.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  You can't predict anything.

• 1:55Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 2:18Steven Rinella?

  Welcome, everybody. Today, I'm joined by Florida man, Captain Bob Stafford, like the actual Florida man. When you see a headline that says Florida man, this guy, Captain Bob Stafford. No, in all seriousness, Bob Stafford's a guide. He guides in Lake Okeechobee, Florida.

• 2:39Steven Rinella?

  He guides for ducks, largemouth bass, crappies.

• 2:47Speaker 06

  Snipe.

• 2:48Steven Rinella?

  Snipe. But we're here to talk about one of the things he does, which he's a gator hunter. Guides gator hunts in Okeechobee, Lake Okeechobee. I met Bob, I've been thinking about talking to this man for many years. Cause I met you maybe six, five years ago.

• 3:08Speaker 06

  About six years ago.

• 3:10Steven Rinella?

  We were out and I was doing, I was doing a different unrelated work project. Kind of like ancillary to the stuff I do.

• 3:20Steven Rinella?

  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 tilapia with bows and arrows one night. And we were in Bob's, your buddy's airboat.

• 3:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:33Steven Rinella?

  You clarified it was not this airboat.

• 3:35Speaker 06

  No, this one was being worked on.

• 3:37Steven Rinella?

  It was your buddy's airboat and we were talking a bunch about gators. And what stuck in my head is he was telling me about baiting gators with chickens. And it's blurred 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.

• 4:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:06Steven Rinella?

  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, for, for questions for, 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 is 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. Cause I got a kick out of talking to you and the chicken thing stuck in my head.

• 4:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:39Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 4:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:49Steven Rinella?

  A friend of mine, another Florida man. I texted it to him.

• 4:55Steven Rinella?

  And he said, that's a gator of a lifetime. Or a lifetime gator, something to that effect.

• 5:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like catching a 10 pound bow.

• 5:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so we got a big old gator.

• 5:06Steven Rinella?

  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, 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.

• 5:25Speaker 06

  No, it's all completely licensed.

• 5:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, licensed activities. But in, in getting into this, I want to step back first. And can you explain?

• 5:38Steven Rinella?

  What, like when you were being brought up, what, what year were you born?

• 5:42Speaker 06

  I was born in 59.

• 5:44Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 5:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:54Steven Rinella?

  When you were a little kid, what was your awareness of gators? How were people in your community? How did they view alligators? Like, like what are kind of your early memories about alligators and how alligators and man interacted?

• 6:09Speaker 06

  Well, a lot of it was my, 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 lived south down by Fort Lauderdale and Pompano. And he also, the game commission had, has a big part of it. Because there was this place that's not even there anymore down. It was a place called Locksahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. And there was a building and 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.

• 6:53Speaker 06

  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, that's kind of where it started. I just, I loved the Everglades. I love Lake Okeechobee. It's all, it's all, it all used to be all connected, you know, until they dyked everything in and separated everything.

• 7:18Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 7:19Speaker 06

  Okeechobee was really the top of the Everglades.

• 7:23Steven Rinella?

  What, when they were an ESA animal? So, 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 have been old enough to go and know what's going on.

• 7:40Steven Rinella?

  Was it rare to see one?

• 7:42Speaker 06

  No, they were around, but there were, there weren't as many then. Cause we used to wade fish in Lake Okeechobee and there wasn't that many gators when I was growing up in my, you know, adolescent years, even teenage years.

• 7:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 06

  There wasn't that many. I was not afraid to jump in the water. We didn't have trolling motors and stuff then.

• 8:01Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 8:02Speaker 06

  Tie a rope on my waist and drag my boat around with my dad fishing for bows. I wouldn't do that now because the program they had, it really worked.

• 8:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 06

  It didn't start opening up until 1988 is when it became legal. They started allowing alligator hunting.

• 8:19Steven Rinella?

  And then, did you jump right into it in the eighties when it was 88, when they opened it up?

• 8:24Speaker 06

  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 really, I always messed with gators. My dad was always mad at me because I would catch them, bring them home. My dad was always mad, but I've always been fascinated with alligators.

• 8:41Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 8:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:51Steven Rinella?

  They'd been protected so long, there wasn't sort of like a, a class or a, an existing community of gator hunters.

• 8:59Speaker 06

  No, there was no gator hunting.

• 9:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So what did that look like when, as people, what did that look like as people all summer like, man, we're allowed to go get some of these? What, what did it look like for people that were going out and trying to learn how to do it?

• 9:14Speaker 06

  Well, they did, they made a class when they started to teach, teach people how to do it. But what happened is a lot of the people, because when they first came out, they were giving 15 alligator tags to one person.

• 9:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 9:29Speaker 06

  Nobody was guiding for hunts and the hide buyers were really wanting the hides. Cause there wasn't hardly any gator farms and stuff.

• 9:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay, yeah.

• 9:38Speaker 06

  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 of alligators.

• 9:51Steven Rinella?

  Because at the time, it was good money.

• 9:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, yeah, because they were getting 60 to $80 a foot for a hide.

• 9:58Steven Rinella?

  And if you applied for a permit in those days, like now in this area, I don't know about everywhere, but I know that the permit we applied for in this area. If you draw the permit, you get two alligator tags.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:07Steven Rinella?

  But back then, if you drew, it's 15 gator tags.

• 10:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:11Steven Rinella?

  And gators were worth how much a foot?

• 10:13Speaker 06

  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.

• 10:21Steven Rinella?

  But if you had, in those days, if you got 15 gator tags.

• 10:28Steven Rinella?

  Were like, was it full of huge gators? I mean, could, could, could guys honestly go out and make like a sizable chunk of money? Killing fifteen gators and selling the leather?

• 10:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, they were not trophy hunting like what we were doing on our deal.

• 10:42Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 10:42Speaker 06

  They were going out and getting six to eight footers.

• 10:45Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 10:45Speaker 06

  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.

• 10:51Steven Rinella?

  I see, yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 06

  But I'd see guys in gas stations in an airboat and gators just piled up in the.

• 10:56Steven Rinella?

  They're mean, they're fifteen, yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're going, they, they might not get all fifteen, but they had a six, eight, ten gators and, and you had to sit on your hides and wait for the hide validation, validation program where they'd have a meeting and the, the people would inspect the hides and

• 11:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 06

  and bid on them and pay you the money for them then.

• 11:15Steven Rinella?

  So what was the first year that you were able to go on a gator hunt?

• 11:20Speaker 06

  Probably around early nineties, maybe ninety, ninety-two is when I finally started and they cut, they started cutting the tag numbers back.

• 11:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 11:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, uh, they started giving more tags out, more, more licenses out to more people, but cut the numbers that you could get back.

• 11:39Steven Rinella?

  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?

• 11:49Speaker 06

  For me, it wasn't. I, I started out just, I really wasn't a guide then.

• 11:54Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  I just started because I love gators. I started hunting gators and then people knew that I hunted gators and, and it's weird, it's like an evolution, the way we hunted them. In the beginning, we would take airboats with harpoons with, on 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, then the buoy would go out and you'd turn around, go pull them in, bang, stick them and go get another one.

• 12:22Steven Rinella?

  That was the early days.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  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, you know?

• 12:36Steven Rinella?

  That was the thing that, that was the thing that surprised me over to spend in a couple of days with you all was, um, I mean, I shouldn't say surprised because I, I didn't, I, I didn't think about it before, but the observation I had and you validated it was that they are very aware that they're being hunted.

• 12:56Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 12:58Steven Rinella?

  And they are skittish.

• 12:59Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 12:59Steven Rinella?

  And they see a boat come around the bend in the river and the big ones are like, I'm out.

• 13:03Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 13:04Steven Rinella?

  And the little ones that haven't been around long, don't know.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  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.

• 13:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:13Steven Rinella?

  And it's funny to think about at a time that they wouldn't have had that response.

• 13:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, yeah, they wouldn't. You could just ride right up to them.

• 13:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 06

  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.

• 13:29Steven Rinella?

  What, what did you do with the first gators you, you got? When you start, when you started getting some tags and stuff, what were you doing with them?

• 13:36Speaker 06

  I wasn't even selling the hides. We were just like cleaning them ourselves. We would do our own processing.

• 13:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 13:42Speaker 06

  We would skin them ourselves, you know, and then cut the meat up. We would keep the meat for ourselves, insult the hides and get the hides tanned.

• 13:51Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 13:51Speaker 06

  From a tannery.

• 13:52Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 13:53Speaker 06

  I didn't really get involved in selling the gators like they did in the beginning.

• 13:57Steven Rinella?

  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, but 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.

• 14:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:14Steven Rinella?

  Like you gotta get deer cooled off.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:16Steven Rinella?

  And I don't know, man, I hadn't really thought about that. And all of a sudden you got this three hundred, four hundred pound reptile. It's ninety degrees out. It's like an issue.

• 14:27Speaker 06

  Oh, it's a major issue. If you want to do something with the hides and, and it's hot out, the, the, 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.

• 14:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 06

  And the meat could go bad. So you had to get it cooled off right away.

• 14:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And you used to use, tell people that you used to use a canoe.

• 14:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I had an old canoe and a ice machine. And then we were only killing two a night when they got down to the two per license. And 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.

• 15:08Steven Rinella?

  Well, that was the rule.

• 15:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was a rule. It might've 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 of hours of sleep. And then you wake up and during gator season, it's in the nineties usually every day.

• 15:24Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 15:24Speaker 06

  So I'd like take one at a time and try to clean them as fast as I could. And, and then get salt on the hides right away. And still some of the scales would slip. We call it slipping.

• 15:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 06

  But.

• 15:37Steven Rinella?

  And were you guys, uh, were you selling some of that gator meat?

• 15:40Speaker 06

  No, I never did.

• 15:42Steven Rinella?

  Giving away to friends and stuff?

• 15:43Speaker 06

  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.

• 15:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, just made it.

• 15:51Steven Rinella?

  What was the, I didn't, I had no idea until you just said it right now. Cause I know a lot of your old gator hunting stories are night stories.

• 15:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:00Steven Rinella?

  I had no idea that it was that you were supposed to hunt at night.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  Yeah. I don't even know what the reasoning was in the beginning. I swear, it, it was like the movie, The Jaws, that Jaws movie.

• 16:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 06

  We would go to the boat ramp and we would have to drive through protesters spitting on our trucks. Cut 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 and I mean, they were screaming all kinds of stuff at us, you know, it was just you know, 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.

• 16:41Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 16:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. I don't know what the reasoning was.

• 16:44Steven Rinella?

  Talk about that evolution. Like you said, in the early days, guys were throwing harpoons from airboats.

• 16:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. And they, 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, I learned how to, I'm, I'm a fisherman and I can cast good. And I started learning how to snag them with treble hooks. And, 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.

• 17:12Steven Rinella?

  But

• 17:14Steven Rinella?

  how do you know, if you're watching a gator a hundred yards down the river?

• 17:20Steven Rinella?

  And the gator goes under. How do you even begin to have an idea

• 17:27Steven Rinella?

  where to cast?

• 17:29Speaker 06

  Well, you gotta kind of watch the way they go down. If they go down and their nose is 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 snagging them are slim.

• 17:50Steven Rinella?

  Got it. Yeah. Tell people the setup you use to snag a gator.

• 17:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just use like, I use a, I use bait casting kind of reels, bigger ocean reels, but we use like a hundred and fifty to two hundred 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 fifty percent from the body to the forward.

• 18:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 18:14Speaker 06

  If you hook them in the back, it makes it a harder fight. You're dragging the, just like tail hooking a fish, you know?

• 18:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 06

  Fight.

• 18:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And when you do that, I never like, I saw you do it. But you're casting out, you're retrieving real slow.

• 18:32Steven Rinella?

  And eventually you just feel the hook find its spot. And then

• 18:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:38Steven Rinella?

  tighten into them.

• 18:39Speaker 06

  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 hook's 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.

• 18:57Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's going to explode.

• 18:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. And you'll get a better hook set, but if they're on the bottom, you literally have to reel slow until you see them. And then you gotta hope it's not a rock or a log, but you know, and set the hook.

• 19:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 06

  As hard as you can.

• 19:11Steven Rinella?

  And you, 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.

• 19:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know. Like that's what I was saying. It's an evolution. Like, I mean, the guy that runs our local, uh, processing plant, he actually helped me a bunch when I was really starting to guide and get into it. And, and I'm like, man, I'm just having a hard time getting these bigger gators. You know, and, 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.

• 19:51Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 19:51Speaker 06

  And we make our own, uh, there's a light right here.

• 19:53Steven Rinella?

  Make your own red light?

• 19:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, we would just go around and, and it was really tricky. You couldn't shine the light right at the gator. You want to shine it above them. I would cut like a, a beer can or a coke can so that the halo wouldn't be as bright on the bottom. And he hold it like on a, a maybe a twenty degree angle over top of me, you're shining the beam up.

• 20:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 06

  Have you ever been in the woods? If somebody's shining a light at you, you can't tell if they're ten feet or ten 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 in motor close with a, with a harp, uh, crossbow.

• 20:33Steven Rinella?

  With that thing lit by the kind of the periphery of the light?

• 20:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're just, 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 a crossbow at them. And then when they were ready, I would lower it down on the, on that thing. And then you could shoot the crossbow.

• 20:53Steven Rinella?

  At what distance?

• 20:54Speaker 06

  From thirty yards in. We were, we could shoot from thirty yards in and we made our own arrows and we had our own broomstick with a little float. You know, so.

• 21:03Steven Rinella?

  And how, out of that crossbow, how are you attached and how are you running a line attached to that? Bolt.

• 21:08Speaker 06

  We would just take the fiberglass fish bolts and get a piece of aluminum arrow that slid over it perfectly and epoxy that in there and epoxy a half moon knock in the end of it.

• 21:21Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 21:22Speaker 06

  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 muzzy point or like those points I use 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.

• 21:45Steven Rinella?

  And then you had them on a buoy.

• 21:46Speaker 06

  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.

• 21:53Steven Rinella?

  And what was that line then on? An external spool?

• 21:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was using Zebco eight oh eights.

• 22:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  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 you, that was hard hunting. You were like, you get out at dark and you're watching the sun come up. I mean, a lot of stuff could go wrong. Those, 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.

• 22:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 22:24Speaker 06

  Make it all moist and all. Then if we went too long or didn't reel upright, sometimes it would shoot out, it would break the line and you would lose the whole rig.

• 22:32Steven Rinella?

  Sure, yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 06

  Or if the, a lot of times my customers would shoot at what they could see. I'd try to coach them. You can't shoot at the, what you can see because you're seeing the head. You have to visualize like behind the head where the valley is, but that's what we call it. You'll see the back and the head and there'll be a little valley.

• 22:50Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 22:51Speaker 06

  You want to aim at the valley. If the, if the arrow hit the water in front of it, that was perfect because it would level out like a torpedo and just hub up right in them.

• 23:00Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 23:01Speaker 06

  And then, and then that was, that would be the best shot. But nine times out of 10, people would shoot at the head. It would skip off the head and you'd lose another arrow.

• 23:09Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Well, how, why did you guys move away from that crossbow style hunt?

• 23:13Speaker 06

  Because everybody started doing it and it was getting harder. Like all of a sudden we're going out gator hunting, you know, and I, then, then that's when I was really starting to get into guiding. Then everybody and their brother, there's red lights everywhere. Gators were getting really spooky. They evolved with the harponing deal and then they started learning about the red lights and they got light shy.

• 23:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 23:36Speaker 06

  You just hit a, you could hit a gator a quarter of a mile away with your light, zoom, gone.

• 23:42Steven Rinella?

  Got it, got it.

• 23:43Speaker 06

  It was just hard.

• 23:44Steven Rinella?

  It's like a gator arms race.

• 23:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we had to figure out something else.

• 23:48Steven Rinella?

  What'd you move to from there?

• 23:49Speaker 06

  We moved to baiting then. Uh, you know, I was, for years thinking about, there's gotta be a better way. There's gotta be a better way. And it wears you out. My wife would answer my phone for me because I was nocturnal. I would, I would be up all night gator hunting and I'd sleep most of the day.

• 24:06Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 24:06Speaker 06

  So I'm, I'm like talking to the, that, once again, that processor. And there was these two old guys that kept getting, bringing in these huge gators all the time to the processor. And 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? And he goes, I think they're putting spray foam in them. I'm like, really? And then a light bulb went off in my head because I'd been playing around with 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.

• 24:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 06

  And, and attaching like with a, you know, clothespin or something, hanging like pieces of chicken out.

• 24:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 06

  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 with it.

• 24:59Steven Rinella?

  So they're like, but, so they're smart enough to know something's up?

• 25:02Speaker 06

  I know. Everybody thinks a gator has a pea brain size. Their, their brain's the size of a pea and they think they're dumb. There's, but they're not dumb. They have that God given natural will to live and.

• 25:14Steven Rinella?

  Like to, 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.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I mean, that, in a way, yeah, I think that's part of it. But, 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. It's a little metal flag, a little flag. They put it on there where they could see their buoy.

• 25:47Steven Rinella?

  To mark their catfish trot lines.

• 25:48Speaker 06

  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.

• 25:56Steven Rinella?

  Like they'll go and work over those catfish trot lines.

• 25:59Speaker 06

  Yes. I've been, my, my younger son, James, we watched one one day. It was a big gator. It was, the lake was low. It was like three foot deep. And then 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, 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.

• 26:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us. They're everywhere.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  We think they're murder hornets. 911 Nashville returns. It's a homicide detective doing here. Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions. All sins swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 27:09Steven Rinella?

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate. An available multi-sensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and scents to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit Lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 28:11Steven Rinella?

  So, so continue that story of that, that you were trying that. You were trying staking the bait out and hanging it from something.

• 28:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, I did that for a while. And then, and, yeah, I, it was later on when that man told me, oh, I think there, there's, 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 sized chickens and, but when you put the spray foam in, they go from, they just went too big. I mean, if you're wanting a really big gator, it was okay. But like, you know, it'd have to be a big gator to eat it right away.

• 28:46Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 28:47Speaker 06

  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 gotta have, the law is, you have to, you can't, we can't use a hook in the state.

• 29:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I think it's important that people understand. You're not talking about a conventional J hook or a treble hook buried into a chicken.

• 29:06Speaker 06

  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, our back and try to catch a gator. Because one, we got to hunt at night. Two, we can't use a hook, you know, 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 Paget. And his family, they were, I'm talking about like 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 hides. They made, they made a living doing that.

• 29:50Steven Rinella?

  Poaching gators.

• 29:51Speaker 06

  Turtle trapping, gator trapping, you know, all that stuff. Well, they said, the reason they used, they, our rule is we got to use a two inch wooden peg, but I don't know why they came up with.

• 30:02Steven Rinella?

  That's your hook.

• 30:03Speaker 06

  Yeah. They, they came up with that. We'd make a leader with the two inch wooden thing. He said, the reason they used the, 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 eventually, when they were starting the, the program. And they got, they asked them how they do it.

• 30:44Steven Rinella?

  And that's how they rolled it up.

• 30:45Speaker 06

  They don't use a hook. They use this wooden peg and, and according to that man, that's how it happened.

• 30:52Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 30:52Speaker 06

  And to this day, we're not allowed to use a hook. We have to use a two inch wooden dowel.

• 30:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. We, we sent one down to a gator. A Cornish game hen down to a gator.

• 31:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:05Steven Rinella?

  And.

• 31:08Steven Rinella?

  We were, we were in a situation where we were able to play the current.

• 31:12Steven Rinella?

  Like, we're in a river.

• 31:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:13Steven Rinella?

  Swamp on each side, river, no one around. And we knew there was a gator way down the river.

• 31:21Steven Rinella?

  And we just sent that thing floating down like, like a, like a presented bait.

• 31:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:27Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 31:33Speaker 06

  No, he didn't think about it.

• 31:34Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 31:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:43Steven Rinella?

  Suck that thing down.

• 31:44Speaker 06

  Immediately, yeah. We just barely got set up. Sometimes we gotta sit for an hour or more and mess with it, but that one there, he was wanting it.

• 31:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So then, when you do that, e- explain like how that then works out, like, explain what your rig is. I know you're giving away all your trade secrets here.

• 32:03Speaker 06

  I don't really care anymore, you know, I'm at the tail end of my career and I don't really care. And everybody's figuring it out, but in the beginning, I was very secretive.

• 32:12Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 32:12Speaker 06

  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.

• 32:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 06

  There's also, you gotta be far enough away from them where they don't think that the boat has anything to do with it. And my old gator.

• 32:33Steven Rinella?

  We ran into that, too. We ran into it where we kinda accidentally got by one and presented that bait to him. That dude was like, uh uh, man.

• 32:40Speaker 06

  Uh, he wasn't having it, no.

• 32:42Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 32:50Speaker 06

  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, you have to have them swallow it right away.

• 33:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 06

  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.

• 33:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 06

  And I've had them do it before. And they, they'll go and go and go, and they'll swim through trees or in vegetation and, you know, I've, I've had them do it before where I have to lay in the boat and just dig vegetation. I mean, for hours. Probably why my back's messed up.

• 33:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I understand. Dig, dig vegetation.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  Like, well, we used to have really thick weeds in the lake. They would swim through thick hydrilla, thick hydrilla, like, I mean.

• 33:36Steven Rinella?

  Carrying that bait, yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 06

  And I would have to pull the line and dig, dig, dig, and I, I could go like, I would have somebody else driving the boat. I'm laying on my belly in the front, just digging, 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.

• 33:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 06

  To get to them.

• 33:57Steven Rinella?

  And you got that rod rigged up where you got, how many, like, how many yards of, e- explain the setup.

• 34:05Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, that's the way I do it. A lot of people do it different. Some people, braided line is expensive.

• 34:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Speaker 06

  And we're using line reels that hold three, four hundred yards of line. And the original reason I did it was because I didn't wanna spend all that money, you know, putting that much line on the, on the reel. So I started you, I used to do a lot of ocean fishing and I used my ocean technology. I just used thirty pound, high visibility, yellow line.

• 34:33Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 34:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was at night. It's easy to see it with the spotlight. So at the last sixty to eighty yards, I would have a hundred and fifty pound test, like, Power Pro line.

• 34:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 06

  And, and like when we were going to get the gator, if he swallowed it, you gotta make sure they swallowed it. I would just, we would just recover the line with hardly any tension.

• 34:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 06

  Until we get all the way down onto the, the braid and get a good, nice wrap.

• 34:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you're basically just tracking him when you're pulling that line up.

• 35:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:02Steven Rinella?

  Like, he doesn't know yet something's going on.

• 35:04Speaker 06

  No. Well, yeah, he kinda does, but you don't wanna put pressure. Like, I'm always telling everybody, do not pressure them until we get on the main line, you know?

• 35:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  And the other advantage of that is, I, I try to tell people not hunting 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 a hundred and fifty, two hundred yards away, and here comes a bass tournament, and all these bass boats hauling butt, and they're going across our line. Well, the, the mono would sink, you know, and they would run right over it, not have a, I've never had a boat hit my line.

• 35:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 35:41Speaker 06

  But, you know, a lot of people just go straight braid all the way, but.

• 35:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 06

  I, I, I think there's advantages to the mono.

• 35:49Steven Rinella?

  And how secure, like, if he takes that Cornish game hen, and he swallows it, how secure is that thing in there?

• 35:55Speaker 06

  It's really secure.

• 35:57Steven Rinella?

  Like, that's a one-way passage.

• 35:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, very rarely I've ever had a one burp it out.

• 36:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 06

  And most of the time, if they do burp it out, it's like at the end of the fight when they're really tired and, and they're ga- and they're blowing air out, and it's over, and all of a sudden, bloop, the bait will pop out.

• 36:14Steven Rinella?

  Got it, yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 06

  But I, I've taken a twelve footer on a table before when we're cleaning it, put a welding glove, and I, a lot of people use parachute cord, but like I said, I use my old ocean technology. I use 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 opened the gator's mouth, and like, you could not pull that bait out of that gator.

• 36:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. Um,

• 36:45Steven Rinella?

  that kinda like, that's kinda where you landed on your strategy.

• 36:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:49Steven Rinella?

  Which is snag and hook.

• 36:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. My, all of a sudden, I went from killing mediocre gators to killing trophy gators a lot. People were like, how are you killing all these gators?

• 36:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And the new evolution now, and you should talk about the new evolution now, it's forward-facing sonar.

• 37:05Speaker 06

  Electronics, yeah.

• 37:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Explain that. I mean, you've been, you're a bass fisherman. I mean, you've always used electronics to fish.

• 37:11Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, people have been doing it for probably three or four years now.

• 37:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 37:19Speaker 06

  I've only, this is only my second or third year doing it. I still, 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, 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. Um, and I could find a gator like seventy to eighty yards away and then go all the way up to him within, I would get within thirty to fifty feet and start zooming in.

• 37:55Steven Rinella?

  Cause he thinks he's hidden.

• 37:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's not moving. And I've, 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'll 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 kinda trolling 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, I'm getting ready to cast on a big gator if you guys are interested.

• 38:29Steven Rinella?

  But the thing about that, I don't know if you realize this, you probably do. In the time we, the, the two days we just hunted, we hunted hard for two days.

• 38:36Speaker 06

  Very hard, yeah.

• 38:37Steven Rinella?

  So,

• 38:40Steven Rinella?

  I, I should point out that on, on, you, you file your treble hooks barbless. You pinch your barbs.

• 38:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:48Steven Rinella?

  And I thought you pinch your barbs to be nice to the gator, but you're pinching your barbs, one reason is,

• 38:53Speaker 06

  They're, they're high.

• 38:54Steven Rinella?

  Skin's hard and it's hard to get it in there. It's hard to get a purchase on it.

• 38:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 38:58Steven Rinella?

  But I wanna point out that we, the barbs are pinched. The barbs are pinched. You, you did find a gator with forward-facing sonar.

• 39:10Steven Rinella?

  Early on, you found a gator with it.

• 39:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:12Steven Rinella?

  Had a good idea how big it was, hooked it, we got it up, and popped the hook and let it go.

• 39:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:19Steven Rinella?

  The other gators, the two gators we killed, and another gator we wrestled with, uh, it didn't come into play.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, as far as coming out?

• 39:32Steven Rinella?

  No, no, I'm saying, it, those weren't forward-facing sonar gators.

• 39:36Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. No, no, the two good ones we killed, yeah, we did it without it.

• 39:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 06

  You might feel good about that, too.

• 39:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but I mean, we, like, I saw how effective it was, and I, and I was getting in my mind like, well, that must be how it is now.

• 39:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:48Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 39:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's why I think, I mean, the first year I had it. It was the first hunt 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, the boat we used. It was brand new. 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 fifty yards as far as you could see. So I turned on the sonar thing and I'm trolling motoring over there and I'm looking for this thing. And I can't figure nothing out. No, I just, I just remember saying, I've never killed a gator with this electronic bull crap. I'm just going back to the old way.

• 40:43Speaker 06

  And I trolling motored over where I saw a big gator go down. And I threw a bait out and just trolling 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 twenty-five minutes.

• 40:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. Now- nowadays, how many, how many gator hunts are you doing nowadays? And I know you're actually, you keep, you're kind of half joking, but you keep talking about that you're not gonna do this forever. But how many gator hunts are you doing?

• 41:15Speaker 06

  Right now, I think last year I killed like sixteen and I'm, I used to kill, I didn't kill a, a whole bunch ever. I, I killed like twenty to twenty-five a year. And now I'm killing like fourteen and sixteen a year and I don't even know if I'll hit that this year.

• 41:32Steven Rinella?

  So you turn, you turn business down now?

• 41:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, not really turn it down. I'm just more selective, you know, a lot of my customers are repeat customers and.

• 41:42Steven Rinella?

  But they gotta draw the tag. But here's the other thing I'd like you to explain is, um, how, how the tag, like. A tag holder, because it's a bit, getting a gator is a group effort.

• 41:53Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:54Steven Rinella?

  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 gonna come into play.

• 42:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:07Steven Rinella?

  Fighting a gator, right? So when you have, you, when you have clients, you have clients who have won lottery draw gator tags.

• 42:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:17Steven Rinella?

  That's the first step that has to happen.

• 42:19Speaker 06

  Some of them draw their own tags and, you know, I don't need a tag holder then. And then sometimes I got people that wanna 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.

• 42:36Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  And everybody else has to buy a alligator trapping agent license.

• 42:41Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 42:42Speaker 06

  To be legal. Anybody touching any of the equipment has to have a license.

• 42:45Steven Rinella?

  Yep. So that's what we all had. We had that trapping agent license.

• 42:49Speaker 06

  I even have one because I don't have a trapping license.

• 42:52Steven Rinella?

  Got it, got it. Um, so that's what you're doing now. You're doing fourteen, fifteen gators a year, yeah.

• 43:00Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know this until recently and I was kind of surprised by it as well. Explain the, the, this egg thing you're involved in, egg collection.

• 43:09Speaker 06

  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.

• 43:16Speaker 06

  We just try to fly under the radar. We hit, we're, it's almost like a military operation. We hit a lake, we're in, we're moving fast and we're out, but.

• 43:25Steven Rinella?

  But, but, but what though?

• 43:27Speaker 06

  Uh, well, the guys that I work for have been doing it since nineteen eighty-eight when it started.

• 43:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 43:33Speaker 06

  And there was one of, one of the biologists that was in the beginning. He's retired now. He candles the eggs for us and, and we have to have a biologist from the state overseeing us to make sure that we're not breaking laws and. And the numbers, because it's all about the money.

• 43:50Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 43:50Speaker 06

  And 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.

• 43:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 43:57Speaker 06

  But we use airboats. We have two crews. We cover the whole state, but not every body of water. Every year they give us a license and we have designated lakes we can go to and the end quote is for each lake.

• 44:10Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 44:10Speaker 06

  Some lake are, you know, you could get a hundred percent of the nest, some are fifty, some are twenty-five. We, 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, has the two guys that run it that have been doing it since the beginning. We, they hire a helicopter guy. And they, they spot the nest from the air and we all wear radio equipment like we got on here. And they, they're like, I need a boat and we gotta go take off and we, we're moving fast. We gotta haul but to the helicopter. And it's in, some of the places we go are not where people ride. We got, our airboats are designed to go in places that are bad.

• 44:55Speaker 06

  And we carry chainsaws, machetes, axes. We get stuck a lot. We gotta turn around and go back out the same way we came in. They look for the nest. The nest can be like that high. It's just piled up vegetation like a dome.

• 45:09Steven Rinella?

  So when you held your hand up, you're saying it could be four feet above the water?

• 45:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, three to four feet, yeah. So they'll, 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, and they, 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? They call it in the bank.

• 45:33Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 45:33Speaker 06

  Like if, if we break even, then we gotta find some more nests and not open them. But he'll tell us, hey, we got ten in the bank. Okay, so we can get ten more and we keep going. And he finds some that we would. Waste too much time trying to get to. They're in really bad places.

• 45:49Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 45:50Speaker 06

  So he puts them in the bank, but when we get there, we all carry a helper. And I just carry it like a, a parting stick for cattle. Because there's usually mama on every nest.

• 46:01Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 46:02Speaker 06

  Probably, probably about fifty, sixty percent of the time, there's no gators there.

• 46:08Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 46:09Speaker 06

  That between the helicopter noise, because sometimes the helicopter comes way down low to look and make sure it's a nest.

• 46:14Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 46:15Speaker 06

  And then when he calls us in, he gets up a little bit and backs away because their air will mess us up. Uh, and he'll just sit there and point out the window, you know. We get, we get there, then, 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.

• 46:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 46:36Speaker 06

  Pack it all down.

• 46:37Steven Rinella?

  And how many eggs will be in there?

• 46:39Speaker 06

  The average nest is like twenty, about thirty, twenty to thirty net eggs in a nest.

• 46:44Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 46:45Speaker 06

  But it's not unusual to find one with forty or fifty eggs in it.

• 46:49Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  They say only one in ten in the wild will survive, so.

• 46:54Steven Rinella?

  That's what I imagine on this egg deal is you get like.

• 46:59Steven Rinella?

  There's a carrying capacity to the lake, like the lake's gonna support, or the body of water is gonna support a certain number of gators. And if you remove some percentage of eggs, it's not gonna affect that. That end number of how many adult gators can be in the lake.

• 47:14Speaker 06

  Some people think, oh, we're taking all the eggs, so we're not gonna have any gators, but just take Lake Okeechobee for instance. I mean, that. We get a lot of eggs off Okeechobee.

• 47:24Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 47:25Speaker 06

  And the numbers are always way up.

• 47:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 06

  It's not really making a dent in.

• 47:31Steven Rinella?

  I can understand that, yeah, like, like when, when salmon go up. And spawn, it's not like every one of those eggs turns into a salmon. Like the system is gonna support so many.

• 47:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:42Steven Rinella?

  And it's, that's what the system's gonna support. And there's, there's an excess of eggs in some way.

• 47:47Speaker 06

  Plus, we're not finding every single nest.

• 47:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 06

  I mean, we try to go around the edge of the lake and stay within a hundred yards of the edge. They can nest miles back in there. We don't know.

• 47:58Steven Rinella?

  So, so you get the eggs in a basket, then what happens? Like, wh- wh- wh- yeah, so they don't need to be incubated, or they do?

• 48:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, they do. They take them to an incubator, but we gotta be really careful. They tell us it's like a hurry up and then slow down. When, we gotta hurry, hurry, hurry, but when we get to the nest, we gotta slow down.

• 48:16Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 48:17Speaker 06

  And you gotta, we, our helpers, we take really good magic markers. They gotta, before they take the egg out of the nest, they gotta mark it, a line across it. Where the, the top part is, because there's an air bubble inside the egg and that's where the embryo attaches in the, to the shell.

• 48:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 48:34Speaker 06

  So if you roll it over, it will drown the.

• 48:37Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so you need to. Orient that egg in the same.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, they have to be and and every year, the first couple of days, the biologist on the boat, he's always honest, 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 then we cover them back up with material. And we try not to haul too many, like in my boat, I mean, if the pontoon boat's way out of position, I've put as many as eight, 10 crates of eggs in my boat, but we don't want too many because we're right in rough areas and bouncing. We don't want to bounce them around.

• 49:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 06

  And and all that, then we we run them out to a pontoon boat.

• 49:16Steven Rinella?

  And then what and then what happens to them?

• 49:18Speaker 06

  Then then that's where that retired biologist is. They got a big box with a 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.

• 49:32Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 49:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's got some corrugated little pipe. And he looks at them and if they're no good, they get right out that pipe, you know, and then 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's there and they know exactly how many numbers.

• 49:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 49:53Speaker 06

  That came out of that nest.

• 49:56Steven Rinella?

  And those eggs are going to supply gator farms.

• 50:02Speaker 06

  That's correct.

• 50:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 06

  There's some really large gator farms.

• 50:06Steven Rinella?

  And they're buying them.

• 50:07Speaker 06

  They bought, yeah.

• 50:08Steven Rinella?

  They're buying them from the state.

• 50:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yep, they're buying them to that's where they get their.

• 50:15Speaker 06

  You know what they need. They they buy them and they buy the hatchlings also.

• 50:19Steven Rinella?

  And and you're working like, um.

• 50:22Steven Rinella?

  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 what's your how how what's your take?

• 50:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, they they pay us per egg.

• 50:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 50:33Speaker 06

  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 in there. I guess they were paying. I wasn't in it then. They 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 they now they got it level playing field. We all get the same money. The two crews combined, we all get paid the same money.

• 51:02Steven Rinella?

  Got it. But ultimately, who like who sells the egg? The state sells the egg or the people that have the contract sell the egg?

• 51:11Speaker 06

  The the people that have the the contract, they are the ones with the license, but they're licensed by the state.

• 51:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 06

  And then there's a a board of the gator farm, gator farmers.

• 51:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 06

  Every year they have to vote. We're never guaranteed we're gonna do it every year.

• 51:26Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 51:27Speaker 06

  They could say, no, we don't want those guys anymore.

• 51:29Steven Rinella?

  I got it.

• 51:30Speaker 06

  They could fire us, but as long as we're doing good and their their hatch rates 80% are better, then we don't have nothing to worry about.

• 51:37Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 51:38Speaker 06

  But.

• 51:38Steven Rinella?

  And there's also in in some areas, there's also a market for like a baby gator.

• 51:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, the same the same people that buy them.

• 51:47Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 51:47Speaker 06

  Do that.

• 51:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And that and that's another collection thing that happens roughly around the same time of season.

• 51:54Speaker 06

  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.

• 52:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 06

  Getting them. And then there's a little bit of a break and September 1st is when we're allowed to get the hatchlings.

• 52:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 06

  And usually by September 11th or 12th, according to the guys I work for, that's when all of them are hatched.

• 52:25Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 52:25Speaker 06

  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 they're cute. They're just little, small little babies.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 52:55Steven Rinella?

  Oh, since swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  That's one of the plagues of Bible.

• 53:00Steven Rinella?

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 53:08Steven Rinella?

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate, an available multi-sensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and scents to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit Lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off or if any door is open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator are trademarks of Ford and Wors Affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 54:10Steven Rinella?

  Do you feel that gator numbers?

• 54:14Steven Rinella?

  Um. Are gator numbers still going up? I mean, I know that maybe there's concern that that that there's fewer giant gators around or people see fewer giant gators, but it just seems to me that there are. This this is just anecdotal from my perspective. It seems that there 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.

• 54:46Steven Rinella?

  Well, let me put it another way first. The first day we were out.

• 54:51Steven Rinella?

  I 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.

• 55:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:08Steven Rinella?

  For hours and hours and hours on end, there was always gators.

• 55:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:13Steven Rinella?

  And it'd be that you'll look down the riverbank in some places, in some places, especially the place we met the first time. Down down the riverbank, you look and there's there's nine just lined up like cars parked in a

• 55:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:28Steven Rinella?

  driveway. We went through a lock.

• 55:32Steven Rinella?

  And there's sort of like this this rock wall area of a lock. We went through the lock and just parked. And there's six.

• 55:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:42Steven Rinella?

  And it's a lock. Loud.

• 55:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. They're not afraid of that. There's also water flowing through.

• 55:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 06

  And gators always congregate where water's coming through a structure or whatever.

• 55:54Steven Rinella?

  They're drawn to that movement.

• 55:56Speaker 06

  There's a lot of garfish there. There's a lot of food. There're dead fish coming through, turtles and

• 56:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 56:01Speaker 06

  They'll eat the garfish. The garfish are so thick, they catch them and eat them.

• 56:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But but I the the main point I was making is just it seems like there's so many. I remember turkey hunting down here a couple of years. We'd just go for a little drive now and then. And there's a ditch, like a drainage ditch.

• 56:20Steven Rinella?

  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 there or is it our our population's kind of like flat and stable by this point?

• 56:32Speaker 06

  I think the numbers are, there's more gators now than when I was young.

• 56:37Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 56:38Speaker 06

  Uh, because of the, you know, the way they protecting them and all. But there's tons of seven to nine foot gators.

• 56:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 56:46Speaker 06

  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.

• 56:55Steven Rinella?

  You think so?

• 56:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, look at how many gators we looked at. And.

• 57:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but we had a lot of gators give us the slip.

• 57:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:03Steven Rinella?

  I mean, you see them way off.

• 57:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:05Steven Rinella?

  But I mean, you know, 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.

• 57:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, and that's like you said, the the bigger gators are smart.

• 57:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And then we hunted two days and got two gators that were over 10 feet.

• 57:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:22Steven Rinella?

  But you feel like even with that, you feel like there's a lower number.

• 57:25Speaker 06

  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, it was nothing to catch a 12 foot alligator.

• 57:43Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 57:43Speaker 06

  You could catch them all the time. I mean, I killed them up to 13. There's a couple of buddies of mine got 12 footers mounted in their houses in Wyoming.

• 57:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 06

  Where it was, it was easy. But now looking back, I'm like, wow, I miss those days.

• 57:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we we should establish that, that, uh. Explain what a top end gator is.

• 58:05Speaker 06

  You mean like a trophy gator?

• 58:07Steven Rinella?

  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. Like it probably wasn't 15 feet.

• 58:16Speaker 06

  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.

• 58:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 58:32Speaker 06

  So it's not, I mean, I wouldn't.

• 58:35Steven Rinella?

  But a 13 foot gator is.

• 58:37Speaker 06

  Is a massive.

• 58:38Steven Rinella?

  A massive gator.

• 58:40Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 58:40Steven Rinella?

  A 12 foot gator is achievable.

• 58:42Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 58:43Steven Rinella?

  You know, an 11 foot gator, if you work hard, you'll find one.

• 58:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:49Steven Rinella?

  You know, and like you're saying, the eight or nine foot gator, they're just everywhere.

• 58:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. If you want to just a meat and hide gator, you know, an eight to nine foot gator, seven to nine foot gator, or even six. The, the, the smaller they are, the better they eat. And the smaller they are, their hides aren't all beat up. Cause the old gators, they get cancer. They've been fighting, they're missing limbs. They got, you know, they got all kinds of blemishes in their hide.

• 59:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 06

  The best hides are like probably a six to eight foot gator.

• 59:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's, that's the thing I want to touch on real quick.

• 59:22Steven Rinella?

  We went to a gator, we, we dropped our gators at a gator processor. So what's, what's the name of that outfit we went to?

• 59:30Speaker 06

  Florida Trophy Gators.

• 59:33Steven Rinella?

  This guy, he's primarily, he was explaining, Wade was explaining, primarily, we're a gator taxidermy business. But we skin gators, we process meat, we do all the other stuff. But like our, kind of our focus is gator taxidermy.

• 59:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:51Steven Rinella?

  Um, but you don't need to do that. You can bring, you can drop off a gator. One, they got big walking coolers. So you get your gator taken care of and cool. Processed in a hurry, butchered. They, they portion the meat out. They run the meat through a tenderizer, they de-fat it. And you get back, you get back one pound packages of ready to eat gator meat.

• 1:00:13Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:00:13Steven Rinella?

  We dropped off that one, it was, it was 11.7, if I remember right.

• 1:00:17Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:00:17Steven Rinella?

  11.7. And I can't remember what he said. We, we're expecting like, maybe we're going to wind up with 70, 80 pounds of gator meat.

• 1:00:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Steven Rinella?

  Off that gator.

• 1:00:27Steven Rinella?

  But he's got all over there, there's signs right now and magic marker.

• 1:00:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Steven Rinella?

  Not buying gators.

• 1:00:36Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:00:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:00:39Steven Rinella?

  Tell people what's up with why there's signs saying not buying gators.

• 1:00:44Speaker 06

  I know some of it, not all of it, but I know that this is the first year I've ever seen that.

• 1:00:50Steven Rinella?

  This is the first year?

• 1:00:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. I've never seen this in my life before. I mean, the gator market is getting flooded.

• 1:00:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:00:58Speaker 06

  Cause 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.

• 1:01:10Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:01:10Speaker 06

  And, and they, I don't know for what reason or whatever, but the, the meat market's like flooded.

• 1:01:18Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:01:18Speaker 06

  He was sitting on meat from last year. So, you know, that, he's like, that's it. We can't buy any more gators. And the hides, because of the gator farms and, and the hide market, the hides are not even worth anything anymore.

• 1:01:32Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:01:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Steven Rinella?

  He said it's dead because of farm gators. Cause farm gators can produce a, a, a consistent, perfect product.

• 1:01:53Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:01:54Steven Rinella?

  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 gators. And no one wants the gator leather from a wild gator.

• 1:02:09Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:02:20Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:02:20Speaker 06

  And they still have a good market because they're dealing with the, the hide, the hide buyers are like the tanneries in Italy and stuff.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:31Steven Rinella?

  So when he has that, so here's a guy that he does some restaurant supply stuff. And, and you know, you drop it off, you get a form, you're like, I want my skull all cleaned up. I want my meat, they'll, they'll ship the meat to you. I want to get the gator stuffed. I want it made for leather for boots. Like you get all this kind of stuff taken care of.

• 1:02:55Steven Rinella?

  But he's not buying, when they, like, if you go, go back a few years and, 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, you 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.

• 1:03:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. orig- before the gator farms got really big, they wanted the bigger gators.

• 1:03:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:03:20Speaker 06

  You know, like 10, 11, 12 footers, they were paying more.

• 1:03:24Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:24Speaker 06

  And, you know, I had problems with my business years ago and I 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.

• 1:03:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  And that was what was putting bread on the table for me. I mean, we were getting like 20, $30 a foot or more for the big, the more, the bigger the gator, the more we got.

• 1:03:45Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:03:46Speaker 06

  You know, and he was just.

• 1:03:47Steven Rinella?

  So you could go out some night, get a 10 footer and just walk in.

• 1:03:50Speaker 06

  Five or $600 cash money in my hand right there. Right now, you, 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 bucks or something.

• 1:04:04Steven Rinella?

  Got it. Yeah. And you don't got it, after you get it, you don't do nothing.

• 1:04:07Speaker 06

  No, you just bring it there, they buy the whole thing, you know?

• 1:04:10Steven Rinella?

  They lift it off, throw a tape measure on it and pay you by foot.

• 1:04:13Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:04:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So do you feel that, that since he's now like not buying gators and the market's different, do you feel that that is gonna reduce interest in gator hunting? Or, or do you think there's such a recreational gator hunting culture? That it doesn't matter that they're valueless?

• 1:04:36Speaker 06

  No, I don't think it's ever, the hunting's ever gonna go down. I think it's a novelty kind of a hunt.

• 1:04:41Steven Rinella?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:04:41Speaker 06

  And a buddy of mine, Sam Heaton, he, he helps me sometimes. He tells everybody, he's hunted all over the world like you. And he's like, this is the most unique hunt in the North American continent. There's nothing else like it.

• 1:04:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It's, it's like, it's hunting and fishing combined.

• 1:04:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. People are like amazed by it and, and the danger element, you know?

• 1:05:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  I've been doing it for a long time.

• 1:05:04Steven Rinella?

  Do you think it's dangerous?

• 1:05:06Speaker 06

  It can be, yeah.

• 1:05:07Steven Rinella?

  I didn't get like a danger vibe off it, but you've been doing it a long time.

• 1:05:11Speaker 06

  You scared me. When you were climbing in that tree, when that one was hung up and you almost fell, I was like.

• 1:05:17Steven Rinella?

  Like he'll grab you.

• 1:05:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. I'm like, he's kind of upset, you know, he's got hooks in him and you were in a bad spot.

• 1:05:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But you've never had a, I mean, like I was saying, it didn't seem dangerous because you know what? Cause you've seen it a bunch.

• 1:05:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:05:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:05:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Steven Rinella?

  Until toward the end, you're like taping his, you know, you got his mouth taped shut. You sever his spinal cord. You know, and when he comes on the, when he comes on the boat, he's cashed. But it's like, it's, it's a process, you know? And, 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.

• 1:06:09Speaker 06

  It's more dangerous when we do the eggs than it is the, the, the hunting.

• 1:06:13Steven Rinella?

  I'm sure, yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 06

  Because the, the females, they have that natural maternity thing where they're going to protect their young.

• 1:06:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. Do guys come to you, do you have clients that come to you and, um,

• 1:06:28Steven Rinella?

  they're like, hey, I'm gonna try to get these tags, I'm, I'm gonna apply for the lottery draw for Okeechobee. And when I do it, I'll come find you.

• 1:06:38Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:06:44Steven Rinella?

  They want to know where to put it.

• 1:06:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. So I, I tell them the areas that I like to hunt and they'll call me and put in for those areas.

• 1:06:51Steven Rinella?

  Yep. And you've kind of, like I said, I can't tell, I can't tell how much you're joking or not. How many, how many years more of gator hunting are you gonna do?

• 1:07:00Speaker 06

  Oh shoot, I don't know, man.

• 1:07:02Steven Rinella?

  Like take a stab, man, like in 20 years?

• 1:07:04Speaker 06

  You've seen me, man.

• 1:07:05Steven Rinella?

  Are you gonna be gator hunting in 20 years?

• 1:07:06Speaker 06

  No, I'm not gonna be gator hunting in 20 years. I'll be lucky to be alive in 20 years.

• 1:07:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay, you gonna be gator hunting in 10 years?

• 1:07:13Speaker 06

  Well, you've seen my helper Garrett, I.

• 1:07:16Steven Rinella?

  That's the thing, now you got him, you got a young guy roped in.

• 1:07:19Speaker 06

  I, and well, James used to hunt, my, my son, he used to be my helper. Man, him could conquer the world when we're together in the marsh. But like Garrett, he has more time to do it and he did awesome. This is the first time, I used him this year, the first time.

• 1:07:34Steven Rinella?

  Oh, he's great.

• 1:07:34Speaker 06

  He's great. And I, I can't lift the gators. I can't, my back doctor's telling me, if I keep doing it, I'm gonna end up in a wheelchair.

• 1:07:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 06

  Well, you know, I'm just, as long as I have a good helper, I'm gonna keep going.

• 1:07:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Cause eventually you can just sit back and be the brains.

• 1:07:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's kind of what I started doing with Garrett. I mean, he's, he's doing good.

• 1:07:54Steven Rinella?

  You just point this way, point that way, yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 06

  That spot and stalk we did yesterday, I used to love doing that stuff, you know, and I can't.

• 1:08:03Steven Rinella?

  What, what he's talking about is, what, what, what Captain Bob's talking about is we had a gator down the beach from us. And this gator was no way, no how gonna take that bait.

• 1:08:12Speaker 06

  No, he wasn't gonna.

• 1:08:13Steven Rinella?

  Got out of the boat, snuck down real tall grass and brush, snuck down and basically crept in on him.

• 1:08:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Steven Rinella?

  And we were like easing ahead, easing ahead, pretty soon you can see his head out there in the marsh and then planted a hook.

• 1:08:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Steven Rinella?

  Hooked him, then ran out, waved the boat down, the boat came down, jumped on the boat and chased the gator down river. Cause he was pulling drag, man.

• 1:08:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, not very many people do the spot and stalk on alligators, but I like it, that's a cool thing.

• 1:08:44Steven Rinella?

  And yeah, you used to do that in India, got to be slower to it.

• 1:08:46Speaker 06

  I just can't, I, I have nerve damage in my back and I can't walk good, so.

• 1:08:51Steven Rinella?

  So of all the stuff you guide for, I asked you about this this morning, you didn't give me a satisfactory answer.

• 1:08:57Steven Rinella?

  Of all the stuff you guide for, oh, there it comes, raining.

• 1:09:01Speaker 06

  Better check windows and cars.

• 1:09:03Steven Rinella?

  I mentioned when I came in, we're recording this. I was telling the guys, I was telling Seth and.

• 1:09:12Steven Rinella?

  Max about this nineteen twenty eight Okeechobee flood.

• 1:09:16Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:17Steven Rinella?

  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 is the, it's the ninety eighth anniversary of the Okeechobee flood, which they debate the numbers, but drowned about two thousand five hundred people.

• 1:09:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Steven Rinella?

  South of Lake Okeechobee.

• 1:09:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, from Clueston all the way up to Pahokee.

• 1:09:47Steven Rinella?

  And I didn't know this either. There's a mass grave near here that has about sixteen hundred people in it.

• 1:09:52Speaker 06

  It was really close to where we went fishing today.

• 1:09:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 06

  I actually knew a guy that was alive. Not in that flood. Maybe it was. No, when they, no, it was when they were building the lock in Clueston. Before they had the dike complete. He was a young boy. Yet that guy's passed away now. But the, the Army Corps engineers had this big, it was kind of like a,

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  it was like a houseboat kind 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.

• 1:10:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Speaker 06

  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 was telling me the story was a young boy then. They got him over there and got him in that boat with them and they tied the boat up. The lock wasn't even complete, but it has two big concrete walls.

• 1:10:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:11:10Steven Rinella?

  It, uh, we'll get off the subject, but just I'm just bringing it 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.

• 1:11:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. Hanging on the trees.

• 1:11:25Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:11:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:36Steven Rinella?

  Terrible.

• 1:11:36Speaker 06

  It was, yeah. There's an island down, down between Belgrade and Clueston. It's called Ridda Island. And there was a settlement there. There was, there was no heavy equipment then, you know, and everybody was, they were just old, old school. They were, had mules and stuff and they were 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 their houses got trashed and the people had to keep going up in the house holding on in the attics, holding on to trees. It was really a bad situation.

• 1:12:13Steven Rinella?

  You see this hat says Bear Grease?

• 1:12:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Steven Rinella?

  That's a podcast we do in our networks hosted by a guy named Clay Newcomb, who's a Southerner.

• 1:12:24Steven Rinella?

  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 Okeechobee flood and I think that he will. So when it comes out, you'll listen to it. Let's get back to my last question.

• 1:12:46Steven Rinella?

  You've guided ducks, snipe,

• 1:12:50Steven Rinella?

  crappies, bluegills, shell crackers.

• 1:12:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Steven Rinella?

  Gators. I asked you, what, what do you like more? Like what, what one do you wake up and you're most in, you're most excited about the day?

• 1:13:06Speaker 06

  For guiding or me personally?

• 1:13:08Steven Rinella?

  Just for how good of a time you're going to have that day.

• 1:13:10Speaker 06

  I like guiding hunters more than fishermen.

• 1:13:14Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:13:14Speaker 06

  But I am a fisherman. I like fishing. People ask me, do you ever get burnt out with fishing? I'm like, no. I get burnt out taking people fishing, but I don't get burnt out personally fishing.

• 1:13:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 06

  But I mean, if I had to give everything up, I would fish.

• 1:13:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:13:30Speaker 06

  Does that satisfy you?

• 1:13:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but you like gator hunting.

• 1:13:34Speaker 06

  I love gator hunting. I've been messing with gators ever since I was a little kid. My dad used to whip me with his fishing rod.

• 1:13:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Uh, I do got one last question for you. What would be a, as, as a guide? If you could convey one message to, to the clients out there in the world? It's like, it's like you're the guide and you're able to speak. Like this is the guide. I wish that all you people understood this.

• 1:14:05Speaker 06

  Hmm. I don't know. That's a hard one. I'm like kind of a guy that I try to accommodate everybody no matter where they're at.

• 1:14:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:14:15Speaker 06

  I would go out of my way to do that. I think that's one of the reasons why I've been a successful guy.

• 1:14:20Steven Rinella?

  You don't have a single, you don't have one pet peeve that you could pass along to America's clients?

• 1:14:28Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:14:31Speaker 06

  No, no, I don't think so.

• 1:14:33Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:14:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Steven Rinella?

  Polite guy, man.

• 1:14:36Speaker 06

  I am very, people always tell me, why are you so nice? I don't know.

• 1:14:39Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you're a nice guy.

• 1:14:40Speaker 06

  I just like to see people get what they're after and I work my tail off to do it. Yeah.

• 1:14:46Steven Rinella?

  So like today, we did a little fishing today and Seth over here behind the, you can't see him over here. He was having a heck of a time getting that hook hung up on them rocks. What'd you think about that?

• 1:14:56Speaker 06

  I knew it was gonna happen. It, it was all right.

• 1:15:01Steven Rinella?

  You were fine with that? All them rocks he was hooking?

• 1:15:04Speaker 06

  I guess the thing that ticks me off, you want to really know what ticks me off. Okay.

• 1:15:08Steven Rinella?

  Please, yeah, I do want to know what ticks me off. Seth outfished me. I don't know if you noticed that.

• 1:15:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, he did good. He, he had jumped off a couple of tarpon and had some hits.

• 1:15:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay, anyhow.

• 1:15:19Speaker 06

  But.

• 1:15:19Steven Rinella?

  Here's the pet peeve. We're gonna end, I want to end on a negative.

• 1:15:23Speaker 06

  We,

• 1:15:25Speaker 06

  we get people in the baits out, you know, 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, their fishing stories and.

• 1:15:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh, their fishing stories.

• 1:15:36Speaker 06

  And like that I don't like. None of the guides like, no, I mean, my buddy.

• 1:15:41Steven Rinella?

  You know why they're doing that? They're doing that because they want you to take them seriously.

• 1:15:47Speaker 06

  But then when you see them handle the equipment, you're like, it's a miracle. It has to be a kamikaze fish.

• 1:15:53Steven Rinella?

  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 gonna show him my fishing pictures.

• 1:16:06Speaker 06

  It could, it could be, but they don't realize we're stressing in the morning. I, people don't realize this. They think, oh, you're a fishing guide. 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, when they're coming, they're, they're introducing themselves and telling us their stories and I'm thinking, my mind's going ninety 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, ah, ah, you know, but it's stressful.

• 1:16:41Steven Rinella?

  Let's, let's role play for a minute. You know what? Say nothing.

• 1:16:46Steven Rinella?

  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.

• 1:17:00Steven Rinella?

  You don't need to tell me.

• 1:17:02Steven Rinella?

  Maybe you just kill that whole thing right then and there. If you just come clean, 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.

• 1:17:16Speaker 06

  What, what really kill, cracks us up, we always laugh about the other guides too, like the guys that get in the boat and they're all jazzed up, you know, they're coming to Lake Okeechobee. Ten pounders are jumping in the boat. I'm feeling that ten pounder today. Right away, I'm like, probably ain't gonna happen.

• 1:17:34Speaker 06

  But the guys that come and are all amped up and they're bouncing off the wall about catching a ten 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.

• 1:17:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Speaker 06

  It, it never fails.

• 1:17:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, got it. So that's ultimately to, to seriously end it on a positive note. The clients out there. Relax.

• 1:18:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Steven Rinella?

  Take in the experience.

• 1:18:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Steven Rinella?

  You don't need to prove nothing to me. I'm gonna try to help you have a great day fishing.

• 1:18:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's what our job is.

• 1:18:11Steven Rinella?

  Let's just keep it simple.

• 1:18:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Steven Rinella?

  We're just having a showdown. We're not having a showdown here.

• 1:18:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. I do enjoy it though.

• 1:18:19Steven Rinella?

  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, tell, tell people real quick how to find you.

• 1:18:25Speaker 06

  Uh, my business name is Okeechobee Charters. You can find it on the web, okeechobee charters.com. And I'm also hooked up with Garrett's Tackle in Okeechobee. Uh, you can call them.

• 1:18:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, it's Gerard's.

• 1:18:39Speaker 06

  Well, their real name is Garrett's. Everybody calls it Gerard's.

• 1:18:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh, Garrett's. It is. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I, I read that wrong. Um, and that's where you go to get your morning coffee.

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  In our bait and all, in our ice, we get all our supplies for the day.

• 1:18:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So for the gator end of things, when is the gator draw in Florida?

• 1:18:57Speaker 06

  The gator draw is usually in May, around May first. We gotta get ready to draw. I don't know. Sometimes they change it a little bit, but.

• 1:19:06Steven Rinella?

  So someone might want to shoot you an email prior to that date.

• 1:19:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, but April to May, you need to contact me if you're a resident.

• 1:19:13Steven Rinella?

  And you'll walk and see what they need to do.

• 1:19:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I can show, I'll tell them. I help people fill out the forms because there's a lot of stuff to fill out.

• 1:19:21Steven Rinella?

  And then if anyone needs some gator meat, hit me and Seth up.

• 1:19:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, you guys got a bunch of meat now.

• 1:19:26Steven Rinella?

  We're sitting pretty rich on gator meat right now. All right, man. Thanks for coming on the show, buddy.

• 1:19:31Speaker 06

  Appreciate the time.

• 1:19:32Steven Rinella?

  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 of days.

• 1:19:39Speaker 06

  Cool. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

• 1:19:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:19:42Speaker 06

  I want to get you on that airboat one day.

• 1:19:44Steven Rinella?

  I've been on your airboat.

• 1:19:45Speaker 06

  Not this one.

• 1:19:46Steven Rinella?

  Uh, I've been on a airboat with you, not that airboat with you.

• 1:19:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Steven Rinella?

  Thanks, everybody.

• 1:20:18Steven Rinella?

  Now more than ever, basketball teams are embracing advanced analytics. Nothing's more popular right now than coming up with a fancy new stat that helps teams gain an edge on the court. And this season, Bet365 is embracing a fancy concept of its own. Bet $10, get $200. Here's how it works. When new users sign up with Bet365 and place their first $10 bet, they'll get $200 in bonus bets. Fine, maybe it's not that advanced, but an offer this good doesn't have to be. Bet365, where winning is everything. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MYRESSET. Must be 21+ and present in a state where Bet365 operates. Please gamble responsibly. Restrictions and TNCs apply. Void where prohibited. Download the app today. Someone once said, "Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

• 1:21:03Steven Rinella?

  I did. Mike Tyson. Oh, well, Mike Tyson and Boost are here to tell you that your mobile plan is punching you in the mouth with prices that can knock you out. That's a low blow. Totally. But you can do something about it. You have to punch back. No, Mike. You gotta switch to Boost with a plan that's $25 a month, forever. Oh, that's a great plan. Maybe you can do both.

• 1:21:27Speaker 00

  Boost Mobile, what's your plan? Okay, laundry stinks, literally. I mean, you could just keep buying new underwear. Not that I've ever done that. Or maybe sort your clothes into piles based on how re-wearable or filthy they are. Or just use Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. It's made for real-life stinks and stains. So even if you don't do laundry the "right way," Deep Clean will knock it out. I mean, it is from the number-one liquid detergent brand that tackles more loads than any other. Come clean with Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. Number one claim based on total wash load sold. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.