The second hour of Swamp People: Everglades titled Savage Pursuit takes the established set up and background from our previous first hour and then adds loads of life-threatening action and white-knuckle footage.
Swamp People as a franchise is ripe for spinning out into a Swamp People S.W.A.T. styled team of traveling Cajuns’ show based right in this target rich environment of the Florida Everglades, with over a million square miles of imminent death by reptiles, panther, wild boar or even black bears.
“Ho” or Holden Landry, is a perfect foil to pair with his uncle, King of the Swamp, Troy Landry. Not that Jacob and Chase aren’t scintillating to watch, but Ho’s insane nerves of steel sell his worthiness in this second hour of Swamp People.
Now in this second hour, Holden, dubbed “Holy Boly” in this run by Uncle Troy, is road tripping in a search for the Nile crocodile based on Uncle Grumpy’s call for help to Troy back in Louisiana.
In this round, Holden learns to lasso a crocodile or gator, grab Burmese pythons by their head, wrangle a pissed off hissing Tegu lizard and generally tromp into the jungle-like brush with nary a hesitation.
Did you have your “lucky donut” break?
We begin the second hour back in Troy’s truck. He and Holy Boly are on the hunt for a monster crocodile. The first hour was spent getting a 14-foot gator and pythons.
Uncle Grumpy sends Troy to “relocate” six snapping growling large breeder gators from a friend’s gator farm. They get the first one, near 14-feet too. And they cannot kill these gators, they must duct tape their mouths and move them elsewhere.
Holy Boly gets a needed lasso lesson as they set out to get more gators. They are literally draining the swampy pond of all the creatures. Four gators later, they THINK they are done…and now comes “da croc” of Lake Okeechobee.
Grumpy gets Troy and Holy Boly a boat to get out there and nab it. This is the tiniest tiny boat! And it has holes in the bottom, which are plugged with duct tape, as say their prayers. People, I’ve been in bigger bathtubs than this boat.
Troy and Holy hook another monster gator (not a croc sadly) and then Troy is nearly yanked right into the pond. They head back to the shore as all of them pull in a 14+ foot gator.
Now Troy and Ho head up to meet Rodney Irwin, a true Floridian who is after the invasive reptile egg eating tegu Lizard, which is destroying the ecosystem of the Glades. Rodney’s poor black dog was chomped on by a crocodile, we learn!
Irwin tells Troy his huge dog was bitten by a genuine crocodile when he was setting traps.
Together, they head into the brush as they come upon a trap full, and catch a big male tegu. Troy gets to wrangle it and it nearly bites him. For the record, tegu lizards are total dickheads.
If you are keeping tally so far, we have bagged tegu lizards, 2, Alligators, 7, and crocodiles, ZERO.
Last chance is Chris Rivers, a Glades legend. A veritable Everglades gator killing machine on steroids. This expert is Troy’s last hope at seeing a crocodile, which we learn in this episode you cannot kill. So there’s that nugget. A giant 20 footer can essentially roam around free.
Rivers tells Troy these crocs are aggressive and top of the food change. And protected.
Fingers crossed. The nighttime rolls in, Rivers gives Troy the lowdown on his methodology of harpoons and spears for bagging and tagging Sunshine state style, going 30 miles an hour.
Noting the smell of sulfur in the air, Troy educates us on how he knows gators are near. “Their breath smells like pure death,” says Troy. On top of everything else out in this lethal swath of nature, the intercoastal waterways are deep enough to allow bull sharks to cruise inland too!
Going about 20 miles an hour, Rivers spears a gator and the chase is on. Troy tosses in the buoy and they have to put another buoy in this big sucker.
The episode winds down and still no crocs.
Then, magic, as Rivers’ assistant with Holy spots what he thinks is a gator. We cruise through the waterways and lo and behold, our camera man captures an elusive crocodile swimming in the water.
The lack of physical evidence gives Holy a chance to tease Troy about ‘the one that got away.”
Swamptastic thoughts:
- Why can’t History and Swamp People producers set up a traveling S.W.A.T. team of everyone’s favorites to go on location?
- Florida is super-rich target environment for gators too, so why not a Swamp People Florida?
- The devastation of Hurricane Andrew and how it impacted this invasive species problem is mentioned more than once. This is a huge problem for the native species, as all of these invasive animals are wiping them out. Maybe a Swamp People Invasive Species hunters?
- Florida is a gun lovers state, it has conceal and carry permits, but when you need a gun when face to face with gators, crocs, or anything else that can kill you…a bangstick? Doesn’t make sense. If you can permit guns, why can’t you issue licenses for hunters to get quotas of invasive species and gators there too?
- How many agree that these two hours made Holden Landry a History star?
- Did you notice Troy’s lack of a belt made his pants slide down in that tiny boat? A belt may save his life one day!
- Why hasn’t Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kreme underwritten or sponsored Swamp People? Troy’s “Lucky donuts” is forever etched in my mind, they can create a whole licensed line of Swamp People gator shaped lucky donuts. I would so buy them.