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Wild alligators are booming, but the market is bust. We bring on Jay Paul from Swamp People for a candid look at what happens when farmed gators flood supply with flawless hides, processors stop buying mid-season, and agencies extend fall dates into cold fronts that shut down feeding. It’s a real-time lesson in wildlife economics and biology: pay-by-the-foot hides, meat that sits, and a population that climbs while incentives for wild harvest vanish.
Jay opens up about the tradeoffs no spreadsheet shows—running lines at dawn, dragging 700-pound bulls into the boat, and still staring at a thin check. He lays out a straightforward fix: align harvest windows with warm weather, consider a spring season to selectively take dominant bull gators in daylight, and set fair constraints on farm output to stop the annual market choke. We dig into the ecology behind the opinion—growth rates, digestive thresholds, pressure avoidance, and why big bulls act like mature whitetails holding to deep, quiet water. The goal isn’t more chaos; it’s better balance for habitat, breeding females, and public safety.
Along the way, you’ll hear a jaw-dropping story of wrestling a 12-footer boat-side, the decision to walk away from TV rather than stage scenes, and what it means to keep tradition alive when social media turns shortcuts into fame. If you care about conservation, tags, quotas, and the future of wild harvest in Louisiana, this conversation connects the dots between biology, policy, and the people who still work the swamp.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves real fieldcraft, and leave a review telling us whether you’d back a spring season for selective bulls.
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