David and Jeromy Catch the Beast of the East

On last week’s episode, called Beast of the East, David and Jeromy finally shot the [alleged] fourteen-foot long alligator that David had been trying to catch for 20 years. David claimed that it was longer than his boat and just as wide, though when they caught it, it didn’t seem quite that big. At the start of their day, they had only two tags left, so they were putting all the tricks they knew into their last two lines. They baited them with monkey milk and another bait so potent that David nearly threw up. However, even this did not lure the Beast of the East out of hiding. They only manged to catch a small female gator with all the rancid bait. Then Jeromy formed a plan that he was sure would help them catch the beast. He told David that they should use the female’s scent to lure in the gator. David himself had gotten sprayed by a female one time and then a bull gator came right up to him. There was no question about it; using the female’s scent would do the trick. So David and Jeromy soaked some cotton balls in a jar of the female alligator’s urine and proceeded to put them on trees near their bait line. The Beast of the East went after that, and David was able to shoot it with his revolver.

In the process of catching it, Jeromy wrangled with the beast while David poked the gator’s mouth with his bamboo pole. Speaking of which, I think it would be more effective to just shoot the thing as soon as you could. They say they do it to keep the alligator from jumping in the boat, but I can only recall one time when an alligator has actually jumped into somebody’s boat. I don’t think it’s necessary. But anyway, they’re the hunters, not me.

At the end of the show, Jeromy came over to David’s house with a present for him. He had cleaned the alligator’s head and bleached the skull. David looked very surprised and pleased, and I must say, it was nice of Jeromy. Unfortunately, History Channel never did give the measurements of The Beast of the East.

by Dink and John

Swamp People Episode #15: Lightning Strikes Overview

This week’s Swamp People episode contained a lot of good quotes, good information, and an old Mitchell family recipe and just in case you missed the show and are unable to watch it, here’s a basic overview.

First of all, the episode is called “Lightening Strikes” because the swampers face a thunderstorm, but hunt anyway because they have only nine days left in the hunting season. Bruce captures all of their attitudes by saying if they got struck by lightning, they wouldn’t know it anyway, so “it wouldn’t make any damn difference”.

David and Jeromy go to a remote channel that isn’t usually accessible, but because of the heavy rain, is that day. After a tiring struggle to catch a big 10-footer, Jeromy says “I almost messed in my britches”. Describing the hard rain, David remarks “It’s like a cow peeing on a flat rock” while Jeromy puts it this way, “That frigging rain is tearing my eyeballs up”. Later, these two get another twelve-and-a-half footer on a line, but they lose it and then proceed to get angry and blame each other for the loss.  They eventually start hitting each other with their hats and saying, “That hurts!” and we get another lovely quote from David: “Today, I don’t think he’s worth a pinch of dog poop”.  These guys have some very colorful language as I’m sure everyone would agree. Unfortunately, David and Jeromy were unable to catch the Beast of the East.

In this episode, we learned that gators love the smell of dogs (coyotes) and wild hog. We learned that wild hogs smell really bad even when they are alive – they just smell bad naturally. David and Jeromy explained about the coyotes and the Texans explained about the hogs. Why did the Texans have to go catch a wild hog? Because they were hunting with their special marsh marinade which they put it on chicken that is not rotten. Unfortunately for them, the rain washed away all of the marinade leaving them with un-stinky chicken hanging on their lines. Naturally, the gators weren’t interested in it. So they went on a wild hog hunt which looked pretty fun. They found one after a while, and after a few shots Bigfoot finally hit it. They used the liver as bait and took the rest of the meat home to freeze.

RJ and Jay Paul were also on this episode and they caught pretty many gators. There isn’t too much to say about them, but they did have a good day hunting in the rain and lighting. In fact, they believed that the bad weather would help them rather than hinder them. At the start of their hunting day, Jay Paul said that he was “sure that we’ll catch some good ones”. They didn’t catch any huge alligators, but they did catch pretty many smaller ones.

Toward end the show, we were treated to an old Mitchell family recipe called “Swinging Chicken”. Bruce was making the treat for Tyler (Bruce’s dog)  and also for Ron and family. Tyler fell out of the boat while Bruce and Ron were hunting and scared Bruce to death so they went home taking the rest of the day off. Anyway, here’s how Bruce tells how to make Swinging Chicken: “Get an old coffee can, put some charcoals in it and wrap basically anything you want up in tin foil, hang it up in a tree or whatever,  just let it swing and let it cook, and that’s a swinging chicken.” (Just in case it isn’t obvious, the charcoals have to be red hot).

It looked like it made a real tender chicken and might be something we’d want to have on one of our camping trips. If we ever caught a fish we could eat, we could have a swinging fish.

UPDATE: A lot of people are asking for cook time. Here is a good video called  “Coffee Can Chicken”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78y7qlLPgpQ you can watch to hopefully help you feel a little bit more confident for your 1st Swinging Chicken. It takes 3 hours for a 3 lb chicken to cook. It’s lots of fun and tastes great. Good luck!

by John and Dink

Beast of the East Comedy Act – Swamp People Devoured Overview

The last episode of Swamp People is called “Devoured” because of the large sinkhole that has devoured part of Troy’s hunting grounds, but it was David LaDart and Jeromy Pruitt who stole this show, in our opinion.

We don’t like to make fun of people and we don’t like to be mean, so when we call this entry a comedy act, it’s because this episode has enormous entertainment value. David LaDart and Jeromy Pruitt are hot on the trail of the Beast of the East (which they say is 14 feet long) and because they only have to fill 50 tags for the season, they can really savor the hunt. They were both in high spirits and filled the air with some yuh, yuh, yuh-hoos. Jeromy felt “…like a possum running across a patch with his tail up in the air”.

They get to an area where they see signs of the Beast but they think the gator might be over the border of their hunting territory where they aren’t allowed to hunt. They decide to try to lure the gator into their territory with some extra rancid bait hung upwind so when the breeze comes through, the Beast will smell it.

The fun really begins after they hang their bait and go to sit in a hidden spot.  They pull out their secret weapon – an electronic speaker call which can play alligator sounds to attract the Beast. “It’s awesome”, says David, after Jeromy lets it rip. We were treated to alligator growls from a big male bull first and we were laughing pretty hard by now. The idea was to make the Beast of the East think there was another big bull around and come out to fight it, then smell the bait and get caught. They are both wanting really bad to get the gator on their hook and they looked pretty intense sitting in their boat playing those sounds.

After the male bull sounds, Jeromy played some baby alligator sounds. Next came some bellows – like bellowing for a mate. Something about seeing Jeromy and David sitting in that boat with those alligator sounds going is really hilarious. Finally, after 2 hours, the Beast of the East comes swimming within view and begins going towards their bait. They can’t believe it. When describing how he felt when he saw it, Jeromy did his “arm pump”. Then, David shows he is not a man who can keep his pants on. He can’t wait for the gator to get to the bait and possibly take it. Instead, he pulls out his pistol and tries to shoot it in open water. Unfortunately, he misses! Then, just as quick as it came, the Beast of the East begins heading back out.

Well, the boys decide to try to follow the Beast so that they can snag it. Unfortunately, the boat won’t start because their battery is dead. After cussing and blaming each other, they start talking about how big the Beast was and Jeromy started up with his arm pumps again. The whole scene is pretty hilarious and if you want to have a really good laugh, watch this episode on the History Channel website.

by John & Dink

Floating Dead & The Beast of the East

Well, we didn’t want to bore people by writing about every single Swamp People episode, but we just couldn’t resist for this particular episode. The 3rd show introduced 2 new swampers: David LaDart and Jeromy Pruitt – with an “o”. Wow – when Jeromy first started talking, we could not understand a word of what he said and for once, we appreciated the fact the History Channel provides subtitles. We never need them with anyone else and were actually offended when they 1st put the subtitles up. Jeromy had so much tobacco stuffed in his mouth, though, that you really needed those subtitles.

David is Jeromy’s step-father who got the boy hooked on hunting alligators when he was babysitting Jeromy when Jeromy was only 8 years old and they have been hunting together ever since. Well – between the tobacco juice spitting and the twang and rather unintelligent conversation, these two are going to take awhile to grow on us. They had something called “Monkey Milk” that was David’s secret recipe. They also had a chicken blood, beef blood, and nasty cheese mixture that they put on their rotten chicken. They also had a cow ear that they stuffed with the gross mixture and they also had some feathers to put over their bait so the alligators would think it was a hurt bird. This was all in an attempt to catch “The Beast of the East”, an alligator that David saw 20 years ago. He hooked it then but it broke the line and having just seen it recently, they decided they were going to catch it. We couldn’t figure out how to spell the Beast of the East the way they said it, so you’ll just have to watch the episode to hear it.

Well after all of that fanfare, they caught one small gator that Jeromy shot with a musket. Like I said, these guys are going to take a while for us to want to see again.

The Texans also just caught one small gator while Troy and Brandon caught 14. Brandon seems like a really nice person and looked quite proud of their catch as he should have been.

The show was called “Floating Dead” because Hurricane Isaac made a lot of leaves fall into the swamp and as the leaves decayed, they used up all the oxygen and the fish died. Troy, the Texans, and Liz & her daughter had to think fast to salvage the day since the alligators were content eating all the dead fish and not their bait.

It wasn’t the most exciting show we’ve ever seen as far as catching alligators goes, but it was good for its shock-value with the introduction of David and Jeromy. Probably not the South’s finest.

by Dink & John