north of the Glades...
They have all their names on each stall.
I know. It's so cute.
King of the Swamp Troy Landry and his partner Tes Lee
are responding to a call for help.
So this must be the one that got eaten by the alligator, huh?
Yup, that was him. Shooter.
Oh, man.
Two year old.
A baby.
Poor little guy.
Well, I have a friend in Florida,
and he raises top of the line beef
and top of the line horses.
He has a two-year-old horse that got killed by an alligator.
The average two-year old horse sells for $15,000,
but if a young colt is successful in competition,
their value can soar to over a quarter million dollars.
He's lost cows before, but this is
the first time he ever loses a horse.
There's a killer out there. We just gotta find him.
But look at the cows. They're just sitting in the water.
There's one in the water right now cooling off.
You see that? And an alligator don't care.
He don't care if it's a cow or a horse.
It don't matter to him. It's food.
A whole herd of cows
are sitting around this river like it's nothing,
so they're conditioning
these gators to look for food here.
We gotta find the gator responsible.
On the south end of the horse ranch...
Mr. Rivers.
Troy, how we doing, buddy?
Troy and Tes connect with local hunting legend
Chris Rivers to help catch the horse killer.
I have a friend, Chris Rivers, that has an airboat,
and we gonna look for this big alligator,
and hopefully we can find him
before he does anything else.
It's not easy terrain to get to,
and you're not just gonna hop in a little johnboat
and make it out there.
You need to use an airboat.
Another one down.
What is that, a horse?
Oh, no, that's a cow. That's definitely a cow.
I mean, you think an alligator dragged it out here
or he just got too deep in the swamp?
I think an alligator killed it.
Oof, they got some big gators out here
-if it can take a cow down. -He's big.
This could very well be the one we're looking for.
Thing about it is, see these trees back here?
-Yeah. -Yeah.
All that stuff, you can go under all of it.
You can swim under all of this?
Every bit of that. It's on a floating drift.
So will this, like, this terrain shape here,
will this move?
Soon as the wind blows hard.
-In a different direction. -What?
So, on one end, on the south end of the ranch
is a very unique area.
You got floating marshy areas, real open, no trees,
a lot of water most of the time, but it's soft-soft.
It's real marshy.
Floating marsh, also called flotant,
is a buoyant mass of air-filled roots suspended in water
that allows it to float.
Over time this mass may become
dense enough to support the growth of trees
or the weight of a human being.
So I don't know
if he's underneath the floating marshy areas,
but that big alligator could be hiding anywhere back there.
He could be anywhere. When they try to get away
from people, this is where they come.
-[engine whirring] -Let's go.
I can only imagine how big it is,
but that's a good sign finding this thing out here.
It means we're in the right spot,
so we gotta keep hunting this area,
and we've gotta keep our head and our eyes on the move.
That's a big old slide right there.
That's where he comes up, right there.
You see where he crawls down through here,
then he just comes up there and lay out in the sun.
They gotta have heat to digest their food,
so they get up out the water, he slides in and slides out.
And you got a little hole right there.
He's probably got a cave
up under that bank right there more than likely.
They love these banks like this.
They'll dig out a big cave,
big enough for three of you to crawl in there.
Yup. This is a big alligator.
Big enough to eat a horse?
-It's a possibility. -Very possible.
I know the big one is in this area.
I know he's here. We seen a lot of good alligator signs,
big slides, big claw mark,
where you can see a big one was climbing up on the bank.
I think he's way too smart to hang out during the daytime.
Let's come back tonight.
Let's go get ready, get all our gear ready.
Yes, sir.
Let's roll.
Chris, you think we can go towards
where we set the lines this evening just to see
-what we see? -Yeah.
Harpooning alligators is very effective.
It's something I'm not used to doing,
but I enjoy doing it.
I go with Chris Rivers when I can,
and he's always my go-to guy.
If we got problems with an alligator in Florida,
he's the man I call.
Hey, hey, hey,
pay attention to him.
-Watch him. -I am, I am, I am.
I've never harpooned an alligator before.
Shoot, this is, like, my second time
alligator hunting ever.
But I'm watching Chris Rivers
all prepared to, like, sling this thing at an alligator
at full speed on an airboat, and it is exhilarating.
Look there, look there!
Look there!
Love it.
That one right here, but he's not a big one.
Eight foot's the biggest thing that's showed so far.
I mean, we've seen a lot of gators,
just nothing with size.
We not seeing nothing with size.
Eight foot's the biggest I've seen.
I know.
We've been riding all night,
and we've seen quite a few gators,
but we didn't see no big, big gator,
nothing I felt comfortable to say that it was
the horse killer or the calf killer
or nothing that big and that powerful.
We've seen 30 alligators tonight,
but we did not see a big, mature alligator, not one.
Nothing big enough to catch a horse.
Right, but we saw those slides. It's out here.
He's been here, Tes. This is his territory.
But he's not here right now.
I think we need to go to ground zero,
where the horse was killed in the river.
-Okay. -Set some lines.
I agree. I think you're right.
Let's do it.
I'm thinking where we going, you and I,
we got a real good chance.
Tes and I take off, and we go look for this big alligator.
But we out of time.
We gotta go back to the Everglades,
go back and hunt pythons.
Can't stay here any longer.
So, hopefully we can find him before he does anything else.
Is that a wake?
Oh, look here, this line's down.
-See it? -Yeah.
We got a tree shaker.
-You ready? -Let's do it.
All right, what it feel like?
I mean, to the best of my understanding,
I think something is on it.
You got something?
I mean, it feels very tight, yeah.
-Oh, that's good. -I mean, I...
-I don't know what I'm feeling. -Hey, this is...
the last place they saw that big gator was
right in this area.
I'm gonna come up here with you.
-Okay. -Follow the line.
Pull us to the end of the line.
Gotta be careful so he don't get off.
You want me to switch?
Yeah, I can't tell what it is, but it feels heavy.
Hold this line, Tes.
Don't pull too tight. Just hold it up.
I'm gonna follow it down.
Be careful.
Damn, I can't reach it.
Okay, take your knife and cut it at the tree back there.
Cut it right at the tree,
and we gonna say our prayers that he don't take off.
I think I can get him.
-Okay, I'm cutting it. -All right.
Give me that long pole.
Oh, there's bubbles.
Whoa, it's a big one! It's a big one!
Whoo!
He's gonna pop the line.
Okay, get the gun. Put a good one in him.
Holy smokes.
Watch him.
Aah!
All right, pop him.
Hurry!
Shoot, shoot, shoot!
Whoo!
Lord have mercy.
Good shot, Tessa Marie.
We might have the horse killer, Tes.
-You think? -And he's big enough
to take a horse or a calf down.
-Okay, now the fun begins. -Okay.
You grab that front leg.
Come on, pull.
Pull, Tessa, pull.
One, two, three.
Okay, see if you can grab the back leg.
On three. One, two, three.
Oh, yeah, yeah, we got him now.
At 11 feet long, Troy knows
this is the beast they were after.
He's big enough. He could kill a horse.
He was heavy.
He wasn't the longest alligator I've ever seen,
but he was really heavy.
You could see he been eating real good.
So I really think this could be the alligator
that killed the horse, I think he was big enough
to kill the horse.
Good job.
-Thanks, man. -Good job, good job.
Thanks for teaching me.
You ready?