After the hunters find and catch the gators on Swamp People, they kill the gators so that they can sell the meat, hides, and parts.
The adrenaline rush that people get from watching a show like Swamp People, in which the cast purposefully puts themselves in danger, is what makes these shows so popular.
However, there is a reason why the cast of Swamp People does this. The gator hunters on the show capture and kill the gators during the hunting season so that they can subsequently sell the meat and hides.
Why is Swamp People such a popular show?
For most people, watching regular people accomplish dangerous tasks on television can get their blood pumping almost as much as doing these things themselves.
In fact, this phenomenon has created a whole genre of television shows focused on everyday people who have particularly dangerous jobs like Deadliest Catch, Alaska Off-Road Warriors, Gold Rush.
This is also why people enjoy watching the cast of Swamp People as they wade into perilous waters, sometimes only armed with a fishing rod to catch some of the biggest American alligators that they have ever seen.
What happens to the gators on Swamp People?
Even though it is entertaining to watch, the reason that these alligator hunters, or as the show calls them “gator hunters”, are willing to put their fingers, limbs, and even their lives in danger in order to find, wrestle, and capture the gators on the show is because they rely on alligator hunting as their main form of income.
Swamp People has become so popular since the show started airing in 2010 that the gator hunting season in Louisiana was extended from 30 days to 60 days in 2020.
Even though this longer hunting season may translate into more time for the professionals to make money, it also means that they have faced increased competition in the last couple of years.
This is because gator hunting is not a sport to the hunters on the show, but it is a way to make a living. The gator hunters on the show are all licensed to catch gators and need to adhere to strict rules to make sure that their catches and sales are legal.
These hunters find and kill the biggest gators that they can find every season so that they can sell them and make a profit from the meat, hides, and parts.
Many of the hunters on the show do keep some of the gator meat for themselves, but most hunters try to make as much money as possible during the limited hunting season and with their limited number of CITIES tags.
How much money do gator hunters make?
Most of the gator hunters who appear on Swamp People have other ways of supplementing their income for the months leading up to the first week in September or the last week in August when the gator hunting seasons start in the West and the East of Louisiana. This is because gator hunting is not as lucrative as it used to be.
When the show first started, some of the hunters earned $20 to $40 per foot of unprocessed alligator, but this number has dropped significantly with the increase in international competition.
Can gator hunters hunt as much as they want to in the hunting season?
Even though the gator hunting season in Louisiana is limited to 60 days, gator hunters cannot just hunt as much as they want to within the season.
The number of gators that each hunter can harvest is limited by how many CITIES tags the hunter has.
Hunters receive a set number of tags at the beginning of the 60-day hunting season and they need to tag every single gator that they catch and kill. Once these tags are done, the hunter needs to stop hunting for the season.
What has the show’s general impact been?
While gator hunting is fairly common in Louisiana, there are many people in the Unites States and around the world who had never heard of gator hunting before the show aired.
Troy Landry, who is one of the hunters on the show, once expressed in an interview that he was relieved when the show first started airing and the History Channel did not include all of the blood and gore footage involved in the gator hunting process.
He felt like this made the show much more approachable to watch and that this was the reason why they were seeing such a renewed interest in sales of gator meat and hides.
Moreover, the show has also had a positive impact on the local Louisiana tourism industry.
