uhhhhh, uhhhhh…” I moaned as my body squirmed
in pain.
I struggled to regain my breathing and slowly rolled onto my back. Had I died? Had the buffalo trampled me? My eyes stared up into the blinding sun, white orbs spinning around in my head as I lay there in a daze not knowing what had just happened.
Blood oozed from my hands as they wrenched in pain. My knees were scraped and skinned many layers down, sand and stone painfully wedged into them. I winced in pain but caught my breath, finally realizing that I was not dead. This was great…except for the fact that I was in a serious world of hurt.
I looked up toward the far edge of the wash. No huffing, bellowing, or angry breathing. No hoof stomping. No trace. No… BUFFALO. I had just outrun certain doom by the hooves and horns of a great American icon, and as I lay there in temporary paralysis I began to cry tears of joy that I was still alive.
Well, tears of joy for being alive, but also tears of pain from the many cuts and scrapes I had suffered. “UGHHHHH!” I cried out as I slowly sat up and struggled to my feet. Blood poured down my knees, and I turned in a circle, coming to grips with what had just happened. I wiped the tears from my cheeks, took a deep breath, and fought my way back up the safe side of the wash.
When I made it to the top, I looked back, but the Rogue Buffalo was nowhere to be seen. Like a phantom, it had vanished amongst the shrubs and shadows, with not a single trace remaining. I slowly limped back toward camp, the sun now beginning to sink in a sky painted in a beautiful scene of cotton candy pinks, oranges and blues. I kept looking back over my shoulder, thinking I would hear the charging hooves of the animal that had chased me off the side of a cliff, yet saw nothing but grasses dancing in the wind.
Did that really just happen? Was I just chased and did I somehow outrun the most iconic mammal to ever roam Wyoming? YES. Yes, I did!
After arriving back at camp, broken and bruised, bloodied but breathing… my Mom cleaned me up as I recounted the tale. My encounter had been as grand as they come, and as my sister listened with wide eyes, she certainly had nothing to say other than…
“I am glad you’re still alive!”
I was always told to never grow up, and while I could not elude the passage of time and the perpetually aging body we are all given, at 30 years old, when I peered down at my own reflection in the water I still looked at myself as a child. Sure, my baby soft face was now rugged with a stubbly five o’clock shadow, and my physical stature had morphed into a formidable adult figure, yet, in my heart and soul I hadn’t aged a day since capturing The Dragon.
As I placed my hands, scarred from years of adventure, down into the swamp, they distorted my reflection and I pulled a cupped wave of stagnant water over my face.
Welcome to the Florida Everglades, where the humidity is thick enough to cut with a saber and the flying insects are as relentless as gravity. Most would think that a splash of grimy swamp water would be the last thing one would want to relieve the afternoon heat, but trust me when I say it was the greatest feeling in the world.
In that moment, I was free. I was once again one with the elements of nature, and as the water trickled off my chin, I pictured myself in command of this foreign land, yet in actuality… I was far from being king.
The sun was inching past the three o’clock hour, and our time on this expedition was running out. Welcome to my first shoot of Breaking Trail, a new animal adventure series that my team and I had conceptualized, pitched to a network, and been given the green light to start capturing on camera.
This particular mission was simple: Catch an American Alligator… with my bare hands.
Yep, you read that right. Our first mission was to catch the most dangerous predator in the Florida Everglades… and I was going to do it without the use of any nets or traps.
As you can tell, Breaking Trail was envisioned with grand plans to encounter and get the cameras incredibly close to some serious predators. The good news for me was that I wasn’t alone.
Let me introduce you to my crew, a camaraderie of brave individuals who will appear in chapters from here on in.
These guys were solid. The kind of friends and determined adventurers who like me, were willing to risk life and limb to get the best shots possible. Mark was our director; fearless, cunning, and driven beyond all odds to get the impossible through the eye of a camera lens. Then there was Chance, a jack of all trades who could not only run and gun a camera with the best in West Hollywood, but also an avid outdoorsman who could MacGyver a campfire… from a stick of gum, some pine needles and the nine volt battery out of his headlamp. Last, but certainly not least, my main man Mario. A wildlife biologist who had an incredible knack for not only helping me spot and identify wildlife, but who also had my back in the event that any animal encounter went awry. If there was one person I trusted to defuse a perilous wildlife situation, it was Mario.
This was my team, and together we were a band of wilderness cowboys. We loved and respected the environment, its plants, animals and above all else, its challenges. If anyone could take on the Everglades and go toe-to-tooth with its most notorious predator, it was us. The only problem was locating one of these reptilian powerhouses amidst the fields of razor sharp saw grass and endless waterways.
Ever heard the phrase, “it’s like finding an alligator in saw grass?” Well, you have now, and trust me when I say it’s not much easier than finding a needle in a haystack.
As our boots trudged through ankle-gobbling muck, I could sense the exhaustion falling upon us. Beads of sweat ran like waterfalls down the backs of our necks, and every next mosquito bite literally sucked the life from our progress. We had seen several alligators already that day. Some measured around four feet in length; a respectable reptile by all means, and an animal that commands respect. However, my goal was to encounter and capture one that measured closer to eight feet and that would likely weigh
around 200 pounds.
I know what you are thinking: ‘Coyote, a single person can’t capture an eight foot, 200 pound alligator with their bare hands. You would need to use a snout rope, a net, and three fully grown, burly men to hold it down. Not only does this “catching it by hand” sound impossible, the very thought is complete madness!’
I agree with you. This was madness, but I was on a mission. I had everything to lose, and everything to prove. Not only to myself, but also to a network that had given my friends and I the chance of a lifetime to make the next big animal adventure show. I was going to do this, or at least I was going to go down trying.
As