It's Florida, Man. (2024) s02e05 Episode Script

What you're about to see may be
dangerous, illegal, unethical,
petty, misguided, immoral,
and most definitely stupid.
But it's also all true.
Sort of.
We didn't really follow
a proper procedure,
so we had a whole gator head
stuffed in a backpack.
I felt like I was being hunted.
All I wanted was
to pick up some moonshine
and now, I'm in the middle of nowhere
with 100 pounds of gator meat on my back.
Don't move.
Mines.
All around us.
I was scared to death.
This is the kind of thing
you only see in movies.
My name's Shane Hunt.
I'm born and raised
right here in Trilby, Florida.
What I love about this part of Florida
is it’s kind of the middle of nowhere.
There's space.
We're not supposed to be all bundled up.
That's not natural.
Out here, you can be
getting your feet dirty,
and digging in the soil,
and being in the sun,
and swimming in springs.
There's something about that,
being a true Floridian.
You still feel free.
At the time this story took place,
I was hanging out
at this bar down the road.
It's your typical
hole-in-the-wall style bar.
Pool tables, dart boards,
smoke-filled room,
old woman bartender
that knew everybody's name
and talked shit to all the guys.
These were the type of guys
that maybe has dentures,
maybe has no teeth, tattoos,
fight at the drop of a dime.
And we drank moonshine together.
But they ran out of moonshine.
Their supplier, he died.
Our supplier's dead.
So, I said,
"You're gonna need more moonshine
Yep.
and you're probably
gonna pay pretty good money for it."
Yep.
So, I got to thinking,
and I came up with the idea
to go talk to Uncle Matt.
Over here, we don't call it "moonshine,"
we call it juice.
I got a couple of friends that make it,
and I don't know what they call it,
but I call it juice.
I'm Matt, and I'm Shane's uncle.
I've been in Florida my whole life.
Look right here.
There's shrimp in there,
there's stone crabs,
there's speckled perch, deer meat,
wild turkey,
there's soft-shell turtle, gator meat.
A while. I'll refill it.
-I'll go back in the woods.
-Yeah.
These younger generations,
they put apple, pineapple,
and all that other bullshit in it,
but the only way you drink
true moonshine is straight moonshine.
All them flavors
are for these city fellas.
Making moonshine is illegal,
unless you have a license to make liquor.
Then you're making liquor,
you ain't making moonshine anymore.
Moonshine's made in the dang woods
by the moonlight.
My name's Josh Owens,
and I love making some moonshine.
It runs deep in my veins.
White liquor, corn liquor,
skull cracker, rot gut.
It's just the mystique of it,
the mysteriousness.
With liquor, you can go in a liquor store
and you can buy it, no big deal.
But if you can go somewhere
and buy some illegal liquor
that you're not supposed to have,
that might give you some kind of buzz
you've never had before,
I think that's what the draw is.
Back then, I lived for that rush.
So, I told the guys that I had
a connection through my Uncle Matt.
Got a connection through my Uncle Matt.
And through Uncle Matt,
we'd get as much as they wanted.
Damn right.
I'll get them as much as they wanted.
Next thing I know, I'm driving out
to the middle of nowhere
with my Uncle Matt
Oh, God damn it.
to pick up a bunch
of gallons of moonshine,
and we're coming down
the dirt road, pull up,
I see this dirty, rundown old shack.
Yeah.
Now, I've gotta warn you
he's a kooky motherfucker.
The property's a pretty sketchy place.
The yard's littered with equipment,
all kind of trash,
old furniture, a random lawnmower
that doesn't work.
And there he is, standing on the porch.
-Hey, Timmy.
-The tweaker, Timmy.
-Is he dangerous?
-Oh, yeah.
Well, that was their first mistake.
Getting involved with a meth head,
a meth head that brews his own moonshine.
You know what that sounds like to me?
A lot of moonshine,
'cause he ain't got nothing else to do.
You got meth,
lack of sleep, and moonshine,
there ain't no telling what might go down.
Well, shit.
What's up, whistledicks?
Glad y'all could make it.
Come on.
Timmy's got this building
he's locked up like Fort Knox.
All right, here's where the magic happens.
When you go inside of it,
he can brew up to 25 gallons at a time.
It was damn near a moonshine factory.
Wow. Wow.
-Wow.
-Oh, yeah, give it a try.
Yeah, brewed that one
with diesel fuel and cat urine.
Give you a punch in the old pickle spear.
-Oh, wow, look at that thing.
-Dangerous!
-What? What?
-That could explode.
One of the biggest dangers
about making moonshine
is you gotta worry
about the still blowing up.
You got a boiler,
and if anything stops that up,
that boiler's gonna blow.
That also could explode.
And this.
Pretty sure that. Definitely that.
Plus, you got all
that high-proof whiskey in there,
and it blows the cap off,
she's probably gonna blow.
And what you're holding.
My buddy, Kenny, blew a house up,
and it blew the whole house up.
It blew bricks out in the yard.
What you're saying to me is damn near
everything in this room could blow up?
Oh, hell yeah, at any time,
we could be blown right up.
Hell, I don't know,
could happen any time. Bang!
Timmy, you're a crazy son of a bitch,
and that's why I like you.
Don't you like him, Shane, huh?
Don't you like him, Shane?
We picked up, like,
ten gallons of moonshine in milk jugs.
Cheers!
We were standing there, talking,
and he was like,
"Hey, I've been tracking
this bull gator behind the house,
do y'all wanna go get him?"
You wanna go get him?
I'm thinking, "I came here for moonshine,
not gator, but what the hell?"
"Let's keep this party going."
We're like, "Hell yeah, we do."
Hell yeah, we do.
So, we head out into the swamp
to where Timmy saw this thing last.
We probably canoed about a mile,
a mile and a half in,
and then we got out and walked
about a mile, a mile and a half.
Nowhere in sight, cell phone signal.
It's just you, the trees,
and the animals, and water.
Right around here.
Lookit. I see him.
-Told ya.
-I see him.
Oh, shit, there he goes.
Come on. Oh, shit.
What you do is look for holes,
and there'll be water in it.
A lot of times, if you sneak up
there right, you see a gator go in it.
But if you can't,
when you get close to it,
you see the water go up and down.
If the water goes up and down,
you know there's a gator in there.
Here we are.
That son of a bitch
is down there, all right.
Once you get to the gator burrow,
here's where the primitive
hunting skills come in.
Timmy has this big bag with all his
primitive-style gator hunting tools in it.
You got a hammer, you got nails.
Duct tape. Binding rope.
-A handsaw.
-Handsaw.
Ziploc bags.
Ziploc bags. And toilet paper.
Toilet paper. If you gotta take a poop,
you don't wanna wipe
your butt with poison ivy.
But also, if you ever get yourself
in a pinch, and the man shows up
Hey! What are you doing back there?
all you gotta do
is pull your pants down.
Like, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm pooping."
-I'm pooping!
-Oh, okay. Sorry. Have a great day.
That's your little
"Get Out of Jail Free" card.
Once you find him,
then you gotta pull him out of there.
I'm gonna get you.
Us rednecks can figure out,
one way or another,
how to get him out there or her out there.
We know how to do it.
Come on.
Where are you? Come on now.
-Oh, yeah!
-Bingo!
Come on! Come on now. Come on.
Matt's pulling the gator out.
Tim had the beating club.
Here, kitty, kitty.
You run it down there,
as soon as you feel him,
you snatch up,
then you gotta pull him out of that hole.
And when they hit the surface,
they go crazy.
You think you can roll on me,
you son of a bitch?
I'll roll your scaly ass
like a gas station hot dog!
It's twisting, and pulling,
and hissing, it's game on.
Suck on this!
We didn't take the time
to do the proper procedures.
So, we had all this gator meat
stuffed into book bags.
That size gator will last
for a few months in the freezer.
Once we're traveling back,
we realize that we're not going
the same way we came in.
This way is more fun.
Shane, he is a loopy son of a bitch,
but he knows these woods.
Probably about two or three miles back in,
we come across something
we didn't expect to see.
Marijuana plants.
What looked like hundreds of them.
Just out there in the middle of the swamp.
When you see something like that,
the smartest thing you can do,
especially if you're in Florida
with these rednecks,
you stay away from that shit,
because you gonna get blown up
or shot or something.
As we were walking out, Matt turned around
and looked at me, and said
If someone comes, you run.
You don't know anybody else,
and you run until you can't run no more.
"And you just run
until you can't run anymore."
It's about like any other
kind of illegal activity, you know,
you're a little bit on edge, because,
you know, your ass is on the line.
You're talking about a meth head,
like, anything can happen.
Like, literally anything.
We're walking along,
and then Matt stops me.
Freeze!
I turn to look, and right there
at my foot is a trip wire.
And it's not just one,
they're all around us.
They were rigged to detonate
if you got too close to 'em.
We all just froze.
We didn't know what to do.
You could have heard a pin drop
all the way through the woods.
I was scared to death.
It's tremendously dangerous
to walk into a grow field.
My name is Billy Lane.
I am a retired police detective,
worked undercover narcotics.
I worked in Central Florida for 20 years.
If you go on an illegal grow patch,
those areas are well known for,
you know, booby traps.
They're well known for trip lines,
you know, explosives.
They believe if you walk
on their property, they own you,
and you're gonna get a shotgun
or AR-15 stuck in your face.
All of these scenarios
ran through my head.
Like, if cops show up out there
and find us doing something illegal.
Hey! What are y'all doing back there?
-We're just pooping.
-We're just pooping.
There's still ways we can get out of it.
Oh, okay.
Have at it.
But what if someone's hunting us?
What if I get shot?
Or I just explode?
But you can't get stuck in your head.
'Cause you still have
a mission to complete.
Like, you still gotta get back
to where you came from.
And Tim was leading the way.
He knew where we were going.
Make like a snake. Make like a snake.
When you're in that situation,
you just have to stay focused.
Make like a snake.
Come on now.
At one point,
we're all arguing with one another.
-I did not come out here to get blown up.
-Do not yell at me!
I ain't yelling at you,
I'm yelling at him.
God, I'm hungry.
We're all hungry, thirsty.
It's 100 degrees outside.
I'm stuck. Grab my foot. Over, over.
Don't drag me by my neck, boy.
All of the emotions that come along
that you see on those TV shows,
those are all true.
You go through every single one of them.
Last time I'm ever coming out here.
We finally make it
to the edge of the minefield.
Timmy and I
get through the last of the wires.
Like, all of a sudden
I fell down in a bog hole.
And when I did, I went up to my hips
in mud, and I couldn't move.
Oh, Lord! I'm in a bog hole!
Son of a bitch!
-What are you doing?
-Oh, Lord! I got caught in a bog!
Oh, Lord.
I wanna help him,
but I'm scared to help him,
because you don't wanna get close
and then both of you cave in.
-Give me your hand.
-I got short arms!
It's kind of like a weird reach gimmick
to where you're trying
to pull him up out of the water,
and he hadn't gotten
past the last trip wire.
So, I got myself in a situation.
Good boy.
I got caught in that bog.
I just step right into a bog.
I hope there ain't no gator in there.
So, I pull him out,
and he's all pissed off.
Son of a bitch!
'Cause he's covered in swamp,
and I don't know if you ever stepped in
something like that, but it stinks.
It smells terrible.
-Damn it, Tim, it's all over me!
-Come on!
It's in my damn shoes!
It's in my damn mouth!
So, he stinks, you know,
and he's mad about that.
Yeah, well, it would piss you off
if you was in a hole.
You know what I'm saying?
We walk back to the canoe.
And Tim turns around,
and he's, like, panicked,
like, eyes all bugged out.
He's twitching, making strange noises.
And he's rocking. And I was like,
"Holy shit, what just happened?"
They can see us. They can see everything.
He was like, "We gotta go separate ways.
They're gonna see us."
"I'm not taking you back to my house."
I ain't taking you yahoos
back to my house, okay?
-You can't leave without us.
-Timmy--
Bye-bye. Good luck.
Timmy, you gonna turn crazy on us?
The two of us could've very easily
overpowered him and took the canoe.
-You know we can easily overpower you.
-No.
We can overpower him.
-Au revoir!
-I've taken him before.
-You could take him, it's not worth it.
-It's not worth it.
We were just like,
"To hell with it. We'll walk back."
No, no.
We're on the side of the highway walking
with bags of 150 pounds of gator meat.
It was like 110 degrees outside.
We were dying.
We walked for miles.
We got back there, we were soaking wet.
Our whole bodies were just freaking
We were drained.
We had spent the whole day fighting
in the swamp,
and then we gotta walk back.
Throw everything in the cooler,
and we get in his truck, and we drove off.
I finally got to the bar.
Came in the back door
like I was a Budweiser semi-truck,
and I was dropping off milk crates of
moonshine.
Yeah!
We're all sitting around the bar,
and I'm wanting to tell everybody
that I met my day.
And I just can't stop talking about it.
And they kind of just rubbed it off.
Yeah. That same thing happened
to Stretch last week too.
And I didn't care. I had a successful day,
so I felt good about it.
And they paid me pretty good money too.
My man!
Doing some of the things--
When I think about what I was doing,
I cringe. I'm like,
"Holy shit, dude, what?"
I think the people
that really get involved
in high-adrenaline situations,
the ones that live through it,
they appreciate
the little things better.
So, like, I appreciate sitting
on my front porch
looking at my children play.
This is my happiness now.
We had quite a few cookouts
with that gator meat.
You can stir fry it, you can fry it.
You can do tacos, whatever.
You can do a breakfast sandwich with it.
I mean, you can do a gator and egg
for breakfast if you want to.
I mean, shit.
First thing we ate
was the gator testicles.
That's good.
You could boil the testicles, and make,
like, Rocky Mountain Oyster style,
but with gators.
-How do you cook it?
-Fry it, boil it,
boil all the semen out, and then fry it.
-So, you boil it first?
-Yeah.