The Ledger – Port Laveau, By Camille Dupont, Staff Writer

LAVEAU — I thought I understood danger. I’ve stood ringside while fists split skin and watched knives flash under bad lighting. I have never, until this week, stood in knee-deep fog while the swamp itself decided we were on the menu. The Gator Hunt began the way bad ideas always do: too early, too damp, and with far too much confidence. A small camp glowed weakly through the fog, firelight swallowed by cypress shadows and buzzing insects. Dead chickens hung from bait lines like grim offerings, and laughter cut through the swamp air, bravado thick enough to taste. I was there to document a hunt. What I witnessed was a near-fatal siege. The first warning wasn’t teeth, it was silence. The swamp went still in that way animals know means run. Then something big moved.

Tents shuddered. Stakes tore free. One alligator, later identified only by increasingly hysterical shouts, began death-rolling with a tent, flinging gear, clothing, and dignity across the clearing. The hunters shouted. Guns came up. And suddenly, there was more than one. They came from the fog like living nightmares, massive bodies sliding out of reeds, eyes reflecting firelight, jaws snapping with the sound of splitting wood. Bait lines screamed. Shots rang out. Someone yelled that there were more on the left. Someone else went down. I climbed onto a picnic table, journalistic integrity be damned, as gators surged into the camp itself. Blood hit the ground. A man was knocked backward near the fire, another narrowly missed losing a leg as jaws snapped shut inches from bone. One hunter lost his footing. Another lost his weapon. One lost his pants, another his shirt. At least one gator took offense to a camp chair and entered into a full, unhinged brawl with it. There is a moment in situations like this where the brain stops narrating and starts calculating odds. Mine were not good.

Gunfire cracked through the fog, echoing off the water. A shot landed clean into an open gator’s mouth, buying precious seconds as it thrashed and roared. Another gator lunged anyway, slamming into the ground hard enough to rattle teeth. Someone threw a flaming log. Someone else threw a beer bottle. Both connected. Neither solved the problem. I’d like to point out that alcohol plus fire only worsened the situation, turning said gator into a rolling fireball that destroyed dreams. At one point, I watched a wounded hunter crawl backward through mud while another stepped between him and a charging reptile without hesitation. That is not bravado, that is survival instinct sharpened by experience. The swamp did not care. Eventually, pain and resistance turned the tide. Blood, reptilian and human, soaked into the earth. Three gators eventually went down though not without sampling their last meals. Two retreated, slipping back into fog and water, leaving behind shredded tents, ruined gear, and a silence that felt heavier than the chaos had been.

When it was over, no one cheered.

We stood there breathing hard, hands shaking, listening for movement that didn’t come. The dying embers and wayward flames crackled. Someone swore. Someone laughed, the thin, hysterical kind that follows narrowly avoiding death. The hunt was called off not out of defeat, but respect. The bayou had made its point.

I came to photograph what I thought would be a new tradition.
I left with mud on my boots, blood on my lens, and the sobering knowledge that in Port Laveau, the line between hunter and hunted is thinner than a tent stake in soft ground.

The swamp remembers.
And this time, it nearly claimed us.

OOC – Gator Credits:
Pickles the Almighty – Played by Ted
Old Geira – Played by Eira
Snapmare – Played by Riko (RIP)
Captain Crunch – Played by Mollie (RIP)
Crock-Pot – Played by Alex (RIP)