The alligators do not enjoy the show
The main setting for the series was originally the Atchafalaya River Basin in Louisiana, the largest contiguous block of forested wetlands remaining in the lower Mississippi River valley and the largest block of floodplain forest in the United States. Beginning with the fourth season, the program expanded to depict other venues, by featuring gator hunting crews in other parts of Louisiana and in the swamp-lands of Texas.
The show focuses on the hunting of the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). Along with the Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), it is one of the last surviving species in the genus Alligator. American alligators are found in the wild in parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. Small populations of migrating alligators have been reported at times in Tennessee, Virginia and (rarely) Maryland, but there are no long-term areas of habitation for the species in these states. Louisiana has the largest American alligator population of any U.S. state.
The species of the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) depicted in the series is listed as a least-concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, indicating that the species is still plentiful in the wild. The species was in long-term population decline from the 19th century until the mid-1960s. From 1967 to 1987, the species was under the legal protection of both the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and a number of state-affiliated wildlife agencies in the Southern United States. This allowed the species to recuperate in many areas where it had been depleted, and there was a sufficiently large population by the late-1980s to make further conservation efforts unnecessary,