It’s hard to believe it’s possible to craft a television show about guys who cut logs that more than just their relatives will actually watch, but the great minds at the History Channel are apparently up to the challenge. And the literally dozens of viewers that tuned into a recent installment of Ax Men were treated to plenty of the usual, um, action. The episode also included a display of what happens when you make one of these backwoods loggers really happy. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. . .
As our story begins, Louisiana logger Shelby Stanga, a.k.a. The Swamp Man, is having hard times and needs to sell some wood. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. Or something. Anyway, as so often conveniently happens when the cameras just happen to be around, wood buyer Keith Dufour arrives just in the nick of time with a $10,000 order.
Alas, history.com won’t allow us to embed their video, but click the link above and skip to the 4:00 mark to catch the ensuing hijinks. Then duck. Because when Stanga gets the good news of his imminent windfall, he celebrates in the only way he can think of: and that’s by yanking a Smith 500 from his cut-offs (and some people say they can’t adequately conceal a full size 1911…pshaw!) and squeezing off four or five wild shots in all directions, one of which nearly takes his own foot off.
They even stick the gun barrel in one of the crater-size holes in the ground to show what the roaring revolver’s capable of. Yes, it’s nice that Dufour made Stanga’s day with some new business, but for wildly letting .50 cal rounds fly through the south Louisiana countryside, we’re going to add to his big take with a freshly felled IGOTD award. As Dufour says with a forced chuckle after the shooting spree was over, “you’re a crazy son of a bitch.” As happy as he’d made The Swamp Man, he should probably be glad Stanga didn’t make him squeal like a pig.
[h/t Ian Moore]
Aaand I’m done. No more TTAG for me.
Not a Smith .500 (I think) and not a pipe.
Ya it’s a single action .45 of some fashion. Not the first time Shelby has got excited and fired that thing off.
How do you know it’s a .45? Magnum research makes a BFR in .500 S&W.
Ive seen him shoot the gun in previous seasons of the show. I don’t remember exactly which episode it was but you get a better look at it.
That cylinder doesn’t look near long enough for a 500. Maybe im crazy
Matt’s got a point because that gun does look like the BFR.
That barrel is way too thin to be the S&W 500. Its def a Ruger Black Hawk, But it could be a 44 or a 45 they both look identical.
Yep, that was the gun barrel. Don’t know how I missed that. Fixed.
It’s a .44 Super Black Hawk
Ain’t no cure for stupid.
amen to that.
He and a buddy fired a bunch of shots sort of randomly with a shotgun in an episode of Ax Men that I saw recently via Netflix Streaming.
The guy must have listened to the Richard Thompson song “Wall of Death” and taken it a bit too literally – the scene in which he casually handled a Water Moc was almost as appalling as his careless firearm handling.
That guy is going to either maim or kill himself and/or someone else. Did anyone see the cute segment where he ran that trashed aluminum hull jet boat of his up on something and his buddy’s arm went through the windshield? Ha ha. Effing hilarious.
I know Shelby he’s been doing crazy things for over 30 years and has not killed no one yet
Wow, and that describes safe in what way? You may know him and you may not. Personally, I could give 2 sh*ts less if you did, but if you act that stupid with a loaded weapon in your hand, I and most gun owners consider you dangerous to others and dangerous to the 2nd amendment.
Good for you knowing a walking, talking, disgrace to handgun safety.
I’m back in my hole.
All of the as*holes in this world aren’t between two cheeks.
If you have a good imagination, you can almost hear “Dueling Banjos” playing in the background.
Good imagination or just plain good hearing?
You need a guy with no sense of risk if you want those swamps logged. We need some guys willing to live 100 miles from medical help, 200 from dentistry. More briefly (ht to Ingvar Kamprad), “it’s a big country. Somebody’s got to log it.” I’m not volunteering. You? Just keep him the hell out of my tennis club.
Watch that show with the gator hunters if you want to see lack of gun safety. One Guy got peppered with 22 fragments 3 times in one episode.
I think the .22 is not as dangerous as what they are shooting at.
Actually, I admire people who do tough, dangerous work for a living. The loggers, the roughnecks, the ice road truckers, the Ironworkers, the coal diggers — they make our lives better. What I don’t understand is the effete snobbery directed at them. Try doing the work yourself sometime and see if you last a week.
I’ve watched Ax Men and a few of those other similar shows a few times. They are interesting at first, because you get a fair amount of insight into the techniques and equipment they use. After a while, however, that gets repetitive and all you are left with is the largely disfunctional interpersonal interactions and bafoonery of the participants. I’ve been dumbstruck at how poor these guys’ leadership and interpersonal skills are. The fact that their job is so dangerous would seem to demand more teamwork, and yet these clowns rarely can get along for more than 5 minutes.
My conclusion is either that: (1) these trades attract the types of social misfits and assholes who really could not survive in a more competitive (read: better) job sector, or (2) the show’s depiction of these types of conflicts is not representational in the trades; in other words, the show purposefully seeks out the biggest retards / assholes to get ratings. Either way, watching dunbasses fight and do stupid shit isn’t that much fun for me.
Remember we’re seeing an entire logging season cut down to 60 minute chunks, so of course we’re going to see a disproportionate amount of “highlights.”
Imagine 10+ hours of footage of men sawing and transporting wood – I doubt that would score much in the way of ratings.
It wouldn’t surprise me if one (or more) of the logging companies filmed for the show has such a smooth logging season that they were left out of the final edit altogether.
LIKE!!!
what network is YOUR show on!!
It’s definitely the latter. A little research and common sense, will tell you these shows are made up. Yeah the jobs are real, but the way they are portrayed is absolute horse shit. Companies like that have high safety standards, and the crews don’t bicker like that. It’s all bullshit. It’s all about keeping ratings up for the baboons that actually think that it’s entertaining.
“What I don’t understand is the effete snobbery directed at them.”
Because law enforcement is the only dangerous job out there.
TV has to reach for some fairly rough-mannered people in order to get the mass audience to watch and laugh, feeling superior. Better the mass should be willing to watch a two-hour explication of tax-code distortions, but that’s not going to happen. This is why they call ‘elites’ elites. I wouldn’t make fun of the logger. He’s getting it done. I also wouldn’t watch a show about his manners rather than his logging.
I haven’t watched this, but I do enjoy Deadliest Catch. The resource extraction jobs are increasingly rare, for obvious reasons. And they don’t pay as well as the used to, though many pay pretty well. Bocephus won’t save you.
Deadliest Catch should go away. It’s really gotten to be utterly boring after all these years. It started out as a simple documentary and they ran with it for far too long.
It looks like a Ruger 44 mag Blackhawk as I can see the paragraph’s worth of lawyer talk on the barrel. For all we know he is shooting into a cypress stump. If you’ve ever been out that way, it is pretty unlikely anyone is out there even if he wasn’t. I’m not saying I would do the same, it’s the real BFE out there.
I agree with caffeinated. Looks a lot like a 44 mag. I don’t think he would be shooting a 500 S&W with one hand anyway.
Bunch of hens. Jealous that Shelby is living life on his terms.
Yeah, he’s living the dream.
i agree with jerk jiggler here. i can bet half these people havnt been more than 15 minutes from a mcdonalds. and thats no .500 smith. that is a ruger super blackhawk .44 mag.
Its a 45 I know I have fired that gun he’s good friends with my daddy
agree with you Shelby is living good!! lock and load!!
It’s not a S&W and it’s not a 500, I come from southerner and logger stock and these inbred hicks are an embarrasment to humanity…..
P.S. what the heck is all the yellow tape on the barrel for!?
Holy Defective Gene Pool, Batman!
written like you got a pole up yo ass.. which i would not be surprised if you do! go shelby!
I watch Ax men just to see what Shelby is up to. How about that crazy dude Richard who comes out of the swamp and picks fight with Shelby. He shot a combound bow at him last season. It nearly hit him in the face. WTF?
Too the Swamp People ! I hope you can see its wrong what you are doing same with that Ducky show as well! Jah knows what you are doing same with the Mountin Men God sees every thing you do.
.44 super black hawk with an 11.5 in bull barrel I have one identical to it its kinda surprising though its a rather rare gun
Umm, you run a gun web site that’s called the Truth About Guns and you can’t tell that’s a single action revolver he’s shooting? Yeah, the S&W 500 is a DA revolver. So, I guess the truth about guns here is you have no clue what you’re talking about.
he doesn’t know a single action from a double action?? wow! go play with your yo-yo!
Dude your a dumbass mofo . Why you gon get on a website an slam someone because you aint happy with yourself ,, i bet you wouldnt last one day with that raw SOB . GUn safety ? yea your probly not even old enough to mount to the yrs SHELBY been holding that gun . at the end of day a mans gonna do what makes him happy . STANGA NATION!!!!
Yall wouldnt last a min. Down here there aint a dam thing wrong with celabrateing a little bit with burning some powder and folk om the river handle guns like yall pump your peckers! Nobody gets hit unless we want them to bleed!
!Hell ya! Stanga nation!
Shelby is one of a kind! He’s funny, and being himself. That’s all a person can be. No fake or phony with him. Loved when he was in the restaurant cooking and serving. When he bit the head off the snake, I just about fell off the couch. Holy crap!! My former Marine, prison guard, swat team, weapons expert, three black belted brother would LOVE Shelby if he were alive!!! He would have to go bite the head off of a snake….He could never be out done. LOL!! Shelby is real and sincere. Come to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and we’ll have us a beer or two. Please bring some chow chow and crawdads. Don’t forget Piss Willie! I was in Louisiana in 1990 and really enjoyed the people. YOU ROCK SHELBY!!
you sir, are one of the many that need to travel out of the comfort of your website to actually see hillbillies, rednecks and country bumkins and how they handle firearms and themselves. I have seen firsthand the skills and complete lack of common sense at each conceal carry class that I have attended. All this by ” civilized folk “. Another reason I Should stay out of your world and you, mine. The best people I have met were and are, these hicks.
I have lived in the NE GA mountains – the setting for the cinematic tour de force ‘Deliverance’ – for 38 years. Only 75 miles from that bastion of urban civility Atlanta, we mountain folk enjoy some of the same creature comforts as our esteemed colleagues in that wonderful city. Things like running water, telephones, indoor plumbing and the like. Some real high falootin’ fellers even gots the internet.
That being said, from personal experience I can tell you that rural residents I know display a degree of firearm safety well beyond those of their uppity, urban counterparts. Guns are an everyday part of these peoples lives. They aren’t some guy that goes to the range twice a year with his $3000 AR or who conceal carries because he’s too scared to drive to his local 7-11. These people are hunters and marksmen and if any of you have ever been in a foxhole you would do well to have one of them at your side.
Gun safety is something that has been engrained in the majority of these people from a very young age. Even the ones that are considered to be on the fringe of the law – eccentric ones like Shelby Stanga or fools who spotlight deer and other nonsense – practice good gun safety from what I have seen. Some idiot waving a gun around carelessly is quite frowned upon and considered a serious breech of redneck etiquette. They might uses three gallons of lighter fluid to start a charcoal grill or drive their lawn mower to the liquor store but you won’t catch them pointing a barrel the wrong way or handing you weapon without first checking the breech.
Even though I don’t watch these type of shows too often (probably because because they already resemble my current surroundings) I don’t feel the same type of vitriol and hatred that I have seen displayed in this blog entry and in the comments section below. A lot of you suburban commandos really are just gun snobs. It doesn’t take a genius to handle a firearm properly. If a conscripted, illiterate Soviet soldier can do it, then it obviously isn’t too tough a task. You people don’t own the monopoly on gun safety just because you are 20 years away from paying off your McMansion.
As stated by another poster here, the area where this took place is sparsely populated and obviously no one was injured. Instead of worrying about how stupid and backward rural gun owners are, try some taking some time to reflect and ponder why you would believe these “reality” shows aren’t staged or scripted. It seems beyond the comprehension of you people that Mr. Stanga could have been encouraged to display this type of wild behavior by the production crew of this show.
“Hey Shelby after you get this log order why don’t you break out the revolver and pop off a few rounds?”
Noooooo……… Something like that could NEVER take place!
Get a life gun snobs. Find something better to do with your lives other than look down your noses at rural southerners. They can’t help it your life sucks and you live in a freezing, crime-ridden, cesspool metropolis completely devoid of nice weather, good food, or culture. If I may borrow a term from your vernacular – stop being such a “hater:
Sincerely,
Herschel Walker
Good reply Hershel Walker, I would just like to add, if I were ever stuck in those swamps, I’d like to be stuck with that man and definitely not any of the individuals that have posted the hate and prejudice on this post
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