Reality TV makes ‘Swamp Man’ famous, but ‘rich’ is a relative term

Listen to this article

Editor’s Note: The following story from the April issue of North Shore Report received more hits in 2012 than any other story on neworleanscitybusiness.com

Ask Shelby Stanga about the money he makes logging in the Bedico Swamp near the mouth of the Tangipahoa River, and he launches into a profanity-laced rant that includes a story about being paid 45 cents, being shot in the head and stuffed in a limousine with a broken leg.

From the story, this much is clear: The price of what he used to be paid for wood has somehow fallen to 20 cents, and it took a violent route to get to that price.

Clarity on his current situation is hard to come by.

Stanga’s words may sometimes blur the line between fiction and reality, but they are always punctuated with expletives, come in between spits of tobacco and are not without sincerity.

What is clear is that despite his rising fame as part of the cast of The History Channel reality show “Ax Men,” Stanga is not reeling in money from his exposure.

Digging up the wood has been the main, if not only, form of sustaining the 56-year-old Stanga and his wife, Donna, who live on 3.5 acres at the edge of the river that leads to Lake Pontchartrain.

“I never did advertising or nothing. They heard I was pulling G– d— wood,” Stanga says, adding that people would just come to him for cypress, cedar and other hardwoods from the Bedico Swamp.

Today, curious visitors pop out of nowhere, not to enlist his logging services but instead to catch a glimpse of the man who is on cable television every week. One day, he says, a family from Dallas drove in and showed up outside his property.

How did they find him?

“All ya gotta do is ask everybody around here,” Stanga says.

Stanga clearly likes the attention, but it does not appear to have changed him.

He’s not putting on an act. He seems generous and eager to show people his world.

Roots of a logger
In his own words, this is how Stanga became a swamp logger.

At age 9, his mother pulled him out of school when it was about to be desegregated. He recalls a pronounced Ku Klux Klan presence in the area outside of Ponchatoula at the time.

“She said, Go play with your first cousin,’ or, ‘Go hunting in the woods,’” Stanga says.

Instead, he went to the swamps.

Stanga says he would climb to the top of the ancient cypress trees, carve out a sitting place at the top and stay there, sometimes for days. He hunted small game with the 20-gauge shotgun his parents gave him as a 7-year-old.

By 16, still out of school, he was working with a dredging company in the swamps when someone challenged him to remove a fallen cypress tree from the water.

He took a boat to the tree, tied ropes and inner tubes around it and dragged it out. Others began to solicit his help to get valuable sunken wood from the bottom of the murky water.

Stanga quickly became a swamp entrepreneur, but the work didn’t pay well. At one point, he didn’t have enough money to get back home from where he was working on Lake Pontchartrain, so he spent the winter on the beach in a tent living off the land.

Like Shelby Stanga – Ax Men on Facebook

A star is found
Representatives from The Discovery Channel reportedly were scouting for a local expert to assist in the production of a post-Katrina episode of “Man vs. Wild,” starring survival expert Michael “Bear” Grylls.

Grylls’ producers began asking around in the area about who knew the swamps the best. They were directed to Stanga, who quickly gained the attention of the television crew.

While taking them through the swamp, a water moccasin swam by their boat, and Stanga allegedly snatched the snake out of the water and bit its head off, much to Grylls’ horror.

When Stanga jumped out of the boat to go after more animals, the producers for Grylls’ show insisted that he stop, calling it a liability issue.

The Discovery Channel and the agency representing Grylls didn’t respond to a request to confirm this account.

But Stanga’s legend was genuine enough to resonate through television production circles, and soon The History Channel was approaching him to join the cast of “Ax Men” for its third season.

Although the production crew would eventually become “like family,” Stanga says there were some growing pains in the relationship. The way he tells it, on some trips he would dive into the swampy water to explore what was beneath the surface. Every time he would return to the surface, there would be a camera in his face.

Stanga says he repeatedly warned the cameraman to stop. When he didn’t heed his request, Stanga shot the lens of the camera off with the .44-caliber revolver he keeps tucked in his waistband.

“He fell back,” Stanga says. “And I said, ‘Told you!’”

On his Facebook page, Stanga now has more than 20,000 fans. On the “Ax Men” Facebook page (43,000-plus as of Dec. 31) , fans have voted Stanga their favorite character and many say he should have his own show.

“Too much aggravation,” he says. “I went backwards doing this.”

Aside from a $9,000 flat-bottom boat he says the production crew sold to him for $1,600, Stanga says he lost money while taking part in “Ax Men.”

“I’m still in the hole,” he says.

But Stanga has survived so long on so little that he seems almost oblivious to the idea of making more money off his newfound fame.

Others around him do not.

Asked if he’s worried about people trying to exploit him for money, he launches in to another expletive-laced tirade.

At the end, he says he’s content, “As long as I get my dip and my gas.”

To sign up for CityBusiness Daily Updates, click here.