Excerpt from the 1926 History of the Okefenokee by Hamp Mizell and AS McQueen:
“When the Swamp was first penetrated by the pioneer white settlers of this section, and that was not so very long ago, so many alligators were encountered, and they were so large and vicious, that a boatman hardly ever entered the interior without a ‘pike-pole’ for protection. And this was especially true if a dog was carried along, for a large alligator dearly loves dog meat, and they will run the risk of being killed by attacking a boat in order to try to pull out a hound dog.”
iNaturalist observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42309500
Okefenokee Photography Project by William Wise 