"No buzzards, no body": An experienced rancher and outdoorsman who lives outside the alligator-infested nature reserve where authorities are searching for Brian Laundrie doesn’t think the fugitive is in there – alive or dead.
Florida cattle rancher Alan McEwen has spent nearly every day of the last 30 years navigating the woods where Brian Laundrie is suspected of hiding and says it's not conducive to habitation.
"There’s no surviving out here, I don’t know how to say it," McEwen told Fox News Digital.
Laundrie’s survival skills have been at the center of conversation since the 23-year-old’s parents first reported him missing Friday, Sept. 17, just two days after he was declared a person of interest in the disappearance of his fiancée, Gabby Petito. The couple were traveling across the country in the weeks leading up to Petito's death.
After Laundrie’s parents pointed authorities toward the Carlton Reserve, a nature preserve Brian was known to frequent, many began to speculate about whether the avid hiker would be equipped to live in the depths of the 25,000-acre woods for weeks on end.
McEwen, who has been assisting North Port Police Department in searching the preserve for signs of Laundrie, remains doubtful the Youtuber has what it takes to make it more than a couple of days in the swamp-like reserve.
"I’ve been in the woods in and out all my life … I have learned a lot in my life, and one thing I know is no one is gonna survive out there for two weeks on foot," McEwen said.
Since Laundrie reportedly entered the park nearly two weeks ago, torrential rainfall has left the area flooded with waist-deep water, leaving the parking lot where Laundrie is said to have left his car unrecognizable.
"Unless he’s got a butt like a duck and can float, he’s not in there," McEwen said as he gave Fox News Digital a tour of the submerged area in his swamp buggy.
Even if Laundrie could manage to last in the wet conditions, he’d still have to face the diverse species of wildlife that have made the preserve a fascination to ecologists nationwide.
The Carlton Reserve is home to 13-foot alligators, panthers, black bears, wild boar and several lethal varieties of snakes. McEwen says that even if Laundrie could manage to fend off the park’s most terrifying predator... (Read more)
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