Sopchoppy man to be on’Dirty Jobs’ show
Worm gruntin’ is a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.
Gary Revell is that man.
For more than 50 years he has been out in the Apalachicola National Forest with only a wooden stob, a 3-foot-long stake and a heavy, flat piece of iron metal, rounding up earthworms for bait.
“My great-grandfather, grandfather, father and uncles all used to worm grunt,” he said. “It used to be on a small scale for fishing, but then it commercialized and it was like a gold rush.
“Nobody used to even know about worm gruntin’ and now there are very few still doing it,” Revell added.
His job, which he makes a good living at with his wife Audrey, is so unique it brought camera crews to his Sopchoppy home to be featured on Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs.”
Hosted by Mike Rowe, “Dirty Jobs” profiles odd jobs around the country. The host gets down and dirty trying out different professions.
Revell said he was surprised when he got the call from the show saying it wanted to feature him. Three vans teeming with camera equipment and crews pulled up to his house in August to film the show that will air tonight on the Discovery Channel.
“Them boys weren’t playing,” he said. “But I took them out and we did some worm gruntin’.”
Worm gruntin’ is easy as long as you know what you’re doing and where to go.
Revell said all he does is drive the stob into the ground about 12 inches. He then rubs the thick, heavy metal across the top of the stake, driving it further into the ground. This is called making a roop, or making vibrations in the ground.
“Then you pull the stob out and see what you have,” he said.
The vibrations, or “grunting,” forces the earthworms to come to the surface of the ground.
“Sometimes you only get 5 or 6 worms, other times you get up to 200 worms,” Revell said. “It just matters on the ground.”
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