‘Swamp People’: Ashley Jones’ Bio and More Personal Details

Ashley Jones has been a fan-favorite star on the History Channel’s Swamp People since 2018. The Brandon, Mississippi resident first hunted alongside Ronnie Adams but is now paired with Anna Ribbeck. She was nicknamed “Deadeye” thanks to her impressive targeting skills. She rarely ever misses. Jones lives with her husband, attorney Chad Jones, and their three children.

When Jones joined Swamp People, she told the Clarion-Ledger that she battled depression after suffering a miscarriage. She was in depression for three months without knowing it. “It was like I was dead inside,” Jones explained. “It was like just going through the motions of life without getting anything back from it. It was a hormonal imbalance and that’s normal, but I didn’t have anything I was passionate about to fall back on.”

Her husband noticed how Jones was smiling and laughing less, as she felt she had nothing to feel passionate about beyond taking care of her family. One day, he took her deer hunting, which she reluctantly agreed to. She had never hunted before, so Chad had her practice. She spotted a buck and fired. Although she missed, Jones suddenly felt like she had a mission.

“I knew I had to make it my mission to successfully kill a trophy buck,” Jones told the Clarion-Ledger. “Once that thought entered my mind I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I remember that feeling of missing him, but I remember the adrenalin rush. I understood why people get up at 4 a.m. to go hunting. It was really, really cool to me.”

Soon, her need to hunt was not satiated by deer, so she went into alligator hunting. She became friends with Adams and went wild hog hunting with him and her husband. Adams knew the Swamp People producers were looking for new hunters to add to the 2018 season, so he recommended Jones. Both of them ended up on the show and have been part of it ever since. Jones credits hunting with saving her life. “It changed my life. It saved my life. It really did,” she said.

In Season 14, which debuted in January 2023, Jones is hunting with the newest addition, Ribbeck. The two were friends for years, Ribbeck told The Advocate. “She’s an old friend of mine and we would hunt ‘gators together. I think she’s been on (the series) for like five or six years,” Ribbeck said of Jones. “So she has definitely moved up to captain ranks; now she is an expert ‘gator hunter.”

“What’s crazy is there are two boats,” Ribbeck said when explaining how the show is filmed. “There’s a follow boat and there’s our boat and the cameraman – he’s awesome. He jumps back and forth between boats to get all the shots, and I mean, he falls quite a bit, too. Oh my gosh. That, that man, he is a bada—. So yeah, it’s all of us, Ashley (Jones, her hunting partner). People ask if this is really real. Yeah, we’re hunting ‘gators and we pulled in like over 100 ‘gators during the season.”

While Jones hunts alligators on television, Chad has a law firm in Ridgeland, Mississippi. He is a specialist in mass tort litigation and can practice in every state, his website notes. He has represented former NFL players who suffered neurocognitive impairment as a result of repetitive brain trauma during their playing days.

Jones is not to be confused with other celebrities of the same name. The actress Ashley Jones is known for her roles in The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and True Blood. Another Ashley Jones stars in MTV’s Teen Mom: Young and Pregnant.