THE EVERGLADES, FLA. (WSVN) - Catching Burmese pythons is an itch that hundreds of hunters can’t wait to scratch every year, and for 10 days this month, they’re sending the big reptiles on the run in the Florida Everglades.
Hunters on trucks equipped with floodlights drive into the night during this humid, sweltering summer, deep in the swamp, to hunt for the invasive species during Florida’s annual Python Challenge.
Cameras captured one of the large reptiles being let out of a sack.
“So we’re looking at about 30 pounds and about nine feet?” said a hunter.
“Sounds about right,” said Zachary Chejanovski with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“One of the larger ones?” asked hunter,
“I’d say this is on average what you’re going to find out there,” said Chejanovski.
Experts say they’ve seen snakes as long as 19 feet, weighing 125 pounds.
Burmese pythons have few natural predators and are known to consume prey as large as alligators.
Ron Magill, a wildlife photographer and communications director for Zoo Miami, detailed the threat that these pythons pose.
“What they’re doing is, they’re really depleting our natural environment,” he said. “They are eating a lot of the small mammals: the raccoons, the rabbits. They’re changing environments by doing so.”
For these 10 days in August, participants in the Florida Python Challenge have their eyes trained on the grassland for the slightest sign of a snake.
“A lot of the times, you’ll just get a little piece of the tail sticking off from behind a tree or something, and you stop,” said hunter Codey Quinton. “These things are very, very camouflaged.”
Despite that, Quinton captured a 10-foot python during last year’s challenge.
The Florida Python Challenge gives amateurs and professionals a chance to seek the thrill of a capture and cash prizes. The hunter who catches the most Burmese pythons can take home $10,000.
“I still get the rush, though, every time you see it. You’re like, ‘A python, nice. I finally get another one out of here,’ because, you know, that’s the mission, essentially, is to get them out of here,” said Quinton.
The snakes first showed up in the Sunshine State in 1979, brought as pets and likely released into the wild by owners when the snakes grew too big to keep.
That created a unique problem.
“If you have a pet python in New York or Michigan, and it escapes, the first winter, it’s dead. It escapes here in South Florida or is released here in South Florida, it’s like coming to Club Med for pythons,” said Magill. “So this is a big issue right now, and this python challenge is basically meant to raise awareness about the dangers of this exotic non-native species.”
But it isn’t easy. Hunters can go days without spotting a Burmese python.
“If you cross paths with 100 pythons, you might just see one to five of them,” said Chejanovski.
Frank Ferraro is one of the roughly 800 hunters this season hoping for that one big catch.
“A year ago, somebody got a 19-foot python. That’s the largest on record so far,” he said. “I’m thinking, if there’s a 19-foot, there is a 20-foot, so might as well think big.”
According to the FWC, since 2000, more than 21,000 Burmese pythons have been captured and killed.
The 2024 Florida Python Challenge ends Sunday. For more information, click here.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.