I’ve made it home from a recent three-day weekend in South Florida hunting invasive Burmese pythons and had a fantastic time of it. I visited with a number of snakes, mostly cottonmouth moccasins, while nighttime hunting the Northwestern corner of the Big Cypress Unit of the Everglades in Collier County. For every 20 moccasins I’d find, one python was caught. Slow action on the big invasives, but two were captured and removed from the ecosystem. That’s two more of the most ravenous alpha predators ever to find their way into Florida’s wild places. Be thankful they haven’t taken a foothold here in Hernando County…. yet. Only a few weeks back, a very large female was captured in Pinellas County, raising concerns about the northern expansion of the giant snakes.
One thing that plum tickled me about the weekend hunting was the number of other hunters out, working the backroads and levees each night. There were dozens of vehicles, all decked out with LED lightbars, each loaded with hopeful individuals, and everyone was carrying handheld spotlights. I visited with a few groups of out-of-state hunters working the roadsides on foot, and they all asked to take pictures with my snakes as they hadn’t found any themselves. It seems that python hunting has become the favorite pastime in that region of Florida.
A lot of the interest in python hunting is being stimulated by outdoor writers and television shows. I know I certainly get a lot of interest from people wanting to learn to hunt them. I was even joined by a couple of film crews and became the star of a documentary film about the Florida Python Challenge. We filmed for ten days, hunting day and night, during which I was able to catch a few pythons for their cameras while teaching others about the snakes and the devastation they’ve been wreaking upon our native ecosystems. In fact, I’ll be leaving in just a couple of weeks for the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, for the world premiere of the movie. I can’t wait to see what they’ve done with all of that footage.
Now, there are a lot of Burmese pythons, but it takes many hours of dedication to hunt them. I read once that in a breakdown of hunters’ successes, licensed contractors with professional training and years of experience may average one snake for every eight hours of hunting. On the other hand, rookies just showing up in the spotlight and dreaming can take up to 20 hours of hunting before locating each python. It can be frustrating trying to locate them, but there is great reward in just being there. Some of Florida’s last unspoiled wildlands are found in the Everglades, and the beauty of the place never fails to make an impression on my heart. As always, I’d love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments about this week’s column or just would like to share a story of your own at [email protected]. God Bless, and good hunting!
Toby Benoit is a best selling novelist and professional outdoors-man with thirty-five years of experience guiding and outfitting for big game all across America. Toby is a renowned archer and turkey hunting expert who manufactures custom game calls and is a regular judge at NWTF sanctioned turkey calling events across the Southeast.
