The Swamp Ape - Pythons

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 9/11/2018 | F Jardim

[w1n1]

It's April in the Florida Everglades, the end of dry season when Burmese pythons breed. This invasive species is now the region’s apex predator and these great snakes have scoured the native populations of birds and small mammals.
The larger snakes have even killed and eaten deer and alligators. By late afternoon as the hot sun is growing dimmer, Swamp Apes Tom Rahill, U.S. Navy veteran Joe “JoMo” Medina, and Sergeant Major Tom Aycock are tired.
They've been searching for the big snakes since dawn, covering 30 miles of terrain by truck and on foot, checking the sides of the levees and walking the water’s edge, if forcing a way through the high grass and underbrush taller than a man can be called “walking.”
The high humidity, mid-80s temperatures, and merciless mosquitoes are just part of a day in the Everglades and they are prepared for it.
If any Swamp Ape doesn’t take precautions to protect himself, the sergeant major won’t hesitate to remind them. That’s what sergeant majors do.
The snakes like to nest in old animal burrows and under matted straw grass.

The Swamp Apes maintain a list of possible nest sites identified in earlier missions. There are a lot and checking them takes time, even with the bore scope, a digital camera mounted on the end of a long flexible probe.
Since a python has six rows of razor sharp backward-pointing teeth in its mouth that can shred your flesh and they aren’t hesitant to launch themselves 5 feet through the air to bite, the bore scope is nice to have.
But a successful python hunter doesn't technically need a bore scope. What they need is perseverance. Read the rest of the Swamp Ape here.

[littleharbour]

Has any progress beeh made in this fight, or has the snake population continued to explode in spite of these efforts? Reminds me of the feral pig problem.

[Clutch Martin]

I have a biologist friend that gave me the lowdown and I confirmed the lowdown that he gave me by going up and looking at a couple of websites concerning the Florida python invasive population.

A female Burmese python can carry sperm for 10 years and lay fertile eggs for 10 years. In 75 years Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana will be populated by Burmese pythons.

[Tax-chick]

No, it’s September in the Florida everglades, just like it is where I live.

[Tax-chick]

In 75 years Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana will be populated by Burmese pythons.

They'll call them "food." As General Joe Wheeler said in The Rough Riders, "Gimme some more o' that there serpent, son."

[central_va]

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Florida is on metric time so it’s April there, just like it is in Britain.

[Tax-chick]

Oh, I see. Are they seven years behind, too, like Ethiopia?

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Luckily, pythons don’t like freezing temps.

I was told at the Everglades Visitor’s Center by a government “wildlife expert” that pythons will never successfully live north of Orlando.

I hope that is true.

[The_Republic_Of_Maine]

Why didn’t they just shoot the thing?

[rellimpank]

---while I agree that the python shouldn't be here , I suspect to predictions of complete takeover are a bit much--

-seems to me I recall that about 40 years ago we were warned that the red ant was going to destroy North American agriculture , after that Kudzu was going to make the south uninhabitable , then killer bees were going to take over, etc., etc.,---

[Campion]

They’ll call them “food” in Louisiana. In the other states, they’ll be called “belts” and “wallets” and maybe “boots”.

[SMARTY]

Nah...the ‘nature lovers’ who first brought and released Pythons into the wild there, are the same ones who would scream themselves red in the face it you even mentioned killing the things.

Funny how that works out

[Little Ray]

Pythons would make nice high-end boots and belts.

[Charles Martel]

They'll call them "food."

Probably so. Python Sauce Piquant.

[Tax-chick]

Good point! Which of your sons is in the Marines? My Elen is at Parris Island right now ... or she was until they evacuated. The local news said they’re going somewhere in inland Georgia.

[Tax-chick]

Unwarranted panic is a recurring phenomenon. Even in the Everglades, the extent of python infestation is disputed.

[central_va]

Bottom line: Tastes like chicken.

[catnipman]

i’m a bit surprised no one has said anything about eating these bad boys, either the article or here ... the snake I’ve eaten has been delicious ...

[GOPJ]

I was told at the Everglades Visitor’s Center by a government “wildlife expert” that pythons will never successfully live north of Orlando.

More for those of us who live south of Orlando?