When Hunting Pythons, It Helps to Dance Like a Monkey—and Carry a Sledgehammer

WSJ ^ | 21 Apr 2017 | Arian Campo-Flores

[DUMBGRUNT]

The agency pays $8.10 an hour, $50 per python—must be delivered dead—and $25 for each foot over four.

There are dangers at either end: strikes from its head and defensive sprays from its tail of musk and excrement. “They’ll fling white blobs of poop everywhere,” Mr. Rahill said.

Mr. Hill prefers a simpler snake-subjugation tactic: He grabs his Winchester 12-gauge shotgun and fires at the python’s head. “A head shot is considered a humane way” to kill a snake, said Mr. Hill, who said he has been involved in capturing more than 700 pythons.

Novice hunters often don’t realize how difficult it is to pursue pythons, he said. “Some people think pythons are waiting on levees with signs saying, ‘Welcome to Florida.’ ”

Days later, farther north, he was tramping through brush and glimpsed a python pattern on a mound, he said. He lunged at it, grabbed at the snake midbody and pulled it into the open. The snake tried to strike him several times before he subdued and bagged it.

The 7-footer yielded a $125 bonus. “I earned that snake,” he said.

The snake earned a swift end dealt by Mr. Rahill’s sledgehammer.

[submarinerswife]

I like the way you think.

[sport]

I know.That is why I would carry a gun and knife.