Posted on 06/23/2022 8:02:39 AM PDT by SJackson
Starting later this summer, hundreds of hunters will disperse across Florida's Everglades.
Their target? An apex predator known to grow up to 18 feet that hunts animals as large as an alligator and sometimes as small as a woodrat.
These hunters are going after the Burmese python — one of the largest species of snakes and a major nuisance to Florida's wildlife.
Native to Southeast Asia, these snakes were first introduced to the Florida wild in the late 1970s, and they have reproduced at an astronomical level since.
Starting Aug. 5 and continuing for 10 days, those hunters (both professional and novice) will fan out in South Florida to humanely capture and kill these snakes for the state's annual Python Challenge.
Registration for the 2022 challenge opened last week. Anyone interested in competing must first register and take a required online training that covers humane killing methods and ways to identify these snakes.
It's an important program that will help restore Florida's ecosystem, according to Donna Kalil, a Florida-based python hunting professional. Last year's competitors removed 223 invasive Burmese pythons from the Everglades.
"To try to keep the Everglades healthy, you have to have the animals that belong in it. And in order to do that, you have to remove the invasive predator that is the Burmese python," said Kalil.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
I can hear Marlin Perkins now - As Jim wrestles the python.... LOL
The wild ones are probably worse.
“Who’s hunting who with one of these 18 foot monsters?”
It’s a TIE !
I was commenting that back I. The day, ck. Ercials used to be like 15 seconds d slots, 30 maybe, only 2 or 3, then back to the show. Hardly enough time to get a soda fro fridge lol. Today, you can get a soda, cook an Omellette, do,the dishes, chop some wood, fill the stove, and still have to sit through a couple of commercials when you sat back down in living room
Yeah there is a ton of invasives now. All kinds of exotics.- efen exotic fish invading now.
I was thinking rinos
There’s a guy called Monster Mike that does a lot of fishing for exotics in the southern Florida region, and posts on YouTube. I kinda wish it was that crazy in the ‘80s. He has way too much fun.
Locals hunt them all the time. They may not want an onslaught on the ‘Glades.
What an awesome show that was. And SHE was the best part of it.
Lol, he was kinda crazy, but marlin was pretty fearless himself too, but I do think a ,ot of the shows were staged with animals kept in compounds. The “a aging footage “ they a,ways seemed to get was just too corn identsl to be taped I. The wild, like a couger chasing an otter around , coyote playing with some “wild” animal like a badger, etc. They jusynran across these things way too often. The animals probsbly grew up together in a wildlife preserve and were used to each other, but it made for good TV to show them “hunting” each other (but never killing the other animal).
Jim efen”got chased” by a brown bear o ce and he had to “run to a nearby tree”, and you could see the bear wasn’t in full charge mode, and Jim kept just ahead of him till he got to the tree and jumped for a branch. Lots of little,things like that made it seem pretty staged.
I thjnk they even got accused of staging scenes that resulted in Animal cruelty. Not sure if anything ever came of,that accusation though
Thanks I’ll look him up. I was wa4ching the a,igstor hunter in Florida fish with a pro there right off the banks of a canal, and they were catching g some really aggressive fish there. Can’t remember what it was called, but the hunter was shocked to,see how ferocious it was when landed. Some invasive species. Swimming In Florida can be hazardous to health lol. A friend took a video,of he and his friends swimming in a really clear spring fed area, and later learned it was infested near there with alligators. Thnakfully,they didnt see any that day though. The lovals,told him he was lucky he didnt
Don’t take chicken in your snack bag!
May have been snake fish. There was a bounty on them, last I heard. A delicacy...the Cubans probably put a dent in their population.
No Doubt!
Yes but they are hard to hit. Best to use M-60s.
it mighta been that- i can’t remember now- there was also a show on pacu too- that is taking over some areas- the fish with ‘human teeth’ lol-
Florida needs to monetize wild python flesh. Give restaurants a tax incentive for every serving of wild-caught BP they sell. And hire professional BP hunters to offset the food bill for the state’s 80,000 prison inmates.
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