Python milestone: Hunters kill 1,000th snake

Program helps protect Everglades wildlife from powerful predators

HOMESTEAD – As pythons go, this one was nothing spectacular. Eleven feet 2 inches long, 32 pounds. Killed with a shot to the head. But this bunny-eating reptile, done in by python hunter Brian Hargrove, was the 1,000th snake killed as part of the python elimination program started by the South Florida Water Management District 15 months ago.

The agency marked the milestone with a public weigh-in Tuesday at a field station in Homestead.

No one knows how many Burmese pythons have invaded the Everglades and surrounding areas, but estimates range from 10,000 to 100,000, agency spokesman Randy Smith said.

And all those killer pythons are preying on the region’s wildlife.

“If you go to the Everglades now, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single squirrel, raccoon, opossum,” said Mike Kirkland, who oversees the agency’s python program. “Now they’re targeting our wading birds.”

The agency chose 25 hunters to scout out pythons on district-owned lands in

Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Collier counties. They are paid $8.25 per hour, up to eight hours daily, to hunt in the Everglades and humanely kill each python they catch.

Hargrove, the Miami hunter who killed Python No. 1,000, says he’s just trying to do his part to protect the Everglades.

“I love snakes,” Hargrove said. “It’s a bittersweet thing. [But] it’s got to be done. Something’s got to be done.”

Hargrove was used to seeing 40 rabbits at a time in the Everglades. Now he’s lucky to see one.

“It’s the pythons,” he said. “What else can it be? In one year, I’ve seen 115 pythons. One rabbit.”

Since he killed the milestone snake, he and his fellow hunters have killed 10 more pythons.

Overall, they have captured snakes ranging from 14-inch hatchlings to granddaddy snakes longer than 17 feet and weighing over 160 pounds.

So far, Hargrove has killed 114 pythons.

Dusty Crum, an orchid grower from Venice, said he’s lost track of how many pythons he has killed.

“We’re all out in there in the frenzy trying to catch snakes,” he said. “Hard work pays off.”

Crum came to Tuesday’s weigh-in with two dead pythons. The bigger one was 14 feet, 6 inches and weighed around 80 pounds. But even better, it was a female.

Pythons breed and multiply quickly and have no natural predator, Kirkland said. Females reproduce once a year and lay anywhere from 30 to 70 eggs at a time.

“These animals are survivors,” Kirkland said. “They can go a year without eating, or they can eat every week. The more they eat, the bigger they get.”

They easily pick off rabbits, otters, raccoons, even panthers and gators.

“We’ve seen numerous photographs of the python with the alligator in its mouth,” Smith said. “And the python won.”

The hunters have captured pythons ranging from 14-inch hatchlings to snakes longer than 17 feet and weighing over 160 pounds.

SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT/COURTESY The python, caught by hunter Brian Hargrove, was the 1,000th snake killed as part of the python elimination program started by the South Florida Water Management District 15 months ago.

WILFREDO LEE/AP Python hunter Brian Hargrove, right, is helped by Marcos Fernandez of the South Florida Water Management District as the 1,000th python caught in the Everglades is measured and weighed.