One of Florida's most lethal python hunters
gardenandgun.com
gardenandgun.com
- Your method should result in the animal losing consciousness immediately.
- You should then destroy the animal's brain by “pithing” which prevents the animal from regaining consciousness.
Looking at the diagram, the head is very small in comparison to the entire body. Perhaps that is why shooting is discouraged. I cannot find a source that states that shooting is illegal. There are limitations on where pythons can be hunted, which is on private land with permission or some public lands. That is mostly going to be a safety and private property protection purposes.
The website states "Members of the public may not transport pythons alive and must humanely kill pythons at the capture location. However, python skins or meat may be kept and/or sold."
I have been hoping for a health improvement so I can go on a guided python hunt. I have read up on it quite a bit. Not only can I get python leather to make a nice wallet, belt, and a pair of boots, but I can do so while doing a small part to curb an invasive species that is wrecking havoc on the ecosystem in South Florida.
I don't think Spain ever could handle Florida
Billy Bowlegs for governor - I know he wouldn't turn the State Parks into golf courses!
However, for whatever reason, snakes don't seem to die very quickly when you shoot them in the head a few times (enough news stories if you're interested). I'd imagine that's at least part of where the recommendation comes from. Plus, they die incredibly slowly (if ever) if you go for a body shot. It'd probably suffer less if you drowned it (an ordeal that itself also takes hours), and none of those methods are even slightly humane.
The most humane way to kill a snake is to quickly destroy the brain by crushing the head or pithing as the article points out.
“We got a bit carried away,” said Moist. “We were a bit too creative in our thinking. We encouraged mongooses to breed in the posting boxes to keep down the snakes…” Lord Vetinari said nothing. “Er… which, admittedly, we introduced into the letter boxes to reduce the number of toads…” Lord Vetinari repeated himself. “Er… which, it’s true, staff put in the posting boxes to keep down the snails…” Lord Vetinari remained unvocal. “Er… These, I must in fairness point out, got into the boxes of their own accord, in order to eat the glue on the stamps,” said Moist, aware that he was beginning to burble
https://www.sfwmd.gov/our-work/python-program
No idea how it actually works but shooting them where they are has to be tough to verify.
Then you ignore the noise factor which can scare off other pythons in the area.
Garret Galvin @fishingarrett has made a name for himself yoinking all sorts of critters in the wild but in particular seems to be targeting invasive pythons in the Everglades. He's very entertaining if you like nature stuff, he's like Steve Irwin's spiritual successor.
You have to make the carrier a mundane part of the cat's life. Leave it out randomly so the cat isn't associating it with unpleasantness, put snacks in it. Then it won't be an object that brings fear and anger.
Release a male python that can only sire male pythons, and population collapse is inevitable.
Who knows, maybe the gun fire attracts other predators in the glades (alligators?).
Note: I know about this because there's a gun range near where I live by the lake, and the lake is now permanently off limits for swimming due to lead pollution.
In a recent conversation over breakfast I brought up lead poisoning and my dad was adamant (in his conspiratorial way) about how all of that lead exposure via handling lead and inhaling lead fumes didn't result in any significant health problems for us. I'm assuming he meant that we all weren't dead yet. He's 80 and a wreck. He's had all sorts of health issues include recent cancer remission. I'm 55 and I've had nerve issues since my teenage years which manifests itself as a noticeable tremor in my right hand that has got worse over time. I developed adult onset asthma in my late teens. I have a host of other health conditions as well. Who knows how much of that is tied back to lead exposure.
Physically wrestling pythons is not really dangerous if you know what you're doing.
Maybe some combination of cameras (thermal, traditional, maybe even Lidar) combining data and processing it to detect at least likely pythons.
It wouldn't have to be perfect, but I imagine such a solution could be more effective than even the most experienced and talented human python spotter.
Also consider that there are plenty of other native snakes the same size as a small python that will show up as a false positive on a thermal camera.
For magnification at least, doesnt help with hunting pythons probably, you can use the focusing lenses for laser cutters, which typically work in thermal wavelengths, to turn a handheld thermal camera into a microscope. Or is it a "milliscope" i guess owing to the limit imposed by the coarser wavelegths.
I wonder how much optical solutions could be solved with the "wrong" lens paired with a well trained transformer or similar modern AI. If google or apple can deblur your family photos is it unrealistic to think you could deblur a thermal image acquired using found lenses?
Crystallography algorithms might even work out of the box? Or be adaptable hopefully?
the Everglades and its web of life as we know it have existed for five thousand years. In the comparative blink of an eye, that intricate system has been upended.
She has been bitten more times than she can count; though not venomous, pythons possess rows of curved, needle-sharp teeth. .. “Use a floodlight to scan the ground near the truck, and look for an iridescence and a pattern... Shout ‘Python!’ if you think you see something, even if you’re not positive—it’s better to be wrong than to miss one."
ETA: they do eventually reference "researchers using drones", so we're not the only ones to think of that. Not to rejoice in anyone losing their job of course, but I do hope that some automation makes this more feasible.
It takes an average of ten hours of searching per snake during which time they mostly drive around so I don’t think drones are a realistic option here due to flight time. There’s little benefit to searching far beyond the roads/levees because the swamp is a very tough terrain to navigate and it gets dangerous thanks to the gators.
Can’t use (real) night vision googles because any stray light from the car could blind the wearer and it would kill the driver’s peripheral vision making it impractical to drive.
That's why they make guns that can load more than one bullet at a time. Also, maybe use a higher caliber bullet. Lot's of asinine pro-gun enthusiastic responses available for Florida man to retort with.
It's not even "as we found it", it's "as it was at a certain arbitrary point in time". I've seen zero proposals to eliminate earthworms, honeybees, or dandelions from the Americas.
Natural ecological events can certainly be difficult for humans to deal with, and even cause mass famine, etc. - but we have many more recent cases of ecological catastrophe caused by humans.
The snakes are captured & bagged, then they are humanely eliminated using a bolt gun to the brain. The brain is then completely destroyed using a metal rod to ensure there's no more activity.
I don't know how his numbers stack up, but he's amusing to watch.
I wonder how you tag a python as spayed though. No ears.
A neutered python puts predation pressure on the rest. Creates crowding.
If only we could make a virus or alter their DNA to wipe them out ;-)
Domestic cats are an invasive species that decimate the native wildlife. "free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually."[0]
Since we're talking about Florida, this is what their Fish & Game department has to say on the topic:
> * Domestic cats are not a part of Florida’s natural ecosystem. A single individual free-ranging cat may kill 100 or more birds and mammals per year. Scientists in Wisconsin estimate that cats kill at least 7.8 million birds per year in that state alone. Even cats with bells on their collars kill or injure birds and small mammals.
> * Cats compete with native wildlife and can spread disease. Outdoor cats have been identified as the primary host in the transmission of toxoplasmosis to wildlife, a disease which has caused death in manatees and other mammals.
[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 [1]: https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/nonnatives/feral-cats/
I imagine it would not be worth the hassle of breeding and releasing pythons, and the character of the people they bring in to help is vetted as well.
A python can weigh over 200lb. It takes a lot to support a snake that big and they monitor sizes to ensure the catch matches what you would expect from a wild population.
"Allow me to introduce myself," says the VC.
Rather than being cynical maybe it would be worth your time to consider volunteering and better understanding how these things are managed. You might be surprised to find it's usually fairly educated folks who care about making sure what we have today is around for the next generation.
What is that style, exactly?
But to build on your idea, a trap that a python can enter but not exit without human assistance could be interesting. You can check the traps periodically and free any native wildlife that happens to enter them.
This does seem like a doomed-to-fail stopgap kind of solution, but sometimes stopgaps are all you've got.
So far, the data suggests that native wildlife is responding in the areas the contractors patrol; though they might not be surging back, mammals and birds are finding the toehold they need to survive. While no one believes the pythons will ever be fully eradicated, Kirkland is hopeful that in twenty years, native wildlife might have regained more than a toehold, and the issue might lessen into something close to manageable.
Every cat lover with a gun would be out hunting them back.
Second, we’ve decided as a society that a particular set of animals are ones we love and protect. Dogs, cats, horses, etc. So it’s very unlikely any hunter of this class of animal would be palatable to our society. Maybe in another country where they don’t view this class of animal in the same way.
Third, I am totally in agreement that cats kill so many birds every year. We keep our cat indoors for this reason.
Sadly, it looks like the program is struggling to find funding: https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/breaking-the-news/...
I wonder if we could do the same with other species or if the destructiveness pythons exhibit in their much longer lifespans makes this equation work out very differently
Then they go, eradicate the cats, and wonder where the rats and mice come from. It's called the "mesopredator problem" in ecology, and it's a massive issue when you want to restore ocean islands for birds.
what is wrong with killing billions of ill and old birds? That is how Nature works, and the other predators do it in the non-developed areas where humans didn't push out those predators from. In the developed areas the other predators are gone, so thanks to the cats who do the necessary job of all those missing predators.
>They're an invasive species in most states
Do you see many native predators around humans? If anything the humans is the invasive species doing pretty much all the damage.
That's fine. Humans exterminated most of the native felines on the North American continent, so we're just re-introducing some of them.
Typo? Creationism? That seems like a very short period of time.
Even only going back a couple thousand years the changes have been huge (desertification in the ME and North Africa).