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Comment by thfuran | Hacker News Reader

It has to be easier to get a dead python into your truck than a live one, right?

I have never tried to shoot a snake but I imagine their high aspect ratio makes getting a critical hit on them challenging, compared to just "yoinking" them.

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.

“Hey look, it’s a tokay gecko. Yoink! Can you tell me where to find that twenty footer?”

You assume you are able to kill a python in one shot. If you don’t get the “kill” shot, your prey runs off into the woods and now you spend time tracking its blood and steps.

Then you ignore the noise factor which can scare off other pythons in the area.

Once you bag a snake, they're pretty easy to move around. Getting them into a sack isn't as hard as you might imagine either. Obviously, it's going to be more difficult for a larger snake, but it's way easier than getting, say, a cat into a cat carrier.

I know nothing about snake hunting other than the 3 youtube videos I just watched (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5JB_bzQwtZ8), but this professional sure makes getting them into the sack is about as hard and dangerous as I would imagine. Seems like you're one slip up from getting a chunk of your body removed (like that dude in the youtube video's arm).

Wrestling snakes is good for likes/subscribes. A .22 handgun is probably what is used when not filming.

Most of the pythons they are bagging are much smaller than that, and YouTubers have an incentive to make bagging a snake look more thrilling than it usually is.

I don't know, I just get the cat to climb into the carrier on it's own.

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.

Yeah, that makes total sense, but we are talking about Florida.

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