Environment |

‘It was insane’: Second-heaviest Burmese python caught in Florida — a 198-pound beast

At just after sunset last Friday night, two trucks of python hunters cast their headlights upon something huge crossing the road in Big Cypress National Preserve. The animal was so thick that Mike Elfenbein, who’s been hunting and fishing in Florida his entire life, wasn’t sure what it was. “It was stretched out across the road. It was so huge it looked like an alligator.”

It was an outlandishly fat invasive Burmese python.

Twenty-one-year-old Carter Gavlock, who was in the other truck, hopped out, sprinted to the snake and immediately grabbed it by the tail.

“That was a big mistake because the snake damn near took him into the canal,” Elfenbein said. “There was nothing he could do to stop it.”

Gavlock had caught yearling snakes before, but this was “a dinosaur,” he said. “I was like, hey, somebody jump on this thing with me. It’s dragging me across the road.”

Elfenbein’s son, Cole, raced over and grabbed the tail as well, and a tug of war ensued. As they pulled it to the middle of the dirt road, it turned on them. “That’s when things got kinda hairy,” Elfenbein said.

Elfenbein learned to hunt pythons from professional contractor Anne Gorden-Vega, and went for the head. He held on as best he could, right behind the jaws.

“Right when Mike went for the head, she turned, almost got Mike, and pulled Mike towards me and almost got a hold of me,” said Gavlock.

At this point, there were five men on the snake.

“It was powerful to the point where Mike and I were both on the front end of the snake, kneeling down, and it picked him and I both up off the ground. She basically arched and picked us both up and pushed us over to the side,” Gavlock said.

Both Elfenbein and Gavlock said it took a good 45 minutes to subdue the snake.

By the time it was over, “everybody … smelled horribly,” Elfenbein said. “I was sore the next morning from manhandling that thing. It took all five people all of their energy to subdue that snake.”

As they caught their breath, Gavlock said it almost didn’t feel real. “We’d just met two random people that were willing to jump on a dinosaur-of-a-snake. Once we had her under control we were just cracking beers and hanging out.  It was like we won a football game.”

Elfenbein called professional python hunter Amy Siewe, aka the “Python Huntress,” to help dispatch the snake.

Siewe has been a professional python hunter since 2019, first with the state, and now with her own guiding service. She’s caught hundreds of snakes. When she rounded her truck and set eyes upon the snake, she was shocked. “I’m telling you it is the fattest snake I’ve ever seen in my life. It was insane,” she said.

Siewe humanely euthanized the massive female with a captive bolt gun, which is the approved method of euthanasia by the American Veterinary Association.

“We got her calmed down … before we dispatched her,” Siewe said.

“Amy is an incredible python hunter — she has a lot of care for the well-being of the snakes,” Elfenbein said. “I could tell she was happy to get rid of her, but I could see that she was sad to have to kill her.”

Siewe took the snake to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida for an official weight and measurement: 17 feet 2 inches, 198 pounds with a 23-inch girth – thicker than the average man’s thigh.

To put that in perspective, Siewe’s largest snake was an inch longer, at 17 feet 3 inches (she caught it solo) and 110 pounds. This snake was nearly twice as heavy.

“Between the deer and the pigs, they’re eating pretty well out there in Big Cypress,” she said.

Sure enough, this snake had deer hooves in her stomach when she was processed. That’s a concern for biologists, who worry that a drop in the deer population will make life even more challenging for endangered Florida panthers.

There also were egg follicles inside her, a sign of the upcoming breeding season in winter. Removing large females from the ecosystem is currently the most effective way to fight the python invasion, which in some areas has reduced the population of medium-sized mammals by more than 90%

The biggest ever

The heaviest python ever recorded in Florida was an 18-foot, 215-pound leviathan captured in Picayune Strand, just west of Big Cypress National Preserve, in 2021.

Biologists Ian Bartoszek and Ian Easterling of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida tracked a male “scout snake” named Dionysus into the wilderness during breeding season as he sniffed out potential mates. He led them to the massive female full of eggs.

The longest python ever captured in Florida measured 19 feet, weighed 125 pounds, and was caught by amateur hunter Jake Waleri this past July, also in Big Cypress National Preserve.

As for the python’s future, they’re thriving. Elfenbein said he’s worried about a proposal that would convert Big Cypress National Perverse into an official “wilderness” area and limit access for amateur hunters like himself.

Meanwhile, the snake’s invasion front has moved north out of the Everglades all the way to the suburbs of Fort Myers and the shores of Lake Okeechobee.

And last week, alligator hunters caught a 12-foot python in Brevard County, some 70 miles north (as the crow flies) of where biologists say pythons are reproducing in the wild. There’s no way to know if that snake was a released pet or a wild snake, but the fact that it was caught so far north is concerning.

But these python hunters said they’ll come back for more. “I grew up on Steve Irwin, watching him every morning as a kid,” said Gavlock, who plans on hitting the dark cypress swamps again this weekend. “To be honest, though, I don’t think we’ll ever top that snake.”