Python Challenge honors longest snake at 13 feet, 8 inches

Booth’s team also took home a prize for largest haul of snakes: 33 pythons.

After a month-long hunt, 106 Burmese pythons have been captured throughout the Everglades National Park in Florida.

The state has not yet announced plans for a 2017 hunt, however, killing a Burmese python in the wild is legal year-round.

Every Python Removal Competition participant was required to complete an online training module, and more than 500 people also attended in-person trainings, which taught them how to identify, locate and safely and humanely capture Burmese pythons. Over 1,000 people from 29 states registered to remove pythons from South Florida’s wetlands from January 16 through February 14.

Unless you’re eager to see giant pythons, the Florida Everglades just became a much more desirable vacation spot. “We need to keep this momentum going now that the competition is over”, Wildlife Conservation Commissioner Ron Bergeron said. Moniz also won $1,000 for catching a 13-foot, 8.7-inch-long python.

This year, though, hunters could capture the snakes, double-bag them, put them in a labeled, heavy-duty box and drop the live snakes off at state hunt check stations. The snakes are not native to Florida and prey on other wildlife. He caught no snakes.

Others are selling him their dead snakes for up to $150 apiece, or about the same price Wood pays for fully processed, tanned and dyed python skins imported from Asia. Brian Wood, owner of All American Alligator in Hollywood, makes everything from Chuck Taylor style tennis shoes to full-length python skin trousers. Though this is an impressive number, pythons remain an invasive problem in the area, but wildlife officials are more concerned with bringing awareness to the issue.

The aim of the hunt is to get rid of these Burmese Pythons, as they don’t belong in Florida’s wetlands.

“I’m trying to promote this lizard we have that’s taken over”, he says, meaning iguanas, which his sons are hired to hunt in South Florida’s urban and suburban environments.