Python hunting

Quote: rxwine

How do you microchip a python?

Let it eat your dog.


*working on a joke*

Heheheh, I laughed. Probable better with "cat" though, since they're smaller. My 2 cents.

Quote: rxwine

How do you microchip a python?

Buy a microchip and some microbrews then fall asleep in the hot sun ... .

From the Atlantic Wire:
link

Bryan Christy doesn't think the Python Challenge is very funny. Writing for National Geopraphic, he argues that the event promotes senseless animal cruelty more than awareness about conservation efforts:

I met contestants who had never seen a Burmese python, who had never handled a snake. I overheard one man telling some greenhorns that his technique is to swing a snake by the tail and slam its head into a tree. "It stuns 'em," he said ...

No one believes Burmese pythons in Florida can be eradicated. The pythons are here to stay. They are part of Florida now. How we treat these animals at our periphery says a lot about how we will treat life more dear to us.

Christy talked about the hunt with wildlife professor Frank Mazzotti, who notes the Cuban tree frog is a bigger problem for Florida ecosystems, but try selling a war on cute little frogs to the public.

Writer Dave Barry: "I'm not going anywhere near people who have come from other states to try to kill large non-native snakes with guns. Scott Wisneski, a reptile store owner: the Python Challenge seems too much like mob violence: " Get your pitchfork and your torches and go get them!"

Want to add to this story? dwagner@theatlantic.com.
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I won't question the snakes versus tree frogs statement but I think a hunter has a right to choose his prey as he wishes. Does a state agency have a similar right to emphasize one portion of its mandate and gloss over other more vital portions?

I agree that untrained personnel chasing cash bounties can be dangerous particularly if ignorant of snakes or the Everglades, but tourists of any sort can be an awful problem, particularly when you throw in some alcohol and ignorance to the situation.

I'm not particularly fond of snakes but see no reason have an event that is more of a media event than an eradication event. The time and money might be better spent on increasing the permits issued to professional python eradicators who know how to do their job and know not to mix alcohol consumption with guns, gators or pythons.

I would recommend taking care of Florida hunters first and not opening up the event to curious out of state gawkers but only to out of state people who produce hunting licenses indicating general knowledge of guns and rural areas that are rugged and full of unknown dangers.

A python expert told FOX 13 News.

The number of pythons in the Everglades is now under scrutiny because of the Python Challenge. In the first two weeks of the event, 1,000 hunters had shot only 30 snakes indicating prior estimates are way off, but the issue of pythons in the wild has gotten overblown. State officials made getting rid of them a political hot button after an escaped pet python killed a child. He also says the media spread unsubstantiated estimates.
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I would tend to agree that one thousand participants and only thirty snakes indicates the existence of fewer snakes than originally estimated or a greater interest in beer and broads amongst the python hunters who went out on a lark. Inexperience, incompetence, poor geographical selection, etc. may all play a role but at some point one has to assume that one thousand searchers can't all be drunken womanizers who told their wives they are out hunting pythons so as to get a thousand dollars.

No one knows for sure how many pythons live in South Florida. A tally of 37 may seem low, but researchers say that number reflects how hard it is to spot pythons in the swamps.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/29/3206171/floridas-python-hunt-yields-37.html#storylink=cpy

I can understand the Python Challenge being more than half over and only 37 pythons killed, but no matter how difficult to spot these python hunters are supposed to be well motivated by the money so I would indeed conclude the low kill number is due to low population numbers.

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Manslaughter convictions upheld on appeal: here

The couple's child, 2, died after their python crawled out of its aquarium in the couple's Oxford home on July 1, 2009, slithered down the hallway and into the child's open bedroom. It then climbed into Shaianna's crib, wrapped around the her body and strangled her. Hare and Darnell are serving 12-year prison terms. She is at Hernando Correctional Institution in Brooksville and he is at the Mayo Work Camp in Mayo.

Not too many things can be hunted to extinction. I'd have to guess the best the hunters can do is keep the numbers down.

From what I know about hunting, something had most or all of the 37 out and about - needing to feed, most likely. Some of the very clever types may have figured out how to stake the snake dens out, but you still have to wait for activity I'm thinking. If there were some way of baiting them, I would think more than 37 would have been bagged.

PS: check out feral hogs in Hawaii for an example of failure trying to use hunters to eliminate such a problem.

I'd certainly suggest that the Burmese Python follows an odor trail and then hunts by sight. Consider the baby's urine in that "down the hall and up into the crib" scenario. Much of the world seeks out nitrogen in its various forms.

It is simply posited that 37 is too small a number for the problem to be as large as the media contend it is, but perhaps its simply too few hungry or curious pythons were out and about.

Quote:

Two young men who became "stranded and disoriented" while taking part in a python hunt in Florida's Everglades were rescued Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

The Broward County sheriff's office said in an email Thursday night that units responded to a call about the missing men at about 4 p.m. Air rescue units began a search of the area, and the hunters were found about a half-hour later at a location 15 miles west of U.S. 27 at the northernmost border of the county. A helicopter landed in the Everglades and transported the two men to rescue units a few miles away.

The news release said the victims, ages 22 and 25, "complained of lightheadedness and weakness and were suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration." Firefighters were told they were from Tennessee. The men, who have not been identified, were treated at the scene and declined to be transported to a hospital.

So, the count was almost Pythons 37, Humans 2.




Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/science/article/Disoriented-python-hunters-rescued-in-Everglades-4261618.php#ixzz2KH4NYSXc

Winners of the 2013 Python Challenge were announced Saturday at Zoo Miami, along with final figures that included a total of 68 Burmese pythons caught, killed and delivered and one snake that measured 14 feet, 3 inches.

Nearly 1,600 people from 38 states and Canada paid $25 and completed an online training course for the right to compete in the unprecedented, state-sponsored hunt.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission initiated the 30-day hunt to raise public awareness about invasive species in Florida, to gain more specimens for lab study and to get more GPS locations for known Burmese python populations.

Winners included:

Brian Barrows: $1,500 for most pythons caught (6) in the general hunt

Ruben Ramirez: $1,500 for most python caught (18) in the trained/permitted class

Paul Shannon: $1,000 for longest snake in the general hunt at 14-feet-3-inches

Ruben Ramirez: $1,000 for longest python in trained/permitted class
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In short: a state sponsored media event at fairly high cost for little or no benefit in relation to a media-created and largely non-existent problem.

USA Today

Perhaps... $25 and 1600 people brought in $40,000. 38 states and Cananda, (they had to eat and sleep, so tourist money)

minus $5000 in prizes. not sure what other administrative costs would be. The fed agencies get paid anyway -- don't think they hired anybody special for this. Plus some free advertising from news reports.