ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Hunters from all over the world are in the Everglades right now, competing to bring in the most Burmese pythons before the Florida Python Challenge wraps up on July 19. <\/p>\n
News 6\u2019s Matt Austin drove four hours to Everglades City to find the people who do this on purpose. Turns out, they\u2019re not who you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK \u2014 I just got a text from the python hunter. She says the bugs are raging.\u201d<\/p>\n
That text came from Kaylen Glenn, a tenth-generation Floridian and semi-pro python hunter we met at a restaurant with a name that says it all: Wild Man\u2019s Pizza, Pasta and Pythons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nighttime. It\u2019s time to party,\u201d Glenn said, as the sun started to drop.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not who you picture when you hear \u201csnake hunter.\u201d Neither are her friends. Jerry Miller, a park ranger, showed up to hunt an invasive apex predator wearing shorts, \u201cI brought my grandma down here and we caught like an 8-footer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how the job actually works. At sunset, you climb into the back of a pickup truck wrapped in lights. Once the sun is down, the truck creeps along while everyone scans the edge of the road for a shimmer that doesn\u2019t belong.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re gonna get our spotlights, and we\u2019re gonna be looking for the pythons,\u201d Glenn explained. \u201cShine back with a very small hint of blue.\u201d<\/p>\n
We got a hit almost immediately. Snake spotted. Tourists driving by pulled over to see what all the fuss was about \u2014 including a couple visiting from Poland.<\/p>\n
The road was packed with hunters that night, and the mosquitoes were just as committed to the hunt as we were. The noise out there \u2014 frogs, insects, night birds \u2014 sounds like a natural casino running nonstop across 1.5 million acres of wilderness.<\/p>\n
That wilderness has quietly been emptied out. Pythons have eaten their way through most of the small mammals that used to call the Everglades home. \u201cYou used to see deer foraging. I haven\u2019t seen probably three deer in the last few years,\u201d Glenn told us. \u201cTheir population has been decimated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stakes are real: $10,000 goes to whoever brings in the most snakes by the end of the competition. But on this particular night, luck wasn\u2019t on anyone\u2019s side. We searched from the truck. We searched on foot \u2014 wool socks turned out to be a terrible decision. We heard a splash in the water that turned out to be a gator, not a python. We spotted massive, stoic owls perched in the trees, plenty of other snakes, bullfrogs, and gators lurking in the dark.<\/p>\n
Then, around 1 a.m., the rain turned relentless. Even with hundreds of thousands of pythons estimated to be living in the Everglades, by 2 a.m. we had to call it a night \u2014 without catching a single one.<\/p>\n
The Florida Python Challenge runs through July 19. We\u2019ll let you know who wins.<\/p>\n
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