Two teams of python hunters in Florida spotted a large Burmese python at the same time stretched out almost the width of the road, and it took all five hunters to work together to capture the behemoth reptile.
Elfenbein was hunting with his son Cole at Big Cypress National Preserve on Friday night when they spotted the biggest snake they’d ever seen, as reported by CBS News.
“It was more than a snake, it was a monster,” Mike Elfenbein told CBS News.
Trey Barber, Carter Gavlock and Holden Hunter saw it, too, and joined forces with the Elfenbeins, which was a good thing, as it turned out.
“We were strangers,” Elfenbein told CBS News. “But the five of us knew we had to capture this thing.”
Gavlock grabbed the tail, Cole grabbed the head and the others sat on the python’s back and wrestled it for more than 45 minutes as the python kept lifting its body off the ground “trying to constrict” its captors and trying to move them out of the way.
It was 10 p.m. when Elfenbein phoned professional python hunter Amy Siewe, who immediately drove to Big Cypress National Preserve to join the hunters.
She told CBS News it was the fattest python she’d ever seen, and she has captured 530 of them since becoming a professional hunter in 2019.
“Using a captive bolt gun, which is the method of euthanasia approved by the American Veterinary Association, she killed the python,” CBS News reported.
Siewe registered the python’s measurements with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. The female Burmese python stretched 17 feet, 2 inches and weighed 198 pounds, the second-heaviest python ever captured in Florida, the Conservancy confirmed with CBS News.
“It was hard to comprehend the size,” Siewe told CBS News.
When the python was skinned, remains of white-tailed deer hooves were found in its stomach.
“We often see the remains of deer inside pythons,” Ian Bartoszek, a research manager at the Conservancy, told CBS News. “Their impact throughout the food web of the Greater Everglades ecosystem cannot be understated.”
Which is why Florida is attempting to eradicate the species, or at least keep their numbers in check.