Mike Kimmel, a state-contracted python hunter in Florida known as the Python Cowboy, met his match Monday when he caught a 17-foot python that bit him badly in the left arm as he was wrestling him from heavy vegetation.
“She got me good, son,” Kimmel said in a bloody Facebook video. “I got her, though.”
Kimmel was hunting solo on an Everglades island in the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area when he spotted the python three hours into his hunt, according to Local 10 News.
“I could barely contain my excitement,” Kimmel wrote on Instagram. “She definitely was not afraid of me and started to slowly cruise through the vegetation as I carefully walked next to her trying to gauge exactly how large she was. Because of all the grass and weeds it was hard to tell, but I could tell she was an absolute monster.”
Kimmel explained that a python this large that is tangled in vegetation can use it as leverage and “can literally pull you into the swamp [as there is] no stopping 150 pounds of solid muscle.”
“I knew going for her head first would be the easiest and safest capture method, but I couldn’t turn down the chance to grab her by the tail and dance with the devil herself,” he said. “As soon as I grabbed ahold of her, I sealed my fate. No turning back now, she was coming for me.
“She immediately started to battle it out, taking strikes and pulling me into some tall grass with her, making it difficult to dodge her strikes. She was able to successfully get a bite on me.”
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It was a deep bite to his left bicep and forearm that he said pierced an artery and hit some nerves.
“I was lucky she didn’t latch on and that I was able to pull out of it,” he said.
Kimmel managed to tire the python out and get it under control. He then used a snake bag as a tourniquet for his arm, as he was losing a lot of blood. He dragged the snake to his 14-foot john boat where he killed the python with a .22 pistol.
Kimmel, who owns Martin County Trapping and Wildlife Rescue, is an invasive animal biologist and member of the South Florida Water Management District’s Python Elimination Program, which has removed 2,970 invasive pythons in Florida.
The record python taken within the program is 17 feet, 5 inches, though bigger pythons have been caught. A husband-wife team caught an 18-foot, 4-inch python as members of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Python Action Team last October.
The nonvenomous constrictors prey on birds and mammals and threaten Florida’s native wildlife, which prompted the FWC to launch the program to help rid the wilds of Florida of this invasive and destructive species. Contracted python hunters are paid a modest rate for their efforts.
Kimmel is among the leaders in removing the invasive creatures. He won the Florida Python Challenge 2020 Python Bowl held before the Super Bowl earlier this year, the Palm Beach Post reported. He caught eight pythons during the event.
Now he’s got an even bigger goal.
“Now it’s time to lock my sights on that 20-foot state record,” he said.
Photos of the 17-foot python and another he caught a few months ago courtesy of Mike Kimmel.