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Publicado: 23 de enero de 2013
Florida Mounts a Hunt for Creatures That Maintain a Very Low Profile
Stalking a Python: Florida's wildlife agency is organizing its first python hunting competition. A group known as the FloridaPython Hunters is out to win the challenge. Will they even catch one?
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – For as long as anyone can remember, hunters here have wielded machetes, knives, rifles andcrossbows as they swept past thickets of mosquitoes and saw grass in pursuit of alligators, feral hogs, bobcats and vermin of all sizes.
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Florida’s Great Python Hunt
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Jason Henry for The New York Times
David Liebman, a permittedBurmese python hunter also known as Python Dave, showing off two large Burmese Pythons he caught near Miami. More Photos »
But on the outskirts of the Everglades this month, a different kind of hunt istaking place, and among those on the trail are three men with little macho swagger and zero hunting finery. They drive up gravel roads alongside the brush in a red “man-van” (a well-lived in ToyotaSienna) and a blue Prius (“You can’t beat the mileage,” says one).
And when they get lucky, they clamber down from their vehicles and snare enormous Burmese pythons with their bare hands, shrugging offthe inevitable bites.
Two of the hunters are brothers, reared in the swamps of Central Florida with eight other siblings. The third is a Utah native, now a Miami high school teacher, who met one ofthe brothers in the apartment building they share. They quickly discovered they have much in common — they are Mormons, for one thing, and not afraid of snakes, for another.
Theirs was truly a chanceencounter, considering that pythons far outnumber snake-savvy Mormons in South Florida.
“We don’t hunt on the Sabbath,” declared Blake Russ, 24, a Florida International University student, as he...
Stalking a Python: Florida's wildlife agency is organizing its first python hunting competition. A group known as the FloridaPython Hunters is out to win the challenge. Will they even catch one?
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – For as long as anyone can remember, hunters here have wielded machetes, knives, rifles andcrossbows as they swept past thickets of mosquitoes and saw grass in pursuit of alligators, feral hogs, bobcats and vermin of all sizes.
Multimedia
Slide Show
Florida’s Great Python Hunt
ConnectWith Us on Twitter
Follow@NYTNational for breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
Enlarge This Image
Jason Henry for The New York Times
David Liebman, a permittedBurmese python hunter also known as Python Dave, showing off two large Burmese Pythons he caught near Miami. More Photos »
But on the outskirts of the Everglades this month, a different kind of hunt istaking place, and among those on the trail are three men with little macho swagger and zero hunting finery. They drive up gravel roads alongside the brush in a red “man-van” (a well-lived in ToyotaSienna) and a blue Prius (“You can’t beat the mileage,” says one).
And when they get lucky, they clamber down from their vehicles and snare enormous Burmese pythons with their bare hands, shrugging offthe inevitable bites.
Two of the hunters are brothers, reared in the swamps of Central Florida with eight other siblings. The third is a Utah native, now a Miami high school teacher, who met one ofthe brothers in the apartment building they share. They quickly discovered they have much in common — they are Mormons, for one thing, and not afraid of snakes, for another.
Theirs was truly a chanceencounter, considering that pythons far outnumber snake-savvy Mormons in South Florida.
“We don’t hunt on the Sabbath,” declared Blake Russ, 24, a Florida International University student, as he...
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