Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Florida hunters catch massive 15-foot Burmese python
Posted By Deanna Ferrante on Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 1:07 pm
PHOTO VIA NICHOLAS BANOS/FACEBOOK
Photo via Nicholas Banos/Facebook
Last weekend, two South Florida men captured a 144-pound, 15-foot-long python, which is roughly the size of three Danny DeVitos.
According to WSVN, the two snake hunters, Nicholas Banos and Leonardo "PythonKing" Sanchez, captured and killed python last Saturday, April 1, in the Everglades as part of the new program that hired hunters to control the spread of these invasive species.
Banos and Sanchez were driving down a dirt road in the national park when Sanchez spotted the snake out of the car window. The hunters managed to catch the python by the tail before it could escape and wrestle into a bag.
The South Florida Water Management District announced last month that it was hiring 25 python hunters for a 60-day pilot program to help rid the Everglades of the pythons.
The goal of the pilot program is to kill as many pythons as possible, but Banos told WSVN that he has mixed feelings about hurting the snakes.
"We hunt to remove. ... But having to kill it was a little rough for us. We've never really had to do that before," he says. "It was satisfying, but it was also a feeling of a little bit of heartbreak."
The hunters in the program receive a minimum wage salary and at least $50 for every 4-foot snake killed, plus an extra $25 for every extra foot.
Since the snake Banos and Sanchez caught was 15 feet long, they'll receive a payday of $325 for this catch.
