It was about 10 p.m. on July 18, the last night of the 2026 Florida Python Challenge, when two veteran snake catchers ended up wrestling the biggest snake of the competition. Rahm Levinson and Tom Rahill were cruising along on e-bikes down an old overgrown trail far back in Everglades National Park hoping to spot invasive pythons.
“I was in the front on my bike, with lights on looking for snakes,” Levinson tells Outdoor Life. “Tom was behind me on his bike, and while going along I happened to glance over into the brush and saw a big snake.
“I stopped and thought it was only about a 14-footer or so. Tom stopped behind me, and we headed into the brush to catch it.”
The Biggest Snake from the Florida Python Challenge
The veteran snake hunters who are licensed by the state to remove the invasive pythons had caught plenty of the big reptiles previously. But the one they chanced upon was significantly bigger than they first believed.
“We watched it coiled in the grass for a while, figuring a strategy on how to catch it,” said Levinson, a 45-year-old veteran who served two tours in Iraq. “Then it started to move and I grabbed it by the tail. Tom got its body, and we wrangled it for a long while before we got it into a snake bag to take back and check it in for the Python Challenge.”
About 15 minutes later Rahill saw something in the brush where the big python had been caught and he noticed a nest with an abundance of eggs.
“That big girl had a huge nest, and the eggs were hatching,” Levinson says. “Tom got a snake bag and started picking them up as they were coming out of their eggs. They were popping out of the eggs and Tom was grabbing them fast before they wiggled off into the ‘Glades.”
Rahill snatched 96 python hatchlings from the nest. Levinson says only two of the nest eggs didn’t hatch.
“There were 98 python eggs on that one nest, and Tom got 96 live ones to keep the non-native and invasive snakes out of the Florida environment.”
Both snake hunters are members of SwampApes, a dedicated group of python catchers that has removed countless invasive snakes from Florida. The Broward County group founded by Rahill specializes in taking military veterans with PTSD into Florida’s wilds to catch pythons for outdoor therapy.
Levinson was awarded $1,000 for capturing the longest snake during the state-sponsored Florida Python Challenge. The giant snake officially measured 16 feet, 5 inches. Rahill received the top prize of $10,000 for catching the most Burmese pythons during the 8-day event.
Nearly 300 pythons were removed in July, with most caught during the well-publicized Python Challenge competition. The annual event began in 2017 and its participants have removed over 1,600 pythons during those years.
This year snake hunters were allowed into Everglades National Park during the challenge, which is where Levinson and Rahill caught their snakes.
Other South Florida areas available to snake hunters during this year’s challenge included Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area, Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area, Frog Pond Public Small Game Hunting Area, Holey Land Wildlife Management Area, Rocky Glades Public Small Game Hunting Area, Rotenberger Wildlife Management Area, and Southern Glades Wildlife and Environmental Area.
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Over the last couple decades non-native Burmese pythons have decimated much of the small mammal and ground nesting bird population in much of South Florida. In recent years snake hunters have taken up the year-round, day-and-night challenge of removing as many of the big reptiles as possible.
“I’ve been hunting pythons for about five years now, and I get 20 to 25 every year,” says Levinson. “The over 16-footer I caught during the challenge is by far the biggest one, but I’ve caught some 14s and 15s previously. There are plenty more big ones crawling around out there, too.”
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