Some families go to the beach or into the mountains together. Others prefer museums, movies, or theme parks. Carl Jackson’s clan, though, would rather be chasing invasive Burmese pythons through the heart of Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve.
That’s where they were on Jan. 13, as Carl drove the truck from Bear Island campground to another site. He was with his wife, Tasha, their 20-year-old son, Ryker, and 16-year-old daughter, Jazzlyn. Although they’d hunted snakes before, Ryker and Jazzyln had just gotten certified as assistants with Carl’s contracting company. (The minimum age to be a python contractor’s assistant in Florida is 14.) This was the first day the family had gone out together on an official python hunt.
Read Next: Can You Make a Living Hunting Pythons? We Asked Florida’s Invasive Snake Contractors
It was around 2:30 p.m., and the Jacksons were happily rolling down the dirt road when Carl saw a python track going across the roadway. The track was about as wide as a mountain bike tire — just big enough for the family to get their feet wet, Carl thought. So he got out of the vehicle, walked off the road and immediately saw a giant snake head in the brush.
“But I could only see about half its body, and I was thinking it was about 12 feet long. So I grabbed its head,” Carl says. “And as soon as I grabbed a hold I knew, ‘ah crap,’ I’d misjudged. It didn’t even try to fight. It just started dragging me toward the canal.”
A Family of Four vs. a 200-Pound Python
Instead of letting go of the giant snake, Carl kept his hands just below its head and hung on for the ride.
“It drug me through some real thick brush, then it drug me over a red and black ant hill, and then it drug me through some more brush,” says Carl. “That’s when I was finally able to get my feet hooked on some brush to where I could get some leverage. And the whole time I’m yelling, ‘Help! I need some help!’”
The python kept slithering toward the nearest canal, and it might have taken him all the way into the water, but Carl dug his heels in and pulled on the snake. The python then stopped and put its energy into wrapping its attacker. Carl felt the snake trying to coil around his body as it pushed him down into the dirt. Then Ryker showed up.
“It was trying to get that coil around me, and I was juking and jiving and trying to keep it off me. And Ryker goes, ‘Holy shit. What do I do?!’ I yelled out, ‘Grab its tail and start stretching! Just keep the coils off me!’”
Ryker grabbed onto the tail and pulled hard as Jazzlyn ran up to help, too. Carl, who had a 9mm handgun on his hip, was now regretting not shooting the snake when he had his chance. With his family standing around him and both hands occupied, there was no way to safely draw his weapon. He yelled at Jazzlyn to grab the electrical tape that was in his front left pocket, and she dug around until she found it.
Carl felt another coil on his back. The snake was now winning the tug-of-war with Ryker, who’s around 6 foot 1 and 200 pounds. So Jazzlyn dropped the tape and used all her strength to keep the snake from wrapping around her dad.
“Now I’m looking at the snake dead in the mouth, and it’s trying to eat my face,” Carl says. “At the same time, my wife got to us, she grabbed the tape, and while I’m fighting it, she started taping the mouth up. I told her to tape its eyes shut, too.”
For a moment, the taped python relaxed, allowing Carl to catch his breath. But it could still smell the nearby canal, and pretty soon it was dragging him again. The other three piled on and got control of the snake with Carl just a foot away from the bank. The snake had dragged him roughly 30 feet from where their wrestling match began.
From there, the four hunters carried the python back to the roadway, where they grabbed a snake bag from the truck. The snake was much too big to fit in the bag, so Carl grabbed his smaller .22 pistol and dispatched the invasive snake.
“Good God. It’s Prehistoric”
With the massive Burmese python taking up most of the 1-ton truckbed, Carl and crew drove out of the Big Cypress to find somewhere to weigh the snake. He called one of his contractor buddies, who’s also a crabber, and they took it to his place, which has a big commercial hanging scale.
“This guy, he’s in his mid to late sixties, he’s been hunting snakes since high school. And when we got there and pulled up the truck, his eyes got huge. He said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. That’s bigger than any snake I’ve ever seen.’”
They measured the python at 16 feet 10 inches, then got it on the scale, which showed 202 pounds. After making a few calls, Carl’s buddy confirmed it was the second-heaviest Burmese python ever caught in the wild in Florida. (The heaviest python on record weighed 215 pounds, and it was caught by biologists with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in 2022.)
The family’s next stop was a drop box run by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. Carl arranged a pick-up the following day with someone from Inversa, a company that buys Burmese pythons and turns the skin into leather for shoes and other products.
Read Next: These Snake Trackers Have Removed More than 20 Tons of Invasive Pythons from Florida… and They’re Just Getting Started
“So we meet him there the next day,” Carl says. “We had [the python] in a big tote in the back of my wife’s car. And I pulled it out and took the lid off, and he goes, ‘Good God. It’s prehistoric!’”
Since there wasn’t enough space to fit the snake in his van, Carl and Tasha followed the Inversa employee to a taxidermist. While skinning out the 202-pound female python, they found 200 eggs inside, which could be its own record. (The 215-pounder caught in 2022 had 122 eggs inside it.)
As contractors, whose primary goal is to remove as many of the invasive snakes as possible, Carl says the egg count is what the family is most proud of. The question is: After an experience like they had in January, would they ever want to chase snakes again?
Related: Monsters in the Marsh — Hunting Giant, Invasive pythons in Florida’s Everglades
“Oh, yeah. There’s days that I don’t clock in, and we just go out and have fun as a family,” Carl says. “My little six-year-old, she loves jumping out the truck and [finding] little water snakes, stuff like that. She can’t wait to be old enough to be Mom and Dad’s assistant.”
Read the full article here
