Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are things going with the pythons OP??

It's really sad how FL has become overrun with invasive species. I used to live in Ft. Lauderdale and knew some USDA folks who worked on ways to combat invasive plants but it seemed like such an uphill battle.

OP here


Python hunt yesterday was disappointing for several reasons. Go a page or two back and look for my post about the lack of small animals and birds in the Everglades.

The python problem is far worse than I’d imagined. Read the post, it’ll make sense.


Why not throw them back for the other fish to eat?

Took a break from iguanas this morning and did some fishing. Caught two lionfish - another invader that is screwing up the local reefs. They were (very very carefully due to their venomous spines!) killed and put in the trash dumpster on shore.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you kill them? Club them over the head with a rock?

Shoot them just behind the eye with a high power airgun, or harpoon them with a dart and then beat them to death with a small club. The darts are for places where it’s not safe enough to shoot an airgun.

Is this part necessary? It's one think to shoot a living being and have it die instantly, quite another to "beat it to death."

There’s some places where we’re hunting where it just isn’t safe to use a high power airgun. If you miss, or get a through-and-through shot where it passes through the iguana and keeps going, the pellet can hit something you don’t want. Houses, windows, cars - people! Don’t want that under any circumstances! So you have to harpoon them instead, and then reel them in and dispatch them manually.

Believe me, I much prefer shooting them when possible. Yesterday I had one that my wife harpooned scratch the hell outta my left shin as I was moving in to club it. Bled all the way down in my sock! Thought I was gonna need butterfly stitches for a while until it finally scabbed over.

So sometimes the iguanas get a few licks in, too. It happens.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wish we could do the same with feral and outdoor cats. Horrible for native ecosystems.

OP here


I don’t think I could ever bring myself to shoot a cat. I have two cats.


But I get what you’re saying. Ferals are a HUGE problem. I can’t even fathom how many birds and small mammals they kill.


But I’m not the guy for that. I love shooting iguanas. Cats? Couldn’t do it. Sorry.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I figure I’m probably the only DCUM’r who’s ever come to Fort Lauderdale for the sole purpose of killing as many giant lizards as I can in a long weekend. That seems worthy of an AMA.

Some background:

Iguanas are an invasive species in Florida. The state encourages people to kill them wherever and whenever possible. They damage native vegetation, vegetable gardens, eat bird eggs and their burrows undermine sidewalks and canal walls causing erosion. Got here earlier today, just came back from our first hunt. Wife killed 9 and I killed 6 in 2 hours. Tomorrow we have a full day hunt, and then Sunday we go to Big Cypress to do a python hunt. Then more iguanas on Monday and Tuesday.


AMA!

No question just admiration. Too bad they can't kill the idiots who bring them into the counry and then set them free when they get too big.

OP here

They don’t import them anymore. You can’t even own one as a pet now in FL.

But it really is sorta pointless now. They’re established here, and self sustaining. The only things keeping them in check at this point is cold weather - so they don’t keep expanding northwards - and people hunting them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you kill them? Club them over the head with a rock?

Shoot them just behind the eye with a high power airgun, or harpoon them with a dart and then beat them to death with a small club. The darts are for places where it’s not safe enough to shoot an airgun.

I truly cannot imagine clubbing any other animal to death. Can you shoot it?

OP here


There are places where we just can’t use the air rifles due to safety concerns about misses or shoot-through’s. In those places you harpoon them with a small dart and then reel them in with a line attached to the dart.

When you pull them aboard the boat, they’re very much in a fighting mood. A big male scratched my leg up yesterday when I was moving in to put him down. It happens. Sometimes they get lucky. It’s a contact sport.


But shooting is preferable. A headshot will usually kill them instantly. Or at least render them unconscious/incapacitated instantly, as long as the air gun is sufficiently powerful.

An air gun like you’d see for sale at Dick’s or BassPro isn’t powerful enough. You need something more powerful than that. The ones we use fire a much larger pellet than the ones sold at big box retailers. Which is why we have to be very careful about the places where we shoot.

Of course they fight back. You're trying to kill them and they don't know why.

You get a scratch and they get clubbed to death? Hardly seems an even trade for someone CHOOSING to go down and do this activity/job.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any luck with the pythons? It's insane how quickly they've decimated wildlife in the Everglades and surrounding areas.

OP checking in!


Sorry for the lack of updates, had a long day hunting on Saturday, then early to bed and up at 3am in order to get over to the west side of the state on I-75 and out into the hunt area in Big Cypress by dawn today.

No. Pythons.

Bummer. A couple factors: wasn’t quite as cool last night as we were hoping, so the snakes probably weren’t as cold as we were hoping, and didn’t need to bask very long before they got moving for the day. The other reason - and this is the REAL bummer - is that Florida Fish and Wildlife now thinks the python population is falling off - from gradual starvation. The reason that’s a bummer is because that means they’ve already eaten most of the small animals in the southern part of the state. As proof of this, or at least my own anecdotal observation, we spent 6 hours walking through brush, cypress woods, pine hammocks and grassland today, and I didn’t see a SINGLE rabbit, squirrel, possum, raccoon, fox, beaver, muskrat, nutria or other small mammal, or any tracks at obvious places. Nothing. Not even many smaller birds to be seen or heard. Big wading birds, yes, but very few small birds. It was erie. In a place that should’ve been full of life, there was literally nothing larger than bugs or smaller than deer or wild hogs. There’s a whole lot of animals out there that aren’t there anymore. That’s what pythons have done to the western Everglades. And now they’re gradually starving out because there’s nothing left to eat. So nature finds a way to fix imbalances I guess. But it sure is costly, with lots of collateral damage and ripple effects. It was a real downer to be out there today and realize what is happening.


So, that was the update for today. Yesterday we hunted in the morning, killed about two dozen by lunch, then went to the beach. I harpooned one practically underneath the I-95 bridge by the Ft Lauderdale airport that was 68” long and 16 lbs! Biggest of the trip so far. Huge male, with bright orange skin with black banding. Paid a local kid at the marina $50 to skin it and do a tanning on it for me. I’ll figure out what to make from it later.

Back out tomorrow morning.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you kill them? Club them over the head with a rock?

Shoot them just behind the eye with a high power airgun, or harpoon them with a dart and then beat them to death with a small club. The darts are for places where it’s not safe enough to shoot an airgun.

I truly cannot imagine clubbing any other animal to death. Can you shoot it?

OP here


There are places where we just can’t use the air rifles due to safety concerns about misses or shoot-through’s. In those places you harpoon them with a small dart and then reel them in with a line attached to the dart.

When you pull them aboard the boat, they’re very much in a fighting mood. A big male scratched my leg up yesterday when I was moving in to put him down. It happens. Sometimes they get lucky. It’s a contact sport.


But shooting is preferable. A headshot will usually kill them instantly. Or at least render them unconscious/incapacitated instantly, as long as the air gun is sufficiently powerful.

An air gun like you’d see for sale at Dick’s or BassPro isn’t powerful enough. You need something more powerful than that. The ones we use fire a much larger pellet than the ones sold at big box retailers. Which is why we have to be very careful about the places where we shoot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How does one kill iguanas? Where do you put them? Who commissions this? Did you fly to FL just to do that?

We’re using a couple different means.

High-powered air rifles (not Red Ryder Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifles, lolz). Big, powerful air rifles. A headshot is almost always instantly lethal to even large (5ft) lizards.

Blowguns which fire darts connected to fishing line (for places where it’s too close to buildings/homes for air rifles). You dart them, reel them in, then club them.

There is a guy down here who is a fish market buyer who buys them. $.50 pound.

Yes, came here just to kill iguanas and hopefully a python or two.

Anonymous wrote:I figure I’m probably the only DCUM’r who’s ever come to Fort Lauderdale for the sole purpose of killing as many giant lizards as I can in a long weekend. That seems worthy of an AMA.

Some background:

Iguanas are an invasive species in Florida. The state encourages people to kill them wherever and whenever possible. They damage native vegetation, vegetable gardens, eat bird eggs and their burrows undermine sidewalks and canal walls causing erosion. Got here earlier today, just came back from our first hunt. Wife killed 9 and I killed 6 in 2 hours. Tomorrow we have a full day hunt, and then Sunday we go to Big Cypress to do a python hunt. Then more iguanas on Monday and Tuesday.


AMA!

Anonymous wrote:How are things going with the pythons OP??

It's really sad how FL has become overrun with invasive species. I used to live in Ft. Lauderdale and knew some USDA folks who worked on ways to combat invasive plants but it seemed like such an uphill battle.