Snake Hunter
A python hunt might evoke images of hunters trudging through swamps and wresting reptiles out of the mud. In reality, it involves cruising the lonely roads that traverse Florida’s Everglades in S.U.V.s, hoping for a glimpse of a giant snake. It is strange work, straining on the eyes, brutal on the sleep schedule.
Python hunters love it.
FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD BACKGROUND
Born near Dayton, Ohio, Amy Siewe (AS), spent much of her childhood outdoors with her father, who taught her to fish and catch wildlife like crawdads and snakes. So, her passion for the outdoors and wildlife was instilled at a young age.
EDUCATION
Following high school graduation, AS earned a communications degree at the University of Toledo in Ohio and then moved to Indianapolis, where she began her career in real estate.
During college, AS had various part-time jobs in the pet and reptile industry, including breeding snakes and working at an exotic pet store. After college, her work with snakes became more of a hobby.
FIRST ADULT JOB IS NEVER A BINDING CAREER COMMITMENT
The first career path for AS involved real estate, initially as a salesperson employed by a real estate agency and then as the owner of a real estate agency – commonly known as a ‘real estate broker.’
AS worked in real estate for 13 years, earning more than enough to support a comfortable lifestyle but still she was ‘unfulfilled ‘– enjoying her work but without sufficient passion for the daily grind of helping a buyer find the right home or assisting a seller to quickly close a deal with a satisfactory profit for the seller. (Whether guiding a buyer or a seller, their agent is paid a percentage of the sale price – typically in the range of 6% only if – and when – the sale is completed.)
When AS visited Florida in 2019 for a vacation, “I was not looking for another job at all, or even a career change,” said AS. “I had a really successful business in Indiana, which I really enjoyed. But when AS went on a python hunt with a friend and learned about how the invasive Asian reptiles were wreaking havoc on South Florida’s ecosystems, AS quickly made up her mind to leave her real estate business behind and jump into snake – specifically python – hunting.
Editor’s note: An ‘ecosystem’ is a geographic area where plants, animals and other organisms plus weather and landscaping interact. Ecosystems contain living things as well as non-living things as well as objects such as rocks, temperature, and humidity. The whole surface of the Earth is a series of connected ecosystems.
Selling her real estate business and the related process of moving from one state to another took the next two months.
PYTHON BACKGROUND
‘Pythonidae,’ commonly known as pythons, are a family of nonvenomous snakes native to Africa, Asia and Australia. They are some of the largest snakes in the world; their average size ranges from 4 to 6 feet but many 10-foot pythons have been confirmed, as well as the recent record setting python: 19 feet, caught 7/10/23 in Florida, a few days after the largest python snake nest in Florida was discovered – 111 eggs total – and removed from the Everglades along with the 13 foot, 9 inch mother.
Since they inject no poison into their prey, pythons must constrict their prey to suffocate it prior to consumption, typically biting their prey to gain hold of it, then using their python physical strength to constrict their prey, by coiling around the animal, effectively suffocating it – causing cardiac arrest in the prey – before swallowing the prey whole, which may take several days or even weeks to fully digest.
Large pythons eat animals the size of a domestic cat, but some Asian species have been known to take down adult deer and antelope. In 2017, there was a confirmed case in Indonesia of a human devoured by a python.
The massive reptiles have become the biggest animal hunters in Florida, and they have a voracious appetite.
GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT IN PYTHON CONTROL
The general understanding of how pythons arrived in Florida is that they were imported from South Asia as exotic pets, many of which were let loose when they grew too big. According to a recent U.S. Geological Survey, pythons have reached West Palm Beach and Fort Myers while threatening more of the ecosystem.
Florida is teeming with nonnative monkeys, iguanas, and tegu lizards. But Burmese pythons may be the most infamous invaders of all. While the federal and state governments have spent billions of dollars to restore the Everglades, pythons have decimated native birds, rabbits, and deer since they were documented as an established predator population in 2000.
State agencies pay about 100 contractors to keep hunting throughout the year, giving them access to levees that are closer to the man-made canals running through the Everglades – closer to the snakes.
Since 2000, more than 19,000 pythons have been removed from the Florida outdoors, a little more than two-thirds of those by contractor “python removal agents.” The program, which began in 2017, is not especially lucrative, paying up to $18 an hour; plus $50 per foot for the first four feet of snake and $25 for each subsequent foot. Removal of a python nest earns $200.
A PYTHON HUNTER WHO SAYS “MY OFFICE IS THE EVERGLADES”
While claiming she enjoyed her years working with real estate buyers and sellers, it was essentially an indoors job. Now, AS prefers ‘hoofing it’ through coastal Florida in search of the massive, yet elusive, pythons.
When she encounters one, she jumps on it, wrangling it into submission for euthanizing it – (AS sells python products on her website from all the animals she has hunted.)
No government is known to require that hunters purchase a permit or hunting license to capture a python, though Florida law requires that they be killed humanely.
Since devoting full-time to her new career, AS says she has caught and killed more than 400 pythons. Her biggest catch came in 2021, when she alone nabbed a 17’ 3” python weighing 110 pounds. She first noted the gigantic beast while driving along a Florida highway around midnight, catching a glimpse of the tell-tale python pattern in the grasses. She pulled to the side of the road and was shocked to see the sheer size of the snake she had found.
Realizing that it was far too big for her to overpower on her own, AS resorted to her preferred wrangling method: placing a drawstring bag over the head of the larger pythons – a strategy that instantly disorients and subdues them.
As the female snake attempted to shimmy her way back to the swamp, AS wrestled with the snake to get the bag over the python’s head. “It was a battle of strength between the two of us,” said AS. “I got the bag over her head, and she just stopped.”
If her years of hunting have taught her anything, it’s that pythons are not usually viewing humans as prey and that pythons over 10 feet are rare to find. But the rarity of encountering creatures longer than 10 feet keeps AS returning to the Everglades time and time again. “The thrill of the hunt will never go away for me,” says AS. “The possibility of finding a 20-foot snake is always there; because we don’t find them every time we go out, I think that’s part of the challenge.”
While AS started out as only a state-contracted python hunter, now in addition to hunting the large snakes, she owns her own guiding service to take people on python hunts. She loves introducing never- before python hunters to new adventures, while explaining all the laws in place for hunting humanely and demonstrating the proper way to euthanize the snakes, using a bolt gun, as approved by the American Veterinary Association.
CHALLENGE – BALANCING KILLING ONE ANIMAL TO HELP SAVE MANY OTHERS
“I have a profound respect for pythons,” says AS, a snake lover who keeps a 2-year-old boa constrictor she named ‘Hank” as a pet. “But I also have a profound respect for the Florida ecosystem, so I know the pythons have to go.”
CHALLENGE – THE SNAKE WRESTLER BETTER WIN THE MATCH!
Tom Rahill (TR) operates a group called “Swamp Apes,” a Florida based organization that takes military veterans out hunting for snakes as a form of therapy for their PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). As he notes, most people might imagine only guys picking up python hunting as a craft but “it’s not just a macho thing where people are expecting to see swampy looking dudes like me,” he said. “There are talented women just like any profession, as many women as there are men.” And they come from all walks of life.
Recently, TR was pulling open a pillow sack to show a snake caught the night before. TR was warned to watch out and sure enough, the snake started biting TR’s feet and legs – anything the snake could reach. TR was covered up, so he didn’t feel anything but excitement, yelling, “Oh, he is a biter!”
Typically, pythons are mostly calm. Every now and then they can get quite feisty. Wrestling snakes over 100 pounds that can fight for up to 15 minutes takes a certain kind of person. “That’s where the adrenaline rush comes in, and I was terrified when I first started doing this,” said a lady python hunter. “Now? I feel like I can do it and I’m not afraid anymore.”
AS confesses to have been bitten many times by those python mouths, each full of razor-sharp teeth. “I can say those bites aren’t fun. They bleed quite a lot.” Plus, there is always the chance of encountering an alligator, panther, bear, or poisonous snake. However, pythons tend to stay away from people and fortunately, are not poisonous.
CAREER SATISFACTION
In the experience of AS, it takes an average of 12 hours to catch one python. But, she says, “Every single one that we’re taking out is saving the lives of hundreds of our native animals.”
“By hunting pythons, I’m using my passion for snakes to make a difference in the world,“ says AS.
“It’s not their fault they’re here, and I absolutely hate having to kill them. To preserve the Everglades, though, they have to go.”
“As a python hunter and guide, I bring my love of snakes and appetite for adventure to the hunt, and my entrepreneurial drive to the business. Every single day brings something new, and I thrive on the challenge – I know I’m living my best life.”
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This career story is based on multiple sources including a news article written by Patricia Mazzei, published by The New York Times newspaper on November 13, 2023, plus internet research: a story for USA Today, written by Eric Lagatta, published by the Naples Daily News; an article by David Sutta, CBS Miami, published 11/19/19 online by ‘Wink News’ and an online article written by Crystal Raypole, published 7/23/23 online by “Insider.”
