Python drags hunter 15 feet over ant hill; ‘like riding a slow horse’

A professional python hunter in Florida needed help from his family to free a giant Burmese python and finally subdued the second-largest python ever seen in Florida.

Carl Jackson, a contracted python hunter with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, was returning from Turner River Road in Big Cypress National Park on the afternoon of Jan. 13 when he noticed signs of a Burmese python in the truck tracks, the Naples News reported.

They appear to be the tracks of a smaller snake (perhaps an 8-foot tall one).

“I’ll go in [to the bushes] Walking around, I saw a head,” Jackson told Naples News.

He immediately recognized that it was not a small snake.

Jackson began wrestling with the giant python, which dragged him about 10 to 15 feet across a red and black anthill.

“It’s like riding a slow horse,” Jackson, 43, told The Naples News.

“This is crazy.”

Jackson relied on his team to free the snake from his body multiple times. His team included his wife, Tasha, and adopted children, Ryker Young, 20, and Jazzlyn Bateman, 16, who both had become certified associates the day before for the FWC’s Python Action Team “Removal of Invasive Pythons” project.

The python eventually weighed 202 pounds, making it the second-heaviest python ever recorded in Florida. The record is 215 pounds caught in 2022.

Jackson’s python was a 16-foot-10-inch female who laid 200 eggs.

Also on FTW Outdoors: Woman wakes up to find python on chest, “Don’t move”

“That means more to me because that’s 200 potential deer and native animal eaters [that were eliminated],” Jackson told Naples News.

Since moving from Utah last year to hunt pythons, Jackson has killed 91 pythons, including the longest among the 2025 contract hunters — a 17-foot, 10-inch python.

This article was originally published in For The Win: Python drags hunter 15 feet across ant hill; ‘like riding a slow horse’