Some families go to the beach or into the mountains together. Others prefer museums, movies or theme parks. But Carl Jackson’s family would rather chase invasive Burmese pythons in the heart of Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve.
They were there on Jan. 13 as Carl drove his truck from the Bear Island campground to another location. He is with his wife Tasha, 20-year-old son Ryker and 16-year-old daughter Jazzlyn. Although Rick and Jazlyn have hunted snakes before, they just became certified as assistants at Carr Contracting. (The minimum age to be a python contractor assistant in Florida is 14.) This was the family’s first official python hunt together.
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It was around 2:30 p.m. and the Jackson family was happily rolling down the dirt road when Carl saw a python’s tracks crossing the road. The track was about as wide as a mountain bike tire, Carl thought, just wide enough for a family to get their feet wet. So he got out of the car and walked out onto the road, and immediately saw a huge snake head in the bushes.
“But I could only see half of its body, and I thought it was about 12 feet long. So I grabbed its head,” Carr said. “When I grabbed one, I knew, ‘Oh shit,’ I made a mistake. It didn’t even try to fight. It just started dragging me toward the canal.”
A family of four vs a 200-pound python
Carl did not let go of the snake, but placed his hands under the snake’s head and continued riding.
“It took me through some really thick brush, then it took me through red and black ant hills, and then it took me through some more brush,” Carr said. “That’s when I was finally able to hang my feet over the brush so I could use leverage. The whole time I was yelling, ‘Help! I need help!'”
Photo courtesy Carl Jackson
Photo courtesy Carl Jackson
Photo courtesy Carl Jackson
The python kept sliding toward the nearest canal, threatening to drag him all the way into the water, but Carl jerked the snake back with his heels. The python then stops and wraps its energy around the attacker. Carl felt the snake try to coil around his body and push him into the dirt. Then Lake showed up.
“He was trying to get that coil around me and I was kidding and trying to get it away from me. Lake said, ‘Oh my God. What am I going to do?!’ I yelled, ‘Grab his tail and start stretching! Don’t let the coil get to me!”
Lake grabbed the tail and pulled hard, and Jezlyn ran over to help. Carl, who had a 9mm pistol hanging from his hip, now regrets not shooting the snake when he had the chance. With his family standing around him and both hands occupied, he could not safely draw his weapon. He yelled at Jazlyn to grab the electrical tape in his front left pocket, and she searched around until she found it.
Carl felt another circle on his back. Now the snake is winning the tug-of-war with Ryker, who is about 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 200 pounds. So Jazlyn threw away the tape and used all her strength to stop the snake from wrapping around her father.
“Now I’m watching the snake die in its mouth and it’s trying to eat my face,” Carr said. “Meanwhile, my wife came up to us and she grabbed the duct tape and when I fought it, she started duct tape over its mouth. I told her to tape up its eyes as well.”
Carr said pythons, like alligators, tend to calm down when their eyes are taped shut. Photo courtesy Carl Jackson
For a moment, the taped boa relaxed, allowing Carl to catch his breath. But it could still smell the nearby canal, and soon it was dragging him again. The other three swarmed over and took control of the snake, with Carl just a foot away from the bank. The snake dragged him about 30 feet from where the wrestling match began.
From there, four hunters carried the python back to the alley and grabbed a snake bag from the truck. The snake was too big to fit in the bag, so Carl grabbed his small .22 pistol and dispatched the invading snake.
“Oh my God. This is prehistoric.”
With the giant Burmese python taking up most of the 1-ton truck bed, Carl and his crew drove away from Big Cypress to find a place to weigh the snake. He called one of his contractor buddies, who was also a crabber, and they brought it to his property, where he had a large commercial crane scale.
“This guy was in his sixties and had been hunting snakes since high school. When we got there and pulled the truck over, his eyes were wide open. He said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It’s bigger than any snake I’ve ever seen.'”
Carl holds up the head of a giant Burmese python. Photo courtesy Carl Jackson
They measured the python’s length at 16 feet, 10 inches and said it weighed 202 pounds. After several phone calls, Carl’s friends confirmed that this was the second largest Burmese python ever caught in the wild in Florida. (The heaviest python on record weighed 215 pounds and was captured by Southwest Florida Conservancy biologists in 2022.)
The family’s next stop was a drop box operated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. The next day, Carl arranged for someone to pick up the shipment from Inversa, a company that buys Burmese pythons and turns them into leather for shoes and other products.
Read next: These snake trackers have already removed more than 20 tons of invasive pythons from Florida… and their operation has only just begun
“So we met him there the next day,” Carr said. “We have [the python] In a large tote bag in the back seat of my wife’s car. I pulled it out and opened the lid and he said, ‘Oh my God. This is prehistoric! “
Since there wasn’t enough room in his van for the snake, Carl and Tasha followed Inversa employees to a taxidermist. While skinning the 202-pound female python, they found 200 eggs inside, which may have been her own record. (The 2022 catch weighed 215 pounds and contained 122 eggs.)
From left: Tasha, Carl, Lake and Jazlyn. Photo courtesy Carl Jackson
As a contractor whose main goal is to remove as many invasive snakes as possible, Carr said the number of eggs is what the family is most proud of. The question is: After what they experienced in January, will they ever want to chase a snake again?
Related: Monsters of the Swamp – Hunting Giant Invasive Pythons in the Florida Everglades
“Oh, yeah. Sometimes I don’t work and we just hang out as a family,” Carl said. “My six-year-old daughter, she loves to jump out of the truck, [finding] Little water snakes and stuff like that. She can’t wait to grow up and become Mom and Dad’s assistant. “
