New Florida tourist thrill: Hunt, and maybe catch, a python. ‘No experience necessary’

On their Florida vacations, Rob Wessels and his family have pursued an array of typical outings — deep-sea fishing, a stroll at the farmers market, tanning at the pool and beach.

On the most recent visit in July, the Ohio family tried a whole new tourist adventure: They went on a guided python hunt.

“Everyone said, you’re stupid, you’re nuts, crazy,” said Rob Wessels, whose family bagged five snakes one evening in July with snake stalker Amy Siewe. “By the end of the night, we’re so happy and excited.”

Siewe, who is well known in South Florida’s python-hunting community, is pioneering new territory in the wildlife guiding business, leading adventurous visitors like the Wessels on excursions to find — and maybe even catch themselves — the giant invasive constrictors that have overrun the Everglades.

“No experience is necessary to come on a hunt,” Siewe said. “I have tons of people who have never even touched a snake before, and they’re catching pythons. And then I have people that just want to watch me do it.”

Business, she says, is booming. This summer, she’s been out five nights a week in a specially equipped Ford Bronco outfitted with LED lights and an elevated stand that towers above the cab of the truck, helping her clients better survey the landscape. The truck is wrapped with snake print and a “python huntress” logo printed on the side. One tourist joked it looks a little like something out of a Mad Max movie.

Other hunters have dabbled in guided tours but Siewe has made this her full-time business in the last two ytear. Tourists said she was easy to find on Google, partly because she has been profiled as a relatively rare female snake hunter in many publications, including the New York Times and National Geographic.

For Siewe, guiding has also proven far more lucrative than just catching and trapping snakes as a state-certified python hunter. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission pays between $13 to $30 an hour depending on the area, she said, but Siewe charges $1800 a night for up to three people with an extra $300 for each additional person, plus suggested tip for her tours. So Rob Wessels shelled out $2,500 for his group of five for a bucket-list, quintessentially South Florida experience.

His daughter, Madison Wessels, 23, said the last time she had touched a snake she was maybe 10-years-old at a pet shop. But, armed with Siewe’s tips and safety talk, she snatched a 4-footer all on her own.

“I was so comfortable. There was no risk except maybe getting bit and that’s only if you’re not fast enough,” Wessels said. “I was like, there’s only one option and it’s to grab it.”

Booking an outing doesn’t guarantee a capture of the elusive snake, of course, but Siewe said her summer hunt success rate has run around 90 percent — a testament both to her skill and the proliferation of the Burmese python.

Nobody can say for sure how many snakes live in the wild but experts estimate the number is in the hundreds of thousands in South Florida. And they have been slowly spreading north, with captures as far north as Orlando and Brevard County — a march that could continue as climate change raises temperatures and makes more areas inviting for the tropical invaders.

But make no mistake, it’s hard to spot these masters of camouflage in the wild. In the state’s most recent Python Challenge —a widely publicized contest that awards hunters who catch the most snakes — it took 857 participants from 33 states and Canada to find just 195 snakes over weeks of hunting. Some years have been far more productive. Since 2017, the annual hunt has removed more than 14,000 Burmese pythons.

Siewe, who has caught over 600 pythons herself since trading a real estate career in Indiana to become a professional python hunter five years ago, acknowledges hunting will never eradicate an all-terrain invasive species that has devastated Everglades wildlife, consuming everything from marsh rabbits to deer. But removing more snakes can’t hurt either. And she tried to give back to the Glades She donates hunts to charity auctions and has raised $600,000 since she started in January 2023 to conservation groups like the Alliance for Florida’s National Parks and others.

Snake hunting is not for anyone who thinks a Florida tourist experience should involve lounge chairs and piña coladas.

At dusk on one recent weekday night, the mayflies and mosquitoes were swarming. “The buggier the better,” Siewe said swatting a blood-sucker off her neck. It was 85 degrees, humid — what Siewe called perfect conditions for hunting.

For her, the key is covering as much ground as possible. Her fiance, Dave Roberts — who is also in the guiding business but with the more common quarry of fish — drove the truck down Tamiami Trail near Shark Valley, veering into the grassy swale to get closer to the edge of the swamp which made for a bumpy ride.

Siewe kept a unwavering careful eye on the edges of the marsh, waiting for a snake to cross into the grass or the road. The pythons are ambush predators, often motionless until striking, and their brown and tan pattern blends into the Everglades landscape. Catching a glimpse can be a fleeting moment.

“I might only see one tiny sliver of one through this grass, and it might be a 17-footer,” Siewe said. “Sometimes just their little head is showing, and if I look up, I miss it.”

Her biggest snake measured 17 feet 3 inches and weighed a whopping 110 pounds. Siewe, a petite 5 foot 4, relies on outsmarting snakes that large, not outmuscling them. Still, it helps to be fearless and fast. On one past hunt, Steve Parker, a visitor from Huntsville, Alabama, recalls freezing up himself when a python he was pursuing slipped into the canal as Siewe shouted at him to grab it. When he backed away, Siewe dove into the swamp and caught the python.

“Without a moments hesitation she’s jumping into that swamp,” Parker said. “Amy’s extraordinarily professional. It was an authentic event.”

Less than an hour into the search, another hunter pulled up in his own truck with a python in a backpack.

“Hey, Amy! You got a tape measure?” Harold Rondan said. “I just got one!”

Siewe said she sees other python hunters every night she’s out hunting but nobody looks at it as a competition.

“Everyone is on the same team, we all have the same goal here to get rid of these things, so we help each other out,” Siewe said.

Siewe measured the snake Rodan caught – 10 feet. The snake wrapped around her neck and its tail tickled her ear. While unraveling it, the snake hissed and bit her. Even while bleeding, Siewe still had a smile on her face.

“It’s just part of it,” she said.

As Siewe went back to her own hunt, she stood on top of the raised bed of the truck, she scanned the marsh with a powerful handheld beam. An hour or so passed before she shouted “python!” and Roberts slammed the brakes of the truck.

Siewe, with her knee in a brace from recent surgery, slid off the trunk of the truck and walked slowly in front of the snake to block it from slithering back into the swamp. When she grabbed the six-footer, it oozed a “musk,” a pungent smell that’ll stick with you throughout the night.

Under state rules, pythons have to be killed humanely. Like many hunters, she used a pistol called a captive bolt gun that instantly kills the animal. Siewe got into snake hunting because she loves reptiles and putting them down is the part of the job she could do without.

“I hate killing the python,” Siewe said. “I don’t want to kill the python but they’re bad for the environment and they have to go.”

She grabbed a “kill kit” from her car that contains a plastic bag and zip ties. The skin she takes home to turn into products like Apple watch bands. She’ll also skin and tan her client’s catches for a fee. The head goes to researchers. She put it in a container to send to scientists studying their navigational abilities at Florida Gulf Coast University.

“We’ve only caught a six-footer tonight which is easy peasy. You can do it with one eye and one leg,” Siewe said.

This hunt wrapped after midnight, but many nights she’ll stay out until 1 to 3 a.m. You never known when the next record monster might show up

“Everybody has their thing that they love and they’re good at even if other people think they’re crazy,” she said. “The bigger the python, bring it on. I’m never afraid, it’s just a challenge.”

Ashley Miznazi is a climate change reporter for the Miami Herald funded by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners.