Large python drags hunter 15 feet over ant hill until family intervenes

A professional python hunter in Florida needed assistance from family members to uncoil a giant Burmese python from his body 

He also managed with their help to ultimately subdue the python, which is the second-heaviest python ever caught in Florida. 

Carl Jackson, who is a contracted python hunter with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, was traveling back on Turner River Road in Big Cypress National Park in the afternoon on Jan. 13 when he noticed Burmese python tracks across the road over his truck tracks. 

They appeared to be tracks from a smaller snake, perhaps an 8-footer, tops. 

“I go in [to the bushes] and walk around and I see a head,” Jackson told the Naples Daily News this week. He immediately recognized that this was not a small snake. Jackson began wrestling with the huge python, which dragged him over a red and black ant hill. 

“It was like riding a slow horse,” Jackson, 43, told Naples Daily News. “It was insane.” 

Jackson relied upon his team to uncoil the snake from around his body several times. 

His team included his wife, Tasha, and adopted kids, Ryker Young, 20, and Jazzlyn Bateman, 16, all of whom just the day before became certified assistants in the FWC’s Python Action Team, Removing Invasive Constrictors program. 

The python wound up being the second-heaviest python ever caught in Florida at 202 pounds. The record is 215 pounds caught in 2022. 

Jackson’s python was a 16-foot, 10-inch female, which had been carrying 200 eggs.