Python eats Adult Deer in Everglades

Capt Jeff Kraynik

Well-known member
An adult deer was found intact inside a huge Burmese python Thursday, after the snake was captured and killed in the Everglades.

Contractors for the South Florida Water Management District encountered the python on a tree island in western Miami-Dade County, according to the district. It was killed with a shotgun blast.

The 15.7-foot snake had a massive bulge from a recently consumed 76-pound female deer, the largest intact prey ever found in a Burmese python in Florida, said Skip Snow, a biologist and python specialist at Everglades National Park, who conducted the necropsy.

The python, an ambush predator, had staked out a known deer trail, he said. When the deer walked by, the snake presumably seized the animal in its sharp, backward-pointing teeth, crushed the deer under its weight and coiled around it, killing the deer before consuming it, he said.

Burmese pythons have established a breeding population in the Everglades over the past several years, arriving by way of the exotic pet business. State and federal wildlife officials say they say they were released by pet owners after having grown too large or escaped from enclosures destroyed by Hurricane Andrew.

The snakes primarily eat smaller mammals and birds, with larger pythons taking alligators, deer and hogs. Although pythons have been discovered with deer remains before, this is the first time such a snake was caught after just consuming a deer. That allowed biologists to see the size prey a python is capable of taking, Snow said. With the deer inside, the snake had a girth of 44 inches.

“This is clearly an extreme event,” he said. “It shows you they can eat huge things.”

Scott Hardin, exotic species coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said the snake was discovered by work crews walking carefully through a tree island to remove non-native lygodium plants.

“It’s pretty clearly one of the biggest snakes we’ve seen,” Hardin said. “We haven’t gotten anything longer than 16 feet in the wild in Florida.”

dfleshler@tribune.com, 954-356-4535


http://www.orlandosentinel.com/...1028,0,1903967.story
 
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Yup, I would quit hunting ducks if that was my only option. YIKES However if they hibernate, now that would be different.
Al
 
I can see that snake! It's the only creature that Moster Quest show might have been right about.

Tim
 
Poor Python,

Once you get to know them they are really quite personable, fun and exciting. Sometimes more exciting then you want!
The Wife has a 6 ft'er that is a bunny burner, he is always hungry. Burmese can get that big in about 5 years on a good feeding program!LOL
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A 76 lb deer! My 6yr old daughter goes hunting with me, she only weighs 60 lbs.

Can you carry 00 buck with you for self-defense while duck hunting in Florida?
 
Most of the guys that hunt down that way keep a knife attached to their waders.

That way if a hunting buddy or dog gets tangled up with one, they can cut them free.

A couple of years back, a south Florida F/F (client) got tangled up with one trying to save a dog in a retention pond. If it wasn't for his partner carrying a knife, he said he would have been dead!!!
 
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