Florida Woman Wins $10,000 for Python Killing Spree

A Florida woman won Florida’s annual python challenge by wrangling dozens of the invasive species in this year’s competition. Taylor Stanberry, 29, is the first woman to win the 10-day competition in the Everglades, and she gets a $10,000 prize for the achievement.

“I hunted every day from sundown to sunup looking for pythons,” Stanberry tells Fox News. “It was tiring, but so worth it to save the native species here in Florida and to take home the title of first female Ultimate Grand Prize Winner.”

Taylor Stanberry via Instagram

Competing against 934 other participants from 30 states and Canada, Stanberry captured and killed 60 snakes. The contest attracts both novice and professional snake catchers, and all are required to take a training course to learn humane ways to trap and kill their quarry.

All told the hunters culled 294 Burmese pythons from the wild. Not much considering there are tens of thousands of the invaders living large in the Everglades, with plenty to eat and few predators that target them. The Florida Python Challenge is more about raising awareness than putting a real dent in the invasive snake population.

Stanberry, along with her husband Rhett, is a professional python contractor. When she isn’t killing animals she’s helping them, as she works at a canine physical therapy rehab center and runs a small exotic-animal rescue as well. Asked by Naples Daily News how she plans to spend the prize money, she said, “I am going to use the money to expand my animals’ enclosures and gas money for more python hunting!”

The champion snake killer would like there to be more training for contest entrants because “every year during the challenge, a lot of native snakes are killed because novice participants cannot correctly identify native species.”  

Photo credit: Florida Fish And Wildlife Conservation Commission