Tom Rahill won the top prize in the Tom Rahill Everglades Python Hunt after catching 96 Burmese pythons. The $10,000 first prize went to the hunter with the highest total, and Rahill’s count was enough to finish first.
Everglades National Park hunt
The competition returned to Everglades National Park as one of the areas open for capturing invasive snakes, alongside Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area, Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area, Frog Pond Public Small Game Hunting Area, Holey Land Wildlife Management Area, Rocky Glades Public Small Game Hunting Area, Rotenberger Wildlife Management Area, and Southern Glades Wildlife and Environmental Area. Hunters could work across those South Florida locations during the hunt.
Ron Bergeron said, "Removing Burmese pythons from this ecosystem is critical to the survival of the native species that call this area home." Nick Wiley said, "Each python removed helps conserve the native wildlife that makes the Everglades so extraordinary."
South Florida wildlife pressure
The hunt is tied to a broader effort in South Florida’s wetlands, where Burmese pythons have been linked to dwindling native mammals, birds, and reptiles. That creates a simple measure for the competition: the more snakes removed, the more the field moves toward the stated conservation goal.
Rahill’s winning total puts that idea into practice. His 96-pyton haul, paired with the $10,000 prize, shows how the competition rewards both volume and persistence across multiple hunting areas.
Tom Rahill’s 96 pythons
The open question left by the hunt is how the other hunters finished and how close anyone came to Rahill’s total. For readers tracking the effort, his result sets the benchmark for this round of the hunt and gives the next competitors a number to beat.
