Oopsss: Fla. Python Hunt Names Wrong Winner

The real longest snake captured was returned to the Everglades
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 18, 2013 4:19 AM CST
Oopsss: Python Hunt Names Wrong Winner
Ruben Ramirez received an award for most pythons caught by an licensed hunter, but was also wrongly awarded the longest snake caught prize.   (AP Photo/The Miami Herald, Peter Andrew Bosch)

The wrong hunter nabbed some glory when Florida named the winners of its Python Challenge, reports the Miami Herald. A pair of hunters who bagged an 11 foot, 1 inch snake were the real winners of the longest-snake-captured category, but the winner was named as somebody who brought in one that measured 10 feet, 7 inches. Officials say the mix-up may have occurred because the winners' snake was tagged and released, while its shorter colleague was euthanized. But the real winner may have been the invasive pythons: After a month-long hunt involving 1,600 hunters, just 68 snakes were killed or captured out of a population believed to number in the tens of thousands. (More Burmese python stories.)

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