Keith Lusher 08.11.26
Tom Rahill spent 10 days deep in the Everglades and came out with 96 invasive Burmese pythons, more than any hunter in the history of the Florida Python Challenge. The catch earned him the competition’s $10,000 grand prize when the 2026 event wrapped up in July, but for Rahill, the number was never really the point. How he gets his hands on a python, and why he keeps doing it, matters more.
Rahill, founder of the veteran nonprofit Swamp Apes, has hunted pythons professionally for more than a decade. His method starts with patience and a nose for the swamp. He has said he can smell a python’s musk in the air and feel in his gut when conditions are right. Cooler, damp nights get the snakes moving, so hunters like Rahill work the dead of night, sweeping a spotlight across the sawgrass and dirt roads for the telltale oily sheen of a python’s skin.
Timing matters as much as instinct. The challenge is held in July, which lines up with python hatching season. Rahill leaned on that this year, working back and forth through the grass until he came across an active nest.
“This is the nesting season, the hatching season for pythons,” Rahill said. “So if you find a nest, you have a strong possibility of finding the hatchlings.”
Once he spots a snake, Rahill prefers a light touch over a tackle. Florida bans firearms for python removal, so every catch is a hands-on affair.
“Instead of jumping on the snake, you just kind of gently get up to it and then just pick it up,” Rahill said. He will stroke the belly scales to calm a docile snake before bagging it. Bigger, angrier pythons call for a different approach and often a second set of hands to keep the animal uncoiled and its head under control until it tires itself out.
Rahill’s biggest catch this year was not one of the 96. Working with a military veteran through Swamp Apes, he set out with a single goal: land that veteran a big snake. They found a 17-foot female.
“I was on a mission to get one of our veterans a big snake,” Rahill said. “I did it. And we wrestled this thing. The veteran was just over the moon.”
That mission is the other half of how Rahill catches pythons. Swamp Apes takes military veterans, into the Everglades to clear trails and hunt snakes alongside him. Rahill has said the work gives veterans back a sense of purpose and focus that mirrors military life, from situational awareness to a clear objective, without the trauma of combat. The adrenaline of wrestling a ten-foot predator by hand, he has said, taps into something the wilderness alone cannot reach.
Rahill has since gone through two hip replacements, and doctors told him this year he should sit the challenge out. He went anyway.
“I did go out there and I got the big snake for that person,” he said.
The 2026 Florida Python Challenge drew 907 participants from 30 states plus Canada and Vietnam, who together removed 280 Burmese pythons from designated hunting grounds across South Florida. Christina Kraus won the professional division with 36 snakes, and Rahm Levinson took the longest-python prize with a 16-foot, 5-inch catch. But it was Rahill’s combination of patience, bare hands, and a mission bigger than the count that carried him to the top.
