Joe Rogan Experience #2020 — Python Cowboy Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day estimate of 500 000 pythons in the Everglades? Could be more. That's the thing. Attacking not so much wildlife, um so sightings are rare but that's just because it's a very elusive animal um and they're out in But he still gets attacked. And I pop out of my tent with my shotgun and my flashlight.

4:50 oh my god i pop out of my tent and nothing's there nothing not a thing so only thing it could pumpkin it was a big male like I've seen cats before I've seen small ones like I And that's it. Yeah. Yeah, they're venomous, actually. It's like there's a word. this secretion when it is injured scared or provoked and what does the toxin do can be dangerous however it may cause muscle weakness rapid heart rate and vomiting

9:32 I'm like, Jesus, Louisa. you cease to exist it's the only experience I've ever had where you cease to exist when you take as well. They're all just these fucking people but Oh, yeah. There's so many Instagram pages and Twitter pages dedicated to people in Florida doing I need to see it because I purposely didn't look. my 14-foot John boat by myself, and I was checking spoil islands out there. These islands were dug maybe 100 years ago or more when they dug the canal. They were made 100 years ago when they

13:26 these animals, confident in my ability, but I'm worried this thing's going to get the best of me, So I know I got to quickly do something. I'm afraid if I get closer to her head, drags you so i know grabbing this thing my goal is to piss it off and get it to start striking seeing what I'm doing. So I got a hold of it and it's starting to are you wearing gloves no how are you able to really grab it if i had gloves on

16:18 mean? Um, a snake this size to my advantage, they're, they're slower than a smaller snake. Floyd Mayweather out there. So it struck. main vein and the real bad one was on the top of my arm that you can't see where it's on this i I was able to grab her head. without exerting myself too much, me. It's going to kill me a hundred percent. Um, you know, I don't think it'd necessarily be able

20:26 kind of got the bleeding under control, and I was able to kind of collect myself. You can lose a gun very easily, and it's in the way. a gopro on the ground this is wild and you know normally i i don't always get great i mean i get and I have all these cameras going and I see all this blood Wow, she really is like a limp noodle. and just keeping it together it's creeping me out just watching you hold on to that thing as

23:31 They're really not. an alligator from a python i had a guy out on a guided hunt with me. He recorded it, videotaped it, Like, I thought we were at the top. but it was also there was some sort of like at today it's just not enough why don't we have anacondas all over why don't we have uh i mean we do have nile monitors But I definitely don't want to get into, like, necessarily mentioning names.

27:17 Really? i'll leave the pythons alone what who does that uh different different uh old school breeders that i would the different He was caught. And then they'll come back a year or two later and there's a huge population of them. and we're seeing people dump their pets because fwc has been going around and they said they wouldn't but they have been they've been going around and actually euthanizing people's pets

31:52 state and selling them where they can't survive anyway because it's too cold. No, that's not the primary way, but that was a huge way. A lot of people were making livings off coming down here, catching them, taking them out of state. So it's almost like a perfect scenario because they can't be invasive They're here to stay. A lot of these areas where the pythons are, you're not legally allowed to go off the trail in a vehicle.

34:40 If you come across a 20-foot python eating a deer, you are not allowed to do anything. You know, half of it's underwater, sawgrass that'll slice you open, twice as tall as you, and too thick to even get through. there recreation a lot of them would live out there make their living out there gator hunters i believe was started in like 47 it was actually up finalized in sometime in the 60s maybe the late

38:25 We're seeing oil drilling, all kind of stuff that, you know, we feel the Everglades should be represented and preserved in a better way. dying, is dying because of their water quality issues. What is the source of the water water quality issues and our state is the source of the water quality issues um it's There are steps being taken to send water south

40:35 is swamp and is is no longer um being able to use for sugar cane and we see a lot of that you know um make the decisions in what happens with our So have they dammed the flow of this water? water south through uh tam ammy trail in 41 but it's just not enough uh we need more water to be kills everything and it's you know they're they're And especially once they have it, you know, the water levels get so high they have to flow it out.

44:37 And they're able to, you know, send it in areas that's not Miami or send it through the canals through Miami out into the intercoastal Yes, it would. the water oh boy it's that's crazy there's so many instances in human history of people putting Everything. Mind-blowing. So the Florida situation as it stands, what are the official efforts to mitigate the python population?

47:16 And you're like, this is what we're going to do. These past Python challenges, the tournaments we have in Florida where the general public goes out there and competes for money catching Pythons, Barely any pythons were caught or removed. have penalties in place for anybody harming a native snake in the national park where then And that we should allow more access.

50:20 which is you know a little funny that sounds crazy yep so um you know my thing is showing And you're going to be left with the general public And then for that license, team i've been putting together specifically to use dogs to help us find these snakes and just there is a python in this hole and uh to be sure i took my little camera stuck it down in there and

54:15 A lot of the dogs I found, the snake's like invisible. hair pointer. He's adorable. He looks so happy. No, he loves it. He loves it. I always say when educational displays for schools um research stuff like that because it is they're they're can lay large clutch of nest or large clutch of eggs i'm sorry wow um we just found a nest this season uh underground as well it was an underground 16 footer and she was on a nest of 70 active eggs

57:17 It's mostly birds prey on them? Yeah. We're 99 or 90 to 99% of our small fur bearing game in in of yours yeah absolutely that's the big one absolutely and a lot of it's agriculture a lot I've eaten it a number of times. is very good i've seen a lot of people uh kill them and cook them on youtube they cook like Does that taste similar to anything? It's just people have to get past the fact that it's a frog.

1:01:03 People love that stuff. that's what I'm looking for when I'm out there. You know, I'm removing any iguanas I see, but those are the big problem. Those big breeders, they usually have a harem of like five or six females. And little fun fact, they have two peckers. So they're out there slanging it. You know what I mean? I don't want to make it seem like, you know, the iguana thing is just a free for all in

1:02:49 Yep. I usually have him mentor them a little bit, take them out, shaking it around and excited and and yeah wiggled out of his mouth a lot of times when yeah like jurassic park like jurassic park six footers fucking really what's the biggest one That's as long as this table, almost. any videos of them like all over a golf course um there's there's definitely some on youtube i i

1:06:23 We all got guns. We got a couple of dogs and we're just annihilating them. Sometimes pigeons will become a big problem. Just Google python infestation golf course yeah there's one video in particular where i was blown away i was like oh i gotta get out there iguanas more than anything pythons they're out in the middle of the everglades away from people

1:08:25 I may have a place that's, you know, only $10, $15 for an iguana, Here's tons of red iguanas. they're not uh quite a bit as big of a problem uh we are seeing them in certain pockets in certain Yep. with the burrows they dig, the vegetation they eat. To give you an idea, the town of Davie, which is just a small town here in South Florida, So I think their budget in the prior years was like $250,000 for iguanas. And they're quickly seeing that we need to spend millions on these reptiles to get them out.

1:12:28 This one's crazy. The fact that you've got some genetically I don't know. country or anywhere where there's mosquitoes how can you not say these things are going to go That should be something that the public should be educated on before these decisions are made. by aliens. We're about to go to war. I think it's going to get way crazier over the next few years.

1:15:32 anacondas big snakes all kind of stuff and they you know they ain't the best pet owners right you It's unlike any other place in the country. just everything everything lines up it's the perfect storm when did you first start like What, being out there? Main thing is we have these people that are not- I've found animals that have just been dumped. Yeah, the police came and investigated it.

1:19:32 stuff like that. whole thing so when you go out there the first thing i came across was a big rock pile with a its anus there was blood coming out of its b-hole which you know i don't know why who knows what it was tell something was killed sacrificed whatever The other eye messed up. I had two guys with me that didn't even want to get out of the truck when they seen the first thing they stayed in the truck so the same they

1:23:32 You know, I know the good Lord has my back, but very strange, right? wall with like a dark red stain on it oh jesus yeah and what was the investigation did you follow I don't know. Let's go. So I see this flashlight bouncing on the side of the road as I'm driving out. he was with a buddy and i'm like you know that's awesome you know that's better than devil yeah

1:26:50 It's interesting. and so his his wife who he claimed i think it was a second wife i'm not sure what he claimed he that please significant for satanic rituals and and that happened during the Easter moon, Oh, God. But you have to believe in God. Yeah, what the fuck are you up to? It's just. And they spray painted everything. Yeah. bit of that when he was hunting the amazon oh no oh yeah it was a big religious sacrifice and

1:31:17 Wild. Just got out of there in time. I believe it. Yeah, well, that's it. Yeah. Oh, kill them. that's kind of their version Nobody's coming to save you out there. There was a movie called Southern Comfort. One of the people that live. Yeah. You're in trouble. there. And he said, there's a direct connection between the type of people that moved there

1:35:13 Yeah, yeah. to now it's stewards of the land to a protector of the Everglades. And, you know, really kind of Yeah, yeah. A lot of people ask me, you know, what's it like being on an airboat, driving an airboat? I say, well, have you ever ridden a motorcycle? We actually run these airboats to stick these frogs. You see a pair of eyes, you go towards him, try to stick him and pirouette around him,

1:38:21 when all of us are gone, And especially the airboats, we're laying grass down. Like who is behind doing this? They're the kind of guys that don't go to a lot of these meetings. You get all these Karens in there that don't know a thing. know what we're talking about, but we're just the minority in a lot of these situations. it's been a battle since then yeah and they're constantly taking away access uh every year it

1:42:33 Historically, the Everglades was 3 million acres. Do you remember before the pythons decimated everything? and that ain't right there's something wrong there and i think that's when everyone started and people just ain't out there at night and if they are they're not they're moving at night they're nocturnal and people just ain't out there front of me where if i didn't step on it or know it was there i would have never seen it when when

1:45:56 they don't find it until they step on it. We do need to manage them and we need to use new and old technologies to do that. So if we use that camera with a drone it to, to read that. Oh, that's fascinating. But I think that would be a big game changer, they expose themselves out in the open but with the dog you don't have to wait for that you can different access and permissions but you know a private private funding right now looks even more attractive to me.

1:50:08 So you're basically not doing anything to stop the population right now. on a small area. We need to spread out big time. And we need the general public to get involved Where we really are. laying eggs creating an army and it's right under our nose you know so it it can be discouraging Again, I've already been self-funding and doing myself. Best thing to do would be to email pythoncowboyhunts at gmail.com.

1:53:35 And all of that, every dollar we make from leather products, from my merchandise, all of that goes right back into trying to get out there, remove more pythons, rescue native wildlife. Yes, sir. That's a valuable employee. It was really fun. Pleasure to be on.