Hunter belly flops on 12-foot snake in Florida swamp, video shows. What happened next?
A uniquely Florida moment was caught on video when a man dove head-first into a swamp and emerged with the head of a massive snake in his right hand.
It happened in February, and that man was animal trapper Mike Kimmel, known on social media as the Python Cowboy.
The video, shared March 16 on YouTube, shows Kimmel leaped off a boat after seeing something “creeping” through the water.
Instead of going the other way as most people might, Kimmel did a classic belly flop and landed directly on top of an invasive Burmese python that was 12 feet long.
At one point in the video, Kimmel is seen bravely feeling along the bottom of the alligator-filled swamp to find the snake’s tail.
“This dive might be my first on a python,” Kimmel says in the video. “I’m not going to dive on it unless I got to. ... I don’t want to be theatrical. We had to dive on that one. ... If I didn’t dive on it, it was going to disappear again.”
It’s the middle of python mating season in Florida and Kimmel says courtship was in progress when he caught the snake.
“We had been seeing signs of a massive female, finding multiple male pythons concentrated in one area and even discovering what we think is her lair,” he wrote on YouTube.
“The mystery of her whereabouts kept us pushing forward, searching islands and scanning every hiding spot. Just when we thought she might have moved on, I spotted a python. ... It was coming up to get some air.”
The video had been viewed more than 142,000 times as of March 25, and it racked up praise and good-natured jabs.
“When you jumped in on that snake in the water I screamed ‘Mike you are insane!’” @fransinyard891 wrote on YouTube.
“No way ... anyone could get me to do that. Nope,” @BryanStevens-w5e wrote.
“Were you trying to flatten the python?” @nickh5195 asked.
“You are fearless to dive in and get that snake like that. What if you would’ve missed his head?” @calgreg2569 posted.
This story was originally published March 25, 2025 at 9:23 AM with the headline "Hunter belly flops on 12-foot snake in Florida swamp, video shows. What happened next?."