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Joe Rogan · 2024-06-27

Joe Rogan Experience #2020 - Python Cowboy

Florida's Python Cowboy on hunting invasive pythons and iguanas, surviving a near-fatal snake bite, and finding a satanic ritual site in the Everglades.

Joe Rogan Experience #2020 - Python Cowboy
The guest

Python Cowboy (Mike): Florida invasive-species hunter who catches Burmese pythons and iguanas in the Everglades using trained dogs, runs guided hunts, sells python-skin leather, and founded the Veterans for Conservation nonprofit.

What this episode covers

Joe Rogan talks with the Python Cowboy, a Florida hunter who specializes in removing invasive Burmese pythons and green iguanas from the Everglades. He recounts nearly bleeding to death alone after a 17-foot python bit an artery, argues the python invasion was likely an intentional release by reptile breeders, and explains how state rules and national-park protections hamstring eradication efforts. He details using dogs like his German Wirehaired Pointer Otto to find unprecedented numbers of python nests, and the broader collapse of native Everglades wildlife. The conversation also veers into the displaced gladesmen culture, water-management corruption, and a disturbing satanic ritual site he stumbled on at an abandoned rocket facility.

Recommended on this episode

MediaRecommended

Southern Comfort

Walter Hill

“it's a [ __ ] great movie ... it's a great movie though man”
“there was a movie called Southern Comfort do you ever see that movie... it's a great movie about these Army reservists”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended

Gladesmen

“you recommend those two yes yes absolutely”
“I think you got uh gladesman uh Sawgrass Cowboys or something like that uh there's there's a few of them yes”— Python Cowboy
MediaRecommended

Sawgrass Cowboys

“you recommend those two yes yes absolutely”
“I think you got uh gladesman uh Sawgrass Cowboys or something like that uh there's there's a few of them yes”— Python Cowboy

The guest's own work

ProductBy the guest

Python Cowboy leather products

Python Cowboy

“I also have my website that I sell my leather products on pythoncowboy.com”— Python Cowboy

Also referenced (named, not recommended)

ProductReferenced

GoPro

GoPro

“I got my shoulder cam on and then I put a GoPro on the ground this is wild”— Python Cowboy
ProductReferenced

AR-15

“you had a bunch of rednecks riding around in trucks with shotguns and AR-15s shooting every snake that moved”— Python Cowboy
ProductReferenced

FloGrown

FloGrown

“a local clothing brand flow grown in Florida made my Instagram made my social media and was like dude you gotta start using it”— Python Cowboy
BookReferencedISBN verified

Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell

“Malcolm Gladwell wrote about people that live in the Appalachians and some of the the insane violence that took place there”— Joe Rogan

Big reveals from this episode

  • He nearly bled out alone in the Everglades after a 17-foot-7-inch, 135-pound python bit an artery; he tourniqueted his arm with his snake bag.
  • He believes Florida's python invasion was intentional, with reptile breeders deliberately dumping crates of snakes to farm them out of the Everglades.
  • Inside Everglades National Park it is illegal to remove invasive pythons, even a 20-footer caught eating a deer.
  • Using his dog Otto he has found about eight python nests in one season, when historically very few people in Florida have ever found even one.
  • While python hunting at the abandoned aerojet rocket facility he discovered an elaborate satanic ritual site with a pentagram, a blood-stained chair, and messages about child sacrifice.
  • A fan who followed his Instagram out to the same remote site heard a barrage of gunshots minutes later, suggesting people were still there.
  • Florida's government interbred the last native Florida panthers with imported Texas cougars, producing bigger, more aggressive cats.

Worth remembering

  • Cane and bufo toads were introduced to control insects but now poison pets; dogs can get high from licking them or die.
  • A large female python can lay 70 to 100-plus eggs, and nests are increasingly being found underground.
  • Pythons have wiped out roughly 90 to 99 percent of small fur-bearing mammals in the Everglades and now eat mostly rats and alligators.
  • A python over 10 feet long shouldn't be eaten because its mercury content from contaminated Everglades water is dangerously high.
  • The small town of Davie spent about $1.7 million in a year just repairing iguana damage to its levee embankments.
  • New cameras spot pythons via the reflective properties of their skin rather than heat, paired with anti-poaching drone software used in Africa.
  • Male green iguanas have two penises and keep a harem of five or six females.
  • aerojet's founder Jack Parsons was a NASA-linked rocket scientist and public Satanist who practiced 'sex magic.'
  • When the Everglades became a national park, the gladesmen who lived there were evicted and some camps were allegedly burned with people inside.