You know the ole saying "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we would all have a wonderful Christmas". Besides, strawman arguments have no place in rational thinking.

@Captain_Feelgood I was being a bit facetious, but humans are surely doing more damage in Florida than pythons could ever. OTOH hunters and people who fish tend toward conservation as environmental problems impacting what they love to do. Can’t hunt game in a former woodlands turned into a shopping mall. And in cases where humans killed off top predators hunting is a necessity to keep populations in check such as deer. With fishing there seems to be a problem with overfishing, but more from commercial concerns than pop and kids enjoying a weekend morning watching a bobber or pulling a lure.

I won't be going either to be honest.. Walking around the Everglades in 110 + degree weather doesn't make even the top 500 things to do on vacation.

Not sure what you mean about the pig's level of intelligence.

@Captain_Feelgood Compared to pythons pigs surely have more capacity for awareness, use of knowledge, and emotion. I’ve kept snakes as pets. Not much going on upstairs. This pop psych article is suggestive of pig intelligence: [psychologytoday.com]

This research article failed to replicate earlier findings of potential mirror utilization in pigs, but that result shouldn’t rule out the capacities pigs do have which may have ethical bearings on how they are treated by people:
[sciencedirect.com]

Of course the ability to use a mirror isn’t the same as self-awareness in the case of pigs and too much emphasis may be placed on the mirror test to evaluate animal cognitive capacities. It reduces other animal capacities to human centric traits. And self-awareness doesn’t seem too common in people.

@Captain_Feelgood As an addendum this review article cited in the Psychology Today article has interesting points to make about pig intelligence. The failure to replicate per mirror usage is addressed but then: “Pigs have also demonstrated another compelling behavior that may be related to self-awareness. Croney (1999) found that pigs were able to manipulate a modified joystick in order to move an on-screen cursor. In a study designed to assess how well pigs would acquire this kind of task to obtain an on-screen target, Croney (1999) found that all pigs in the study were able to acquire the task, despite dexterity and visual- capacity constraints of the joystick task. Dogs, however, did not do as well on the same tasks (Croney, 2014). Manipulating a joystick to attain a target arguably requires a complex capacity known as self-agency: the ability to recognize actions caused by oneself. Self-agency is a fundamental component of autonomy and purposeful behavior. Pigs may share this capacity with chimpanzees, who are able to distinguish a computer cursor controlled by themselves from motion caused by someone else (Kaneko & Tomonaga, 2011). Again, much more research is needed to determine the exact nature of the pigs’ responses to this task and whether it overlaps in any way with self-awareness and self-agency.”
[escholarship.org]

Grain of salt. Add pork seasoning joke here…

@Scott321 I guess my main question was about your hesitancy on pigs due to their intelligence. So if more intelligent, the less you'd be likely to hunt them? Either way, I'm all for eating anything you kill, including snakes. I wonder if a good pork rub would be good on a python?

@Captain_Feelgood I’ve never eaten snake but have tried gator several times. Apparently so have pythons or vice versa.

I’m really torn on pigs. They taste pretty damn good but are respectable in the brain department which makes them effective pests but something to empathize with too. There are crazy people who enjoy hog wrasslin in the woods. The pigs have a fair chance given the sort who would engage in that sort of lunacy.

I’ve grown up around hog hunters. It can be really tough on the dogs if things go south. I saw a video once years ago and if I recall correctly they often used hounds for the chase and pits for the take down. Ideally the dogs don’t get hurt.

A friend’s step dad sewed up his prize pit bull after a hog mishap. She survived. I don’t know if using dogs is still acceptable practice. Not my cup of tea. I do understand vicariously some people hunt to live or at least supplement their food supply and not for some stupid canned amusement.

@Scott321 I've had rattlesnake and gater and loved them both. Both fried though, and hell,, a flip flop is probably pretty good if it's fried right. Some hot sauce never hurts as well.

I'm not a big fan of using dogs myself, no matter what game you're going after. I never have or will hunt with them. Well, I take that back. If I ever go duck/other bird hunting, I'll gladly let a dog retrieve it for me. Of course, there will be a tasty treat waiting for said doggy when they get back with the quarry.

@Captain_Feelgood I had a dog who broke loose from the yard and got his ass kicked by a resident Muscovy duck he tried to chase down. He was afraid of ducks after that incident. So some birds are bad ass. I wouldn’t mess with an emu.

Hunters are far more connected to their kills than those of us in supermarket aisles and fast food lines. I have fished before and helped my dad clean them. A good friend growing up hunted rattlers with his dad.

Perhaps you should check out the rules first. Firearms are not allowed in taking any pythons. You can use an air rifle/pellet gun though. Anybody remotely familiar with hunting knows deer hunting only takes place during the wintertime mating season (in Florida is late Nov. to early Jan.) and there is NO cougar hunting allowed any time of year at all anyway.

@Captain_Feelgood . Being "allowed" to hunt is not the same for many people. I owned a farm where I had to chase away stupid people with guns throughout the whole year. Not just in winter or summer. Stupid people come from the cities with the urge to shoot something, anything that moves. My truck was shot, my neighbor was shot, my goats were shot at.
There needs to be somebody on site governing the action of the few idiots who have low IQs.

@OldGoat43 There are people on site governing the action. They're called Game Wardens.