JustJohn

Just John. Nothing more, nothing less. Question all authority, education, and religion. #OneHumanRace

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

City boys can’t help themselves, they always portray sportsmen as rednecks, and in the case of Florida’s Python Challenge this post cannot be more wrong. Each year, Florida enacts one of the largest citizen science efforts in the world, the Python Challenge, as an invasive species culling event aimed at the Burmese Python, which has devastated Everglades food webs, ecology, and habitat. While the event is a hunt, it’s also the greatest source of scientific data collection on invasive pythons.

The Python Challenge does not, as Antonio notes, entail “any local with a firearm showing up and blasting in any direction,” the python cull is tightly regulated and science-based invasive species culling effort hosted by Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, the University of Florida, and the South Florida Water Management District (the organization that employs the most PhDs in the state btw).

There are no firearms allowed in the boundaries of Everglades national park, and these rules are systematized in FWC (state) managed areas meaning pythons must be euthanized using air guns or captive bolts, and carcasses have to be submitted at a check station within 24 hours of capture where UF scientists collect data.

All Python challenge participants have to do a training called “FWC Python Patrol” to participate, which covers safe handling, humane euthanasia, and invasive species ecology. In Florida, non-native reptiles do not require a hunting license to harvest, and the no firearms rule has been in place since the Python Challenge began in 2013.

Contrary to how this post portrays the Challenge, it’s truly a scientific affair. Most of what we know about invasive Python demographics and biology in the Everglades comes from this culling effort, which is half sporting contest and half large scale data gathering exercise.

Challenge data collections and necropsy results have shown us the age and sex structure of pythons in the park (70% female, 10-15 eggs peer clutch), size averages (19 ft and >180 lbs), and stomach content analyses. All of the data we have on trophic interactions and cascade effects (62% of their diet is mid level mammals on the food web) comes from the Python Challenge.

Even if hunters were “firing their guns in all directions” during the Challenge, which they aren’t, it’s important to remember that American hunters (through license sales and excise taxes on guns and ammo) provide the majority of wildlife conservation funding in all 50 states. Hunter surveys provide much of the management data on everything from waterfowl populations to big game herds, enabling science based management on game and non game species and habitat.

[MeatEater @MeatEaterTV]

A message from our founder, Steven Rinella, on the recent Ambler Road decision.

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

@JimShockey_ Make sure to do some dune bashing out there in Doha! You can go out in the dunes and look over the water to Saudi.

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

@UCFCartwright He says nervously, looking around.

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

@WhitneyCummings The Girl Scouts of America sued the BSA - and forced them to become Scouting America. Girls sued to become part of scouting and forever change the Boy Scouts. So there is that

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

Pulled this pork off the smoker at 2am- it went into a crazy long stall around 175-180 for hours last night. Wrapped and covered in towels in a cooler till morning. Came out pretty dang good if I say so myself #bbqbrag

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

@DonnieDoesWorld If you can't peel the fruit don't eat it. No salads at all! Only cooked food from Dhabas and restaurants. No street vendors no matter how good it smells. I did three weeks with no sickness on those rules.

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

New spot- good traffic on camera so we
Set a tree stand. Fingers crossed

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

And good evening.....

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

Good morning.

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

I got a hunting problem. It's cold wet and raining off and on. Mosquitoes are constant. I have seen no shooters. For three days. But here I sit.

[Suhr Majesty @ULTRA_MAJESTY]

Metal song using an unhinged leftist rant as vocals 🔥🔥

🔊

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

BREAKING: Kamala Harris to deliver her closing speech at the DC National Mall, directly where the KKK rallied in 1924

[Eric Matheny 🎙️ @ericmmatheny]

You have a device in your pocket that can communicate with satellites so that you can order tacos in your undies but we can’t count ballots.

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

Got to improvise sometimes. So many trees are down-

[Holden Culotta @Holden_Culotta]

Mike Rowe: “We’re dealing with alarming math … For every five tradespeople who retire this year, two will replace them.”

“I got a call a few months ago from a company … building four nuclear-powered subs. They need to hire 100,000 tradespeople in the next nine years. This guy called me and said, ‘Can you help? … Do you know where they are?’

And I said, ‘Yeah, I do, they’re in the eighth grade.’ We have to start now, because we’re racing the math and the math almost never loses.” @mikeroweworks

[JustJohn @FishMiner]

First hunt of the season- missed the opening because of storms and life. Have the next few days to make something happen. Just feels
Good to be back hunting.

[Florida Expert @Matt_Fleming321]

Thread 🧵1/
#HurricaneMilton did plenty of damage on land, but it's underreported how much TOXIC water pollution every hurricane creates in Florida and floods into the ocean. Sewage, toxic waste, farm runoff, yard chemicals...After 25 years of Republican "rule", our lakes, rivers, estuaries, and nearshore waters are in a state of unmitigated toxic death.

#DemandCleanWaterFL

[Tallahassee History @TLH_History]

All that old growth longleaf pine lumber thrown in a dumpster. Waste upon waste.

[🤍✨Dipshit Usagi✨🤍 @420mercymain69]

I can’t believe they’ve already invented a slur for robots.