Friday marked the start of the annual Florida Python Challenge, where hunters head into the Everglades to track down invasive Burmese pythons in hopes of grabbing a share of $30,000 in prizes. A dozen would-be hunters gathered Friday morning at the Everglades Holiday Park for a demonstration about safe python capture practices held by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "All I could think was, holy crap, this is what I've been doing my entire life, and there's a tournament doing it? I want to do this” said Jay Kattalikis, a would-be python hunter who drove down from Mississippi for the competition with his friend Michael Huckabee. Over the past decade, the python challenge has grabbed headlines for its incentive-based, only-in-Florida style of hunting as well as celebrity participation. This year, more than 600 people registered for the event, with two coming from Canada and 108 from other states. During the challenge, hunters will linger around designated areas spanning through western Broward County to the Tamiami Trail in the Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area, including other management areas like Southern Glades, Holey Land and Rotenberger. The goal is to humanely kill as many pythons as possible, and prizes divide between three groups: professional hunters who work for the state, hunters who are active in the military or are veterans and novice hunters, which includes anyone who is not working as a state-contracted python hunter. Each category has its own prizes, with $2,500 going to the person or team that kills the most pythons, $1,500 going to the runner-up for most kills and $1,000 going to whoever kills the longest python. The grand prize for the most kills in all categories gets a $10,000 prize. Each person can only win one prize, so if someone is tops in two categories, they will end up with the highest-valued prize and the next qualifying hunter gets the remaining prize. In 2017, the South Florida Water Management District and the state began hiring contractors to handle its invasive python problem year-round. According to the wildlife agency’s website, through 2023, more than 11,000 pythons have been removed by these contractors. Last year's challenge brought in 209 pythons and the grand prize winner was Paul Hobbs, who bagged 20 pythons. Also during 2023, Florida wildlife agency and district contractors removed about 2,200 pythons. AP video by Daniel Kozin.