This year’s Florida Python Challenge drew more than 1,000 hunters down to the Everglades. Coming up tops as the grand-prize winners were a boy, his grandpa and his dad, who joke they’re just the “crazy snake enthusiasts who like to get outdoors.”

Dominic Hobbs, 12, has been joining his father, Paul Hobbs, and grandfather, Tom Hobbs, for snake hunts since he was only in the single digits.

“I don’t get nervous,” Dominic Hobbs said. “I get overly excited.”

This year, they are walking away with the grand prize of $10,000 for catching the highest number of snakes, 20.

The Florida Python Challenge ended Aug. 13, and the state announced the winners Friday. The Hobbs family takes a 16-hour road trip from Tennessee, their home state, to Florida’s Everglades to capture the pythons.

“It’s lifetime memories, very precious memories,” Paul Hobbs said.

The 20 snakes the Hobbs caught were hatchlings, they said.

Last year, the grand prize winner caught 28 snakes.

Overall, this year’s challenge wrangled in a total of 209 snakes from 1,050 registered competitors from 35 states and one registrant from Belgium.

The grand-prize runner-up, Ronald Kiger, took home $7,500 for removing 14 pythons, and the military category winner, Justin Morgan, took home $2,500 for removing seven pythons. Amy Siewe caught the longest python this year at nearly 11 feet, and she will take home $1,000.

This marked the state’s sixth python challenge. The state first offered the contest in 2013, but it hasn’t been held every year.

The total number of pythons caught from challenges alone now hits nearly 1,000, which does not account for the pythons captured by year-round hunters.

In the past five years, more than 11,000 pythons have been removed from the Everglades, Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez said. This figure comes from a variety of state efforts, not just the challenge.

“That goal is just a small fraction of what we need to keep on doing,” she said.

Núñez spoke before a packed room Friday morning, recalling a promise she and Gov. Ron DeSantis made when they were first elected to prioritize conservation, calling for $2.5 billion to be invested into those efforts, with $3.3 billion being secured instead.

“That just shows the commitment not only to conserving the environment but specifically for Everglades restoration and protection of water resources,” she said.

Núñez said the state’s Framework for Freedom budget includes more than $695 million for Everglades restoration projects.

“We are going to protect Florida’s natural resources for future generations,” she said. “I know all of you that are here share that goal.”

The python challenge is more of a way to raise awareness about how damaging pythons are to the Everglades, rather than creating an actual dent in the population. Tens of thousands of these serpents are estimated to slither through the area, and the reptile’s range is only expanding.

“Alligator” Ron Bergeron, a South Florida Water Management District board member behind the Bergeron Everglades foundation, was celebrating not only the end of the challenge, but his 80th birthday, with remarks and cake during the event.

“We remove this invasive snake out of our environment, and we have a quality of life for future generations,” he said. “Long live the Everglades.”

The Hobbs family will be back next year, they said.

“We’re still looking for the 20-footer,” Paul Hobbs said.