In a lovely gated community in southwest Florida, a long gun with an impressive scope lay in the bed of an unattended Kubota turf utility vehicle. IGUANA CONTROL the sign on the back of the vehicle read.
Naturally, I was curious. I’ve always been intrigued by iguanas and have written about them more than once in this newspaper. But I’d never witnessed iguana hunters in action. So I asked my walking companions, who—binoculars in hand–were strolling the neighborhood looking for birds, if we could pause for a bit. Yeah, herons and egrets and pelicans are interesting. But nowhere near as interesting as six-foot-long reptiles who hang out in trees.
Several minutes passed before two official-looking young men strode toward the Kubota. I flashed them what I hoped was a winning smile. “If you’d left that gun unattended where I come from, it would be long gone by now,” I told them.
“Awww, it’s just a .22 pellet rifle,” one of them said. “But some people think it looks kind of like an AR-15.”
I didn’t tell him that where I come from there are people who’ll steal a pellet gun even if it doesn’t look like an AR-15. Instead, I asked the young men about controlling iguanas. Over decades of writing human interest stories, I’ve learned that most people love to talk about what they do for a living. These guys were no exception. I peppered them with questions. They had answers to everything I asked. Fascinating answers.
I already knew that, like cane toads and Burmese pythons, iguanas are not native to Florida and are classified as an invasive species. Indigenous to Central America and tropical South America, they likely arrived as stowaways on cargo ships in the 1960s. They soon became popular as pets. But when they grew too big or—heaven forbid!–bit their owners or lashed out with their whip-like tails, countless numbers of iguanas were “humanely” released into the wild. Thus the infestation.
Iguanas can live about ten years in the wild. They have few natural predators. And they’re extraordinarily prolific. Females lay up to 80 eggs twice a year. You don’t have to be a math whiz to know what that means. Iguanas have become such a pestilence—they damage buildings, collapse sidewalks and seawalls and compete with native animals for food–that Florida has outlawed owning, transporting or releasing them. It’s always open season on iguanas. No hunting license is required. And there’s no bag limit.
Hunting iguanas was exactly what these two young men, who introduced themselves as David and Kevin, were doing that warm and sunny February morning.
They told me that, because female iguanas and the young of both sexes are green (mature males during mating season are bright orange), they’re well-camouflaged in trees, especially when they flatten themselves on the limbs. And being constantly hunted has made them wily. Hunters are urged not to slow down or make eye contact when they encounter an iguana. “Just focus, aim and fire,” Kevin said.
“You have to hit an iguana right behind its eye to kill it,” David added. “That’s where the brain is. It’s about the size of a quarter. Hitting them in the body won’t do a bit of good.”
Once iguanas are dispatched, I asked, what happens to the remains?
The corpses are taken to headquarters, where they’re tossed into dumpsters or donated to anyone who wants to eat them. “Lots of people think iguana legs and tails are delicious, especially fried,” Kevin told me. “I hear they taste a lot like frog or chicken.”
On that note, I thanked these brave hunters for laying a newspaper column right in my lap and went to join my friends, who were sitting on a bench happily gazing through their binoculars at a pond filled with herons and egrets and pelicans.
(March 8, 2025)