Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the Secret Service discovered a “suspicious” hunting stand near Palm Beach International Airport with a direct sight line to where President Donald Trump exits Air Force One.
“The FBI has since taken the investigatory lead,” Patel said in a statement, “flying in resources to collect all evidence from the scene and deploying our cell phone analytics capabilities.”
Now, two weeks later, a Florida reptile hunter who calls himself the Python Cowboy says he’s convinced the FBI is barking up the wrong tree.
Mike Kimmel, owner of Martin County Trapping and Wildlife Rescue, told NBC News that the elevated stand has been there for years and the only mystery is whether it was set up by a hunter, birder or wildlife photographer.
“When we had first seen it, Joe Biden was president,” Kimmel said. “And it looked old and dilapidated at the time. It never gave like a suspicious vibe.”
A professional trapper for over a decade, Kimmel operates across southern Florida, removing invasive species like Burmese pythons, green iguanas and feral hogs. He also guides hunting trips, with the help of his specially trained dogs — Trouble, Rooster and Rowdy, among others.
The waterways surrounding the Palm Beach airport are well known to Kimmel. They are prime spots for hunting iguanas.
Kimmel said he first noticed the tree stand identified by Patel a couple of years ago.
“It never crossed our minds that it would be used by someone taking a shot at the president or anything like that,” Kimmel said.
In July 2024, a would-be assassin managed to fire several rounds at Trump during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, striking him in the ear. Two months later, the Secret Service arrested a man who was spotted hiding in the bushes, with a rifle, at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. A Florida jury in late September found him guilty of trying to assassinate Trump.
Kimmel said the Secret Service reached out to him after the first assassination attempt and told him to refrain from going on hunts in the area for the next week or so.
“We respected that,” he said. “We’re out there with air guns and everything. It can look suspicious.”
If you spend as much time in that area as he does, Kimmel said, there’s plenty of other things that you could see.
“There’s homeless camps out there,” he said. “There’s all kinds of trash. I found a dead body out there. The tree stand is a very small blip.”
“I think the FBI is wasting their time,” he added.
One of Kimmel’s hunting guides, Joseph “JR” Entry, also recalled first seeing the stand a couple of years ago and thinking little of it. He said he and the other guides find the FBI’s sudden attention amusing and a bit perplexing.
“I think it’s a big stink about nothing, to be honest with you,” Entry told NBC News.
An FBI spokesperson said the agency continues to analyze the hunting stand materials for forensic clues at its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. So far, the investigation has not identified any individuals connected to the mystery tree perch, the spokesperson added.
Kimmel’s exploits catching — and sometimes getting bitten by — giant pythons are the stuff of legend in Florida.
The video clips he posts on YouTube and Instagram — showing him belly-flopping onto pythons in alligator-infested swamps and bagging serpents like a pregnant 16-footer with 60 eggs in its belly the size of grapefruits — often draw thousands of views and media attention.
In 2024, he took a blind dog on a hunt with him, and the pooch nicknamed “Helen Killer” helped him snag a 9-foot-python that also couldn’t see. The feat was chronicled in the Miami Herald, which described him as “one of Florida’s best-known wildlife trackers.”
Four years earlier, Kimmel appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and brought with him the head of a monster snake that nearly got the best of him.
“I almost bled out in the middle of the Everglades,” Kimmel told Rogan. “This snake — 17 foot 7 inches, 135 pounds. At the time, that’s about what I weighed, so it was a fair Everglades battle royale.”
Kimmel said he understands why the Secret Service would find the tree stand suspicious, given its proximity to an airport Trump frequents and the fact that he has been targeted before.
But he thinks there’s little chance even the most advanced technical analysis would yield much of anything.
“It’s been just sitting out in the elements – with the sun straight on, it rains – everything like that,” Kimmel said. “I would imagine any kind of DNA or fingerprints would be quickly eliminated off of it, but that’s not my area of expertise.”
From his perspective, the authorities should have already moved on.
“I would expect them to investigate something like that for sure,” Kimmel said, “but I’d also kind of expect them to figure out very quickly that it’s essentially nothing.”
“All you got to do,” he added, “is talk to us.”