Meet William Sargent – Hong Kong's very own snake catcher

Midway through our conversation with William Sargent, his phone rings with an emergency call. It’s the police – but don’t worry, it’s not bad news. Not for him, anyway: they just need help catching a snake in Hong Kong’s northern New Territories. “They call once or twice a week in the summer,” says Sargent, sitting back down to talk. He won’t be taking this job, despite the HK$800 bounty it carries.

Meet Hong Kong’s “snake guy”. Sargent caught his first snake at age eight. He’s been an official go-to for the Hong Kong Police Force for a decade now and became the city’s first “rapid release” qualified snake catcher. This status was established in 2023 after he successfully lobbied for a city-wide policy change that allows approved catchers to set caught snakes free quickly and safely into a suitable natural habitat nearby.

It’s an overlooked but vital calling. While Hong Kong is known as an urban jungle, around 40 per cent of the territory is protected within the boundaries of 25 country parks – hospitable to nearly 45 different species of snake. Of these, there are nine medically significant venomous snakes – with the bamboo snake, Chinese cobra, many-banded krait and red-necked keelback among the most commonly sighted. Naturally, when something long, thin and scary-looking gets too close to an urban area, the public raise the alarm – which is where the city’s handful of licensed catchers come into play.

Sargent has safely entrapped thousands of snakes in his time, including approximately 300 on behalf of the police. These are typically in the vast wilderness of Lantau Island, which he also calls home. However, he insists he’s never been seriously injured. “I had a snake bite on my knuckle that really swelled up that was sore for a few weeks. That’s it in nearly 40 years of catching snakes.” The key? “I don’t let the venomous ones bite me,” adds the 48-year-old.

One time, the police alerted him at 3am because a terrified caller had found a Chinese cobra under their bed. The only problem was that Sargent was home alone with his young, sleeping daughter. In the end, the force was so desperate for his help that they sent four officers to babysit so Sargent could take care of the scary, scaly business.

Brought up in Hong Kong since the age of two, Sargent has long been passionate about engaging the public in the outdoors and encourages residents to get up close and personal with his regular snake safaris . Since launching the concept in 2017, Sargent estimates he has taken out more than 200 groups – and none have returned home without seeing a snake. The record? Fifteen sightings in a single evening.

He remembers the night that one lucky group got to watch as a three-metre-long king cobra spent 15 minutes devouring a smaller example of the same species on a rock in the middle of a stream. “It ate the whole thing and then went straight up a tree,” remembers Sargent. “Even for me, witnessing that was a unique life experience.”

As well as reptiles, participants might glimpse civet cats, porcupines and newts scurrying around. “Hong Kong’s got a lot of wild animals if you stop and look, which is what really surprises people,” says Sargent. He also runs an events business that organises the annual Moontrekker , a charity night hike and trail run across Lantau Island (this year’s edition raised HK$1.3 million for The Nature Conservancy ).

Typically, safari groups of about eight aspiring herpetologists meet near Hong Kong’s highest peak, Tai Mo Shan, and after a 15-minute briefing, embark on a short hike of about 3km, with optional stream trekking. Only a basic level of fitness is required, with previous participants ranging from eight to 81 years old. “A lot of people have lived here for 10 or 15 years and never seen a snake, or are scared,” he says. “You see the change in people’s mindset after experiencing a snake safari, and that’s a satisfying reward for me.”

The father-of-two certainly understands the importance of a willing enabler. Sargent got hooked on snakes after falling under the tutelage of “OG snake catcher” David Willott, a classmate of his older brother, who would lead the trio of schoolboys in trailing reptiles across Lantau’s country parks.

“I remember going to Dave’s house when I was nine or 10; he had a bathtub with all these different snakes in it,” he adds. “There was this big python in the bathroom – it looked amazing.”

Sargent carried the hobby into adulthood and spent his 20s “rushing home from working in a suit in Central” to hit the trails. It wasn’t until the birth of the internet that he realised this passion wasn’t quite as niche as he’d previously feared. Today, fellow enthusiasts track sightings on Sargent’s “Hong Kong Snakes” Facebook group , which has attracted almost 20,000 members.

“Growing up, [snake spotting] was considered a weird thing to do,” says Sargent. “People still think it’s a bit strange, but in those days, I kept it quiet – I was the weird snake guy. Then the internet comes along, and you find all these other people who are not strange at all.”

In many ways, hosting snake safaris is both the ultimate affirmation of Sargent’s oddness – and a rebuttal of the notion that he was ever weird in the first place. "This was my secret hobby, and then suddenly all these people want to spend an evening with me climbing Tai Mo Shan looking for snakes,” he says. “It’s still boggling to me.”