Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Snakes THAT bad in Texas?

So I was perusing the website Fark.com, and saw the link to this story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-property-overrun-copperhead-snakes.html

C'mon...is it really THAT bad? As this came from the UK, I know it has a definite slant. What I find particularly amusing is that there is a caption that shows asll the snakes on a fence that says "these are the ones she has killed"

Wasted hatbands.

I'm skeptical. Some of those snakes look like they've been dead a long time. I don't doubt they have quite a few copperheads around but I think the numbers are exaggerated.

Well I'll say this about that area, IF the snake problem is legit, i bet there is a bunch of food walking around there to keep them happy. kill the food, the snakes will leave.well the ones that you end up not killing anyway. i have no problems with snakes, but that many venomous snakes around my house would have me being a bit proactive.

I agree about the food sources. If there are a lot of snakes then there must be a lot of mice or possibly frogs or toads in the vicinity. Snakes are common where there are lots of things to eat as well as suitable habitat.

Well,
I'm at least 12 miles to the closes small burg. I am heavily wooded and 3 stock pods on or adjacent to my 5 acres. Only seen 3 water snakes, 1 cottonmouth, and maybe 3 copperheads, and a couple common non poison varieties. I've been here over 15 years. We have a few(few) cotton tails, fox, very few coyotes, only seen 1 mountain lion, a very few feral hogs, and a lot of deer.
We have always been amazed at the lack of snakes.

They need to get one of them snake killin terriers.

I buddy of mine goes to Lockhart every weekend, he says they have kilt 15 copperheads so far.

you ought to see the moccassins around here. I'd much rather mess with copperheads

East Texan here. I've killed 3 Copperheads this spring. There are more, they are just darned hard to see.

Out in my ancestral home near Midland, Tx I could kill 3 a day for weeks if I wanted to.

We live within the city limits of a small Texas coastal town. Dogs used to kill several coral snakes every year, and we get a few non poisonous snakes. Saw my first rattlesnake this winter, right beside the house. Found a small non-poisonous snake in the bathroom last year, don't know how he got in. On the other hand, we have 10 acres outside Brazoria, Texas, a little to the west, where I hardly ever see a snake. Stomped on a copperhead my first visit to the property, maybe killed one more and one coral snake since - in 6 years - and saw one large blue runner (?). Personally, I suspect the feral hogs keep the snakes down, and we have lots of hogs.

I've only seen a couple of Rattlers and 1 Copperhead this year.
But the grass in our pastures is so thick after all the rain we've had that you could walk right by one and never see it.

You can easily run into a "den" or such of the little chits... .

a good friend killed 27 one weekend, they think it was due to the vibrations of a generator they had never run down by a creek for a party.

But he said they kept showing up for 1.5 days.

He isn't one to exagerate or lie.

I haven't shot one here in a couple of years, but it comes in spurts it seems for some reason.

I know one thing, there are a LOT more snakes out there, than you ever see, IMHO.

One of the last snakes we killed the wife caught live first, 27 inch coral snake, she called me, knowing I'd mentioned catching and donating for research and such, and she knew they didn't have "fangs" like the others and had her heavy leather gloves on... I was between a fire run coming back in and headed to a CPR call in progress.... I told her to whack it on the head with a rock and kill it... she did.

Actually the last one we killed was not poisionous and in our dryer, a 5 foot coachwhip. Injured to bad to release.

Probably don't kill more than 6 bad ones a year in the yard.

Ditto! Those Water Moccasins are aggressive.

Don't worry, there are plenty of them to go around here too...

Dang I had to open this...I just had too....when will I learn?

We have some serious CH issues in SC. But y'all are right. The WM's are twice as gnarly and aggressive as heck. Saw one about 2 weeks ago that had to be 3 feet long with the girth of a bicycle inter tube. Some devil chit for sure.

You guys can advocate healthy snake life all you want but for the most part they're dead before they leave my yard. At the very least they are relocated to the street side sewer run off drains.

I don't know if the OP story is accurate or not, but snakebites are up here in west Texas this year. The well-above-normal rainfall these past few months has caused a general upswing in critter populations, as there is finally something to fackin' eat after 8 years of drought... more critters that eat vegetation means more critters that eat other critters, and since snakes fall into the latter category, there you go.