Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Snakes

I read once, many years ago, that the largest percentage of venomous snake bite victims in America were caucasian males between 18 and 28 and alcohol was involved.

Guys who work with them regularly are more inclined to be bitten, of course and that's what happened to me. I got stupid one day and didn't follow my own number one rule. "don't ever give them a chance". A young adult massassauga birthed and raised in captivity. I mistook its general mild, timid and lethargic approach to life and the goings on around it for "tame" and got too close with a bare hand at feeding time. 2 sets of eyes, they have...

I don't hold it against him. Rattlers are still my favorite.

ps

Not only 2 sets of "eyes" but 2 senses of "smell".

I've had a captive snake the majority of the last 20 years -- red-tailed boas and ball pythons, mostly.

I also live for 5 years in a spot in AL with one of the highest concentrations of water moccasins & copperheads in the SE. caught 2 coral snakes too.

here, we see about 4-5 rattlesnake bite cases per year.

all in all, I think they're pretty cool.

Kept a couple of these for about 10 yrs....Kids wanted them as pets...now the kids are both away at college, just donated them to a school as class pets (with the kids blessing of course). The wife wasn't crazy about them, but as pets go, they are about as easy to care for as it gets.



Tangerine Honduran Milksnake....tropical cousin to the King Snake

I jumped at this one!!

I almost stepped on this one. Knocked down a Gambel's and it happened to land close to this. My female springer took a glancing blow in the ear. She spent a couple hours drooling and acting stupid. We were four hours from pavement and I thought she'd die overnight.

She ended up with a big swollen ear that ended up like this:



Mojave greens are bad juju. I'd like to tell you I didn't scream like a girl when that SOB exploded at my feet, but that would be a lie.

Snakes? You can keep 'em!!!

rb

Les manages that for about 18 out of every 24 hours...

Don't thing any Mojave greens are involved, though.

I've seen that clip before and it does make you twitch at first viewing. IIRC, that's one of the Australian python species. It really shocked me to see that they can grow that big. I knew the Retic, African Rock, Indian Rock, and Burmese could get huge but didn't realize that the Aussie versions could too. In all candor, the big constrictors creep me out more than most of the "hots". I've always had a morbid fascination with the venomous species. I'd love to see some in their natural habitat, giving them, of course, the appropriate amount of distance and respect that they're due. Last year in Namibia, my PH and tracker thought they saw a Black Mamba while we were driving back to the lodge. We back-tracked but couldn't find anything and went on. I just recall being as excited about the prospect of seeing one of those in the wild, as I was to be hunting plains-game in Africa.

Wow Rick. The Mojave is a serious serpent. By the looks of the background in your first photo, you were in prime rattler country. Glad everything turned out OK. IIRC, the Mojave is especially dangerous as its venom contains both neurotoxic and hematoxic properties.

Our dogs used to get bitten on the face and head all the time In Benavides. Their heads would swell up like that little dog on "Mask" but they wore it for a few days and they were back to normal. I always knew that if they got bit on the head there was a dead snake out there somewhere. Good Dog!

Had one bitten in the neck once. It must have just gotten the skin because the skin on the dog's throat swelled up and a hole developed through the skin. When it healed the hole stayed. When I was kid a big snake got one of my grandfather's pointers under the store house. The dog was bitten many, many times and died.

In the years we lived there I killed lots of rattlesnakes. I never noticed any shortage. I would always stop and catch indigos out in the pasture and let them go at the house. They helped with the rats and the rattlesnakes.

I always kept a gaggle of cats out there, only have two now that we're in town, but cats will deal with small rattlesnakes. They will surround them and wear them down, and eventually kill them. One day when I was a kid I was out looking for rabbits. I saw a paisano with one wing dropped dancing in a circle. He would hop and flutter up in the air and come down with the wing dropped and do it all again. I watched him for a while until I saw him come down and slam hi beak into a snake. He worried that snake for 10 min and killed it.

Hogs don't even slow down when they find a snake. They will start slurping on the run.

Alan

There is nothing asinine about my statements. There are too many people in the world and there aren't enough pygmy rattlers. The planet cannot support the number of people on it now. It will die and everyone with it, unless the population is greatly reduced. There's no point in denying this reality. What pissed me off was the way you attacked, my name, my avatar and my intelligence. Tell me what I said in my original statement that got you all bent out of shape.

Rick, mohave greens are the nastiest species north of the Mexican border.....venom is more similar to cobra or mamba venom than the majority of US pit vipers.....

as for the python in the video my guess is its an amethystine(scrub) python getting ready to shed.....pretty snakes after a fresh shed but not as pretty as the Aussie carpets which are about the equivalent of our bull or pine or rat snakes, most are under 8 foot and lightly built.....amethystines get long but usually dont get the girth of the retics and definitely not as chunky as burmese, african rocks or anacondas unless they are way over fed.....

My wife works in the pharmacy in our local hospital and she is the one who sends antivenin down to the ER. There have been 6 venomous snake bite victims in the hospital this year. More than usual. One was a child. All survived. Antivenin, by the way is terribly expensive. The hospital charges the patient $7500.00 a unit for it and it typically requires 1-5 units, depending on severity and patient reaction. The simple fact that venomous snake bites are so rare, debunks any need for exterminating them. Unless there is a den under or near your house, there is no reason to kill a rattler found near the house, because it won't hang around long.

BTW for those with an interest in snakes and like chunky snakes but dont want a 18 foot monster short-tailed(blood) pythons are pretty cool.....most in captivity are over fed and obese but even a trim one is fat....ive had 2 of the 3 species, my trim 20 inch black sumatran blood python i had for awhile was thicker than my wrist......seen 6 foot reds as big around as a mans thigh.....the blacks stay smaller, around 4 foot, the other two can get up to 8 foot in large females......the blacks usually have the nicer personalities but the reds can be stunningly beautiful....course the running joke is they aint called blood pythons for their coloration....

this is a baby red one, was pretty even tempered but it was also one thats been captive bred for several generations....wish i still had pics of my sumatran black, that was an impressive looking snake.....

"He said, If it bites some little kid, you'll feel bad. I said, "No I won't. There are too many kids in the world and not enough pygmy rattlers."" - Monlithinc_Solid

No bending out of shape here. Just an observation that this is an asinine statement.

Still no bending of shape in pointing out the inconsistency in your screen name and avatar, unless someone is making a monolithic solid that looks like a soft point.

You're the one who brought up the Rabbit thing. Attacking your intelligence was never an issue. Definitely not a fair fight.

Alan

be happy, the Crofab is much better than the old horse serum and far less likely to give an allergic reaction.....used to be nothing to go through 10 vials of the horse serum on a mild bite.....

aint gonna beotch bout someone keeping them away from their house or barn or whatever but like i said keeping the good snakes around makes it less likely the venomous ones will be around.....

BTW i call bullchit on them not hanging around.....if their are rodents they hang around.....

Hey rattler,

Are those the same (or similar) snakes that herps refer to as "ball pythons"? I recall seeing a Malayan Ball Python that had some of the same physiological traits - very stout and thick but really short. Seemed kind of timid, until it was dinner time.

Yeah. I've been reading that coral snakes are now listed as present in Oklahoma near the Red River. I told the ER Doc about this and he told me we don't have coral snake antivenin. He said the Oklahoma City Zoo may have some. Then, I found out that coral snake antivenin is no longer being manufactured, because the demand for it is so small and it's so expensive to make. Without antivenin, the only way to treat a patient bitten is by keeping them on life support for a couple of months until the effects of the venom wears off. Not very reassuring. Fortunately, one would literally need to stick their finger down a coral snakes throat to be bitten by one, because they have small, rear fangs.

Beautiful snake, man.