Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Giant Gaboon viper

Jochen told me you really liked snakes. I'll admit even though it was Namibia's winter, when we would sit down and glass from the top of a rock strewn, brushy hill, i would very carefully scan my hind end's landing zone.

ingwe has a mission from me to try and find a snake thats on his side of the state and not mine.....decided 4 years is long enough without a snake in the house and one species ive always wanted to work with is a small boa native to the western third of Montana....gonna get a few other species aswell including hopefully a mildly venomous species from South America i used to keep....

lordy lordy , thats a big snake not even seen them that size in the forest , and he is definately not a pygmy so thats a giant Gabon and has to be old man what a waste, didnt let it live , killed it and the probably tried to sell it for the meat if i know AFRICA !!!!

gaboons are not the most venon deadly but the extreme length of the fangs puts the poison so deep in the tissue. growing up in west texas we learned about snakes from early childhood & i never knew any of my friends getting bitten. these days if i see a copperhead or rattler not close to camp or home i just let them go along however the idea of snakes in trees would make me nervous. watching the ground & above is tough to handle.---cranky72

In the rain forest they blend in with leaves on the forest floor, have pygmy trackers who usually do vertical take off and walk on low hanging vines when they spot them, actually hilarious laugh till you hear them hiss ( sounds like air out of a inner tube ) then laughing stops and everyone heads back they way came without any dignity and at incredible speed usually means bongo hunt over for the day.

Makes for interesting conversation round a campfire >>>>

no drop for drop they dont hold a candle to alot of the elapids but drop for drop the venom is comparable to an eastern diamondback which is no slouch in toxicity combine that with a venom load significantly higher than most other snakes and bite are often lethal.....kinda 6 of one half dozen of the other.....might not be as deadly drop for drop as a mamba but your likely gonna die if bitten out in the bush just the same....

Rattler, you are evidentally a serpent man (Doh!) . I am very intrigued by most of the beautifully, patterned ones but was a little skittish in Namibia, and even though it was winter we had a smaller gabbon found outside the house one morning.

Last pd shoot in SD, one of our party stepped over a fence but levitated for an instant due to a short, forearm-thick Western Diamond back that would have been under his next step.

We saw more snakes that trip, one of which i used shooting sticks to put him in a cooler filled with ice. Six hours later, at home we sneaked a peak thinking he'd be "sleepy". Taking umbrage at our meddling in his day, he "cocked" his body and gave a nice sustained rattle -- my wife took umbrage with me. Well, he got the cryo- treatment and is now in permanent striking mode which I think he'd like.

I don't care how long the snake is, but a human who is only 2 inches tall would really be something!

George, yeah im a snake freak, but so is ingwe so im not alone on here actually the snake yah found in South Dakota would have been a prairie rattler not a western diamond back......the diamondback isnt found much more north than Oklahoma....the markings/coloration of a prairie are close enough to a western diamodback that if your not really familiar with snakes you might not see the difference.....

I'm a bit of a snake freak too, and Australia can be quite a dangerous place to be so. Mind you, for all their hype and venom over here, they can be quite scarce to encounter, and even then, they seem to be intent on disappearing pretty quick.

Thanks for the correction R.

Troy, at this point i would damn near give up my left nut to spend a month down there doing nothing but hunting, fishing and catching snakes and lizards.....my wife is afraid if i ever get to Oz, ill never leave

George......since yah got him mounted as a reminder, interesting thing bout the prairie over the western diamondback is that drop for drop the prairies venom is more toxic......there are a fair number of subspecies in the prairie rattler complex and some of the others are some of the most deadly snakes in the US in venom toxicity.....but the good thing going for us is prairies usually arent a big snake so they dont pack as much venom as some of the other species so you normally have plenty of time to get to a doc so deaths are extremely uncommon.....

Well Sheridan, come on over. The tropical part of Oz will see you having the most fun with most of your pursuits. Pigs, Buffalo, maybe some Chital deer in some areas. Access for hunting up there can be pretty hard, unless you're prepared to pay, or know someone with land. But area's for fishing and generally running amok with the local wildlife can be a bit easier to find. Not to mention, I've found most of the reptiles a bit nore prolific up there than down here in the South.
I mainly find common brown snakes down here, and the odd tiger and red bellied black. The first two are customers you certainly don't want to get in a tangle with, but the red bellied black isn't that poisonous.

Having read your posts for some years I am fairly sure you will fit in fine here....now if you can just get rid of that abysmal accent.

The only good snake ...

I hate snakes. The snake in the original pic makes me think I need a double rifle just in case.... Regardless, a .30 WCF is not overkill for a creature of that size.

Also, thanks to JJ for filling my nightmares with cobras swimming around over my head in the trees.