I just like 'em.
Here's some pix from the pocket camera:

False water cobra, Argentina:




Mamba, Caprivi




Boomslange, Caprivi


Puff Adder, Mozambique

You can keep your snakes!

WHY DID I OPEN THIS??!!

Bring on the straight jacket!

Steve...I like 'em too...

Ingwe

cool

I don't care for snakes but I respect them and the niche they fill. I find it great that others have an interest in snakes....kinda' like spiders.

Me not a pussseee...I love snakes!

Never seen so many Nancy girls.

Spent half my childhood catching them.

indigo from about 5 weeks back

I hope you shot the puff adder after you took the photo. Don't know if I would have been thinking about a camera at that point in the intro. Pretty sure I would have been lookin through glass with crosshairs in it.

killed 3 rattlesnakes last Friday. Too dang warm here for this time of year.

Scenes like this make me want a flame thrower.

http://www.kansasprairie.net/kansasprairieblog/?p=7888

Unlikeley to be taken near Tucson. Those look like standard prairie rattlers, and more common in Kansas. also the denning behavior is more common in colder climates like Kansas, although some denning does occur in central/northern Arizona with Western rattlesnakes (close to prairie rattlers)NOT Western Diamondbacks.

Sycamore

Funny ... that pic was reputed to be near Riverton, WY. Who knows as it is the innanet!

#3 son killed two five footers (rattlers) at the ranch on Sat. #1 son killed two more of the same length last week out there. They are surely out and about in South Texas right now. Good time for me to stay in the truck. I used up all my luck on rattlesnakes a long time ago. We do have a big indigo living under the camp house. He can stay and he can bring a friend or two as well. I had noticed a marked decrease in rat activity over the past several months, now I know why. An indigo can fill the snake niche just as well (or better) than a rattlesnake. Rattlesnakes are bad news but they don't hold a candle to a mamba or a puff adder. That boomslang ain't now half-stepper either. I've never heard of a false water cobra. Of course I've never been to Argentina.

Alan

Note:False Water Cobra aka. Super Ninja Cobra! I like the second name better. It's got to chew to give you a mild reaction to it's venom. Ninja must mean something different in Agentonian.

This might be the source of the snake den photos, down near the bottom of the page, with more photos of the same den:

http://www.friendslittlebighorn.com/rattlesnakesatlittlebighorn.htm

Bruce

have a friend that's got a rattler den under her house near Sinton. they've killed 5 since they moved in 3 months ago. she says every time the door is slammed or shut hard you can hear them rattling under the house. she wants my buddy Brett and i to go and catch them.

I don't kill snakes. I have absolutely no reason to. I photograph them, then leave them be. We have lots of velvet tails here and a number of pygmy rattlers too. They have difficulty crossing roads, because most people can't resist running over them, even if they must swerve into the left lane to do so. A while back, I photographed a pygmy rattler and showed it to my friend. He asked if I killed it and I said no. 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."

Very cool, Snakes eat spiders, makes me feel warm and tingly when i come across a prairie rattler swallowing a good sized spider!

If you find playing with snakes a wee bit thrilling.....we have a sweet, docile little wonder over here called a Taipan (inland Brown).

I guarantee you that your lot will be an awful lot more exciting when you grab it by the tail.

.....for a short time, anyway!

I walked into a rattler one night while coming out of the Applegate area in southern Oregon on a deer hunt.
To say it scared me half to death would be a wild understatement!!!
I was sliding down a cut bank in the bright moon light and was almost on top of it before I could get stopped.
I'm pretty sure that some of my moves, trying to get stopped are responsible for the Disco craze......

And, you better believe I killed it!

I'll pass on that. I only play with American made snakes.

For all of you who like snakes, you are welcome to my share.

Here are a couple of pics of a pygmy rattler I recently saw. This was a particularly small one. It was only about a foot long.

The ones on our lease all have a lead deficiency, but I try my best to supplement their diet.....

I had a close call with one of those on a hunting trip. That was 40 years ago and I still remember it vividly.

I had a Bengal cat that was a snake hunter. He would kill gopher snakes and bring them to the house.

My mom liked that cat because she hates snakes, my dad liked him because he would kill squirrels and eat them.

I did not like him once when he put a dead racer in my room.

If your serious, you have a mental problem, and no I'm not joking. I may be wrong but I'd bet money you don't have kids either do you?

That said, I don't have a problem with snakes. These days a rattler way out in the pasture even gets a pass most times. But anywhere near the house, barn, or anywhere else my family frequents the poisonous snakes get killed immediately with extreme prejudice. Rat snakes, bull snakes, etc. are welcome to hang around.

Bill

I was pushing some fines out of a razor ditch yesterday morning w/ my tractor and noticed a copperhead in a tree about eye level.
Swung open the tractor door and shot him, got down to get him and noticed part of him still wrapped in the tree, [I thought the 45 cal. gold dot cut him in half] WRONG.. as I reached for the piece in the tree a head came around the tree to greet me HFS I said, drew and shot the 2nd snake.
I usually dont bother them, but its very dry here in OK. for this time of year, hence pushing fines out of the ditch to hold water for the deer and other game.
I have a natural ground blind just up the hill from where this took place, I often enter the blind before first light.
Still to hot here and couldnt risk it, so those 2 had to go.
Got pics but dont know how to post.

You're right. I don't have kids and don't want any. I may have a mental problem, but my doctor says I'm fine. Do you not agree that there are too many people in the world? including kids? If not, then you have a mental problem and I'm not kidding, because they're starving around the globe.

That says it for me.
I don't hunt them down...avoidance is my rule. However, any rattler(s) encountered where people or pets frequent are immediately eliminated. Simply "risk management" in my view.

Now, using a filleting knife, gently remove the tender meat taking care to avoid the boney ribs, marinate the meat in a white wine (Chardonnay works well), place on the grill until slightly warm and serve.

Me - I'll need a fifth of bourbon to eat it.

Maybe someone can get some close-ups with a wide angle lens!

ive kept captive bred false water cobras........really cool snake, appear to have more going on in their noggin than most snakes ive kept, actually would like to keep them again, my wife even liked them.....called "cobras" cause they flatten out their neck like a hood though not as defined as most Naja species.....they are rear fanged and technically venomous but the venom molecules are particularly large and dont travel well in mammal tissue, not really a factor other than for rear fangeds they have good sized fangs.....

never did get bit by mine, unlike the pythons they hunted mainly by smell and sight not heat so they never did mistake my hand for food like most the pythons did atleast once in awhile....

I like 'em dead

It is beyond me why so many people are afraid of snakes. Most of them are practically harmless. Even the pygmy rattlers and velvet tails where I live are quite docile and won't bite unless you step on or near them. And when they do bite, the pygmys are usually dry bites and the velvet tails are frequently dry also. Furthermore, antivenin is available in case you are bitten and it works very well, if needed. Fear can be the only motivation for wanting to kill every snake you see. I don't kill snakes.

They bloody well are not......not here!

The problem here MS may not be your mental state and/or lack of compassion. It's that when you make a statement like this, very few people take you say seriously after that.

For my part, I would gladly and without a moment of hesitation stomp the life out of the last snake on this Earth to keep a little kid, or any kid from being harmed.

Also, if you're going to run with a handle like "Monolithic_Solid" and keep what appears to be a "jacketed soft point" as an avatar, you also might experience some problems with people taking what you have to say seriously. I leave open the possibility that there is some reason for the discrepancy, or perhaps you don't know the difference, or don't care.

Certainly, overpopulation is a grave issue, but not to any great extent in the areas where most of us live tapping away at out computer keyboards so the poisonous snakes that you let live in Oklahoma would be harming children that are not starving all over the globe, IF that could even reasonably used as a criteria for allowing children to be harmed.

Personally I think it was a pretty asinine statement.

Alan

My feeling exactly....most especially if that child is my Daughter!



Ps, on this matter I do not give a stuff what the law or popular opinion says.

I don't go out of my way to kill snakes, but I have had to many close encounters not to be scared. Worst was hog hunting in a swamp in Florida & a 6 1/2' rattler struck at me twice. I managed to shoot him before the third strike which may have my "out". This snake is mounted in the mouth of a 400lb. red hog. I have had several moccasins fall in my boat fishing in Santee Cooper, SC. I can assure you that I did a remarkable marathon in only a 18' bass boat. There there was the time I leaned against an ant hill in South Africa & the PH suggested I move since he had killed a cobra there last year. There has been the many turkey hunts that I shared with various snakes. Did I say I don't like snakes?

I don't mind the non-poisonous varieties at all (since we don't have any of the big constrictors here...... yet) and in fact encourage them to live around my house and camp. Poisonous snakes are dispatched to whatever their eternal reward is with all expeditious haste by what ever means are at hand. If you've ever seen a snakebite, particularly a rattlesnake bite, you know it is not something you ever want to do.

Several years ago a girl at school took two copperhead bites on the top and side of her foot. It swelled up and after about a week of hobbling around on crutches, she was none the less for wear. That didn't make it OK. One of our teachers was cleaning out his garage and was carrying a box out to the trash. A three foot Rattler came out of the box and got him on the forearm. IN twelve minutes he was at the ER and had anti venom. It was a long, slow, painful recovery even for a former Marine Corps Master Sargent. Not something I ever want to do.

Alan

you all are missing the boat with them snakes. Snake skins bring good money for bow skins and such. Anyone who wants to sell some let me know and I'll probably be able to hook you up, especially copperheads and cane breaks that are "hole free".

Bbassi.
You'll give Les nightmares with that picture.

A black widow.
With snake skined limbs and quiver.
And spider silencers.

He wake up in a cold sweat and screaming like a little girl!

Mono - I think you are displaying a significant amount of ignorance. Or worse.
Readily available anti-venom is not a magical elixir that makes all boo-boos go away.

You should get a look at the horrible swelling that can still occur and the resulting appeasement that can take place to relieve it. Even after timely anti-venom.

Dry bites are a nice gift, even more common with copper heads.
A poor young boy across the river from me who loved snakes and grabbed a hold of every common water snake he could get his hands on spied a particularly fat one one day. He grabbed it behind the head, as was his custom, then knew that he had screwed the pooch when he felt the rest of the snake pushing against his chest. The result was a bite into the back of his hand.
Not a dry bite.
Horrible medical procedures to deal with the swelling.
After timely anti-venom.
Months of recovery that ended up in permanent disfigurement and disability.
After a non-dry bite.
And after timely anti-venom.

I don't mind snakes that I spy prior to stepping on them. The surprises "scare" me. I'm man enough (and smart enough) to admit that. Some get a pass. Any in what could remotely be considered a hazardous location get a death sentence.

What is the story with your name versus avatar, anyway.
Do you understand the question?

That is the dividing line for snake haters vs tolerate-rs here in the Mid west.

My FIL was from WV and grew up killing every one he saw.
( always funny to see a 6'5" 300 lb hillbilly runnin from a 6" snake!)

But I guess having poisonous critters hangin out in the out house would do that!

I grew up in NE Ohio and brought home every snake I could find.
My dog would catch 'em shake em dead and follow me home with them dragging.

When I was five my mother had a fit when we filled the clothes washer with garter snakes

You been dining with Al Gore?

I will say I'm pleased you don't plan on breeding any time soon...


Travis

There is only two snakes I hate: Satan & the one pictured by Kamerad Les

joe788's graphic example also shows that statistics seldom tell an entire story.

We often see statistics about how few people die of snakebite, but that ignores those who may be permanently maimed, disabled and disfigured.

Same with reports of other traumas, including military casualties. "His injuries are not considered life threatening." Yeah, but...

In this world there are a lot of bad things short of dying.

Paul

Yes, and when I was a lad of under ten in Queensland, I spent an awful lot of time catching Death Adders and Red Belly Blacks in the flood waters of the Thompson River....so what.

I defy ANY sane man to grab an angry Taipan by the bloody tail and not p!ss his pants....and if you want to cuddle a Tiger Snake I can supply you with as many as your little heart desires....same goes for Blacks, Browns and a couple of other cute wee nasties.

These bastards don't make you sick.....they can F_ing well kill you in very short order.
If you want to have a bit of excitement in your life then try dragging 'roo carcases through dry rice stubble in the dark....the rice stubble is absolutely full of the buggers.....they are there after mice, and they are p!ssed when disturbed.
I have lived and worked around them for years....out in the dark....by myself....miles from anywhere.

Stuff feeling all cuddly about them....I shall leave that to those clowns who have a death wish.


Ps, The above does not relate to Carpet snakes.....they go for Aus $100.00 a foot around here and are eagerly sought after for grain sheds and shearing sheds....to keep the vermin down.

I am just like a couple in here.. I too like snakes.




Especially as a hat band or a belt and they even work as faux chicken. I even like them on the road squirming into a ball after being run over.
I lived for a time up in the Tucson Mountains back when there was almost no one up there. I think my nearest neighbor was almost a mile away. My entire family had their share of no much fun snake experiences.

I will not go out of my way to kill one..

An Inland Tiapan and a Brown snake are not the same thing.

Cigar - you Bastid!

shoot em wenever i see em.

Reply to Joe 788
This is my "GO TO" post when people get too warm and fuzzy about Rattlesnakes.

http://www.rattlesnakebite.org/

Pictures are a must see, a bit of reality

they would not starve if there wasn't so muce greed and hate in the world theres enough food and assistance in the world to go around BUT DESPOTS AND DICTATORS SEEM TO NEED MORE THAN OTHERS

bassterd lol

Man, Glad he is alive..

that is friggen unreal,i don't often get squemish ,but i would not want to go thru that,

i've walked around rattlers on hunting trips and heard them while berry picking , know enough to be careful I HOPE ,

might, MIGHT, be 16 feet.....no way the SOB is 50 feet.......damn thing aint dead either..... he looks a bit frisky but i would still catch the [bleep], just a python, been bit by the [bleep] before.....

At 16 ft would that end up Python 1 Rattler 0

pythons eat warm blooded prey, mammals and birds.....wont pay much attention to snakes, well most pythons, the blackheaded python from Australia is known to eat snakes and other reptiles on a regular basis....

Snakes don't bother me, but I don't want one curled up at the foot of my bed either.

Python 1 Rattler 0 was directed at you.Who'd be catching who?

You say overpoplulation is not a problem where you live. Yes it is. Overpopulation in China and other places is depleting the oceans. When the oceans die, we all die. Snakes are a major part of the ecosystem. If you stomp them all out to save one child, you may unbalance the system so profoundly that we all die, including the children. Saving one child is not worth losing the whole world over. Furthermore, it's the parents responsibility to protect their children from snakes and all other wild animals. I'm sorry my name makes you feel inferior, but it's just a name. It could just as easily have been Core-Lokt or Nosler Partition. Since you're so timid, I'll change my avatar to something less scary so you won't be frightened by it. I don't know what the problem is. You really have no reason to fear me or snakes. If a snake gets after you, all you have to do is walk away. The fastest snake in the world is the black mamba and it only crawls at seven miles per hour. If you people down there are so slow that you can't outrun a pygmy rattler, I apologize for failing to recognize your handicap.

I understand the question. A monolithic solid and a Remington .458 405 grainer are both bullets. If you undertand so far, we can move on. A few years back, a little kid was bitten on the hand by a cottontail rabbit. Infection set in and he is now permanently disfigured. For this reason, we need to exterminate every cottontail in America. Uh oh. I just realized I changed my avatar to a cottontail. If this image frightens you too bad, let me know and I will change it.

I met a guy from Montana once. He was the stupidest MF I ever met.

at me? well there is a reason i refused to keep constrictors that got bigger than 10 feet when i had snakes....up to about 10 feet one person can handle them safely......over 10 feet its best to have a second person.....even if it was just my wife with me i wouldnt hesitate tackling a 16 foot snake and my wife really doesnt have much know how with dealing with them but even at half my size she would be enough help for me to handle a snake up to 20 feet....

biggest thing with pythons is to know what your doing and accept the fact that eventually your gonna get bit....have lost blood to just about every python species ive kept......no biggy, accept that going in and no real reason to fear them.....panic gets yah hurt more than anything....

Mono, you make a post that makes some noise that might indicate that you might know the difference between the bullets in question. I'll give you that one; heck, I'm feeling generous today and it kind of looks like you're getting off to a bad start here. I suspect you might often have that problem when exposed to responsible adults.

Now, are you bright enough to understand the difference between the irony of a kid bitten by a rabbit and then became infected by a chance exposure to a microorganism compared to a group of responsible adults who would shield their children from potential exposure to a serious threat?

im not big on killing snakes as you can imaginne given my posts that ive kept quite a few......that said i dont fault anyone clearing their yard of them in any way they feel necessary, hell ive even stated before if someone kills one with a nice hide i could be interested....

heres a hide from a gaboon viper i picked somewhere over the years

I like snakes too. I once owned a pet rattlesnake.

Having said that - I'll never forget that warm fall afternoon on a rocky bluff when I laid down to have a snooze and my shirtless back came down right on top of a curled up snake!

I was very proud of my sphincter control that day!

Rat - that is an amazing sample of a beautiful animal. The camo patterns produced by Mother Nature are amazing!

My apologies to most that I got sidetracked.

Same here.
I've had numerous serious encounters at feeding time. Smaller animals, while there's a lot of blood loss and pain that'd surprise ya, weren't life threatening. But get a 60 or 80 pound snake (on up) wrapped around your hands/arms, blood running everywhere, and you're all alone, it could turn serious in a matter of seconds. The little lady had to help get me unwound on a few occasions. You can't get your hands free. No human is that strong. Interesting wrestling matches, to say the least. No more. I don't fear either but I'd rather keep and work with deadly venomous than a large constrictor. Much, much safer.

had a 5 foot bullsnake lock me up like a pair of handcuffs once......wasnt in any danger but couldnt do a damn thing till he decided to let me ive got no illusions that in stonger than a 10 footer but i can keep myself safe with one....over that its not so certain.....

I do. Do you know the chance of a anyone being bitten by a venomous snake? I spoke at length with one of our local ER doctors about treating snake bites and he told me most people who are bitten by venomous snakes are drunk when it happens, indicating that most people are bitten while harassing them. If you don't bother the snakes, the snakes won't bother you. It seems you are using their percieved danger to humans as an excuse for killing them.

Damn, nice skin.

Was it that I don't take what you say seriously or that I think what you say is asinine that bothered you so much. It seems pointless for anyone else to expose your ignorance, you do such a good job of it yourself.

Alan

any ER doc that sees lots of bites, and few see lots of bites, will tell you the two groups most likely to get bit are the drunk and kids......the only local guy that i know personally thats been bit was bit as a lil kid....bites from rattlers are rare up here.....my grandfather killed every rattler near the farm house but left those in the field alone for the most part....he would also beat your arse if he heard or saw you hurting a bullsnake cause they were better mousers in the barn and around the grain bins than cats and if yah had alot of bullsnakes around the rattlers tended to stay away....

as i said i aint big on killing any snake but dont fault anyone for killing the poisonous ones around thier places but it would likely do them some good to learn which are the dangerous ones and which are the harmless cause if yah encourage the harmless to live around your place they will likely keep rodents down which wont give the venomous ones a reason to look at setting up shop......

Snakes are why God gave us shotguns.

You are correct.....and I was tired.

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.

nope but the physical trates are similar....ball pythons are chunky snakes but they come from west Africa not SE Asia.....actually a captive bread ball python is an excellent first snake as they are the python species least likely to bite and if yah have one that hits 6 foot its huge, i had a 15 year old one that was only 4 feet......the front portion of a ball python is alot skinnier than a blood though....however a wild caught ball python is about the worst pet cause they are a pain to get eating.....only was bit once by a ball and it immediatly let go unlike some other pythons.....

ball pythons heavily prey imprint so tend to like to eat what ever kind of food they started eating as babies.....my hand tasted nothing like a mouse so it immediately realized its mistake and let go.....some other pythons arent as picky and latch on and are gonna ry their damndest to eat what ever they get ahold of until you convince them other wise....i got bit by the ball cause i stuck my hand in the cage before the snake had found the mouse i had given it....it smelled the mouse but saw the heat of my hand and struck me....they have small teeth though and the mark was gone in 24 hours....

blood python


ball python

doesnt take months for it to wear off, few days at most.....venom is a protein, and like any other protein isnt that hard to break down......also they are a front fanged elapid just like a cobra.....

Uh, I hate to split hairs here, but Coral Snakes are Elapids and their fangs are positioned in the front of the mouth, not in the rear. There are some highly dangerous "rear-fanged" snakes but none of these are found in the New World. The Boomslang and African Vine Snake are the most infamous of these. Taxonomically, these are classified as Colubrids. All Coral Snake venom is highly toxic but they are small and, generally, non-aggressive. Their biting and venom delivery method is typical Elapidae - strike, hang on, and chew.

rattler,

OK - cool man, thanks for the clarification. Those are some great photos and do a nice job of distinguishing between the two genuses.

also the only snake i can think of thats about impossible to get it to bite yah is the rubber boa of the western US.....had one guy that kept them swear he could dress his finger up in a mouse hide and wave it infront of the lil snakes and not get bit....

coral snakes are as willing to bite as most, less than others.....but they are a snake that isnt as likely to come into contact with ppl cause they chase lizards not rodents so are less likely to be around houses.....pick up and mess with a coral and their is better than even odds you will be bit....

Is that a picture of you in your avatar? If not, then there is an inconsistency in your name and avatar too.

just for clarification those arent my photos, stole them from another site......unfortunately i managed to loose most the photos from the time period i kept snakes....

Yeah. The Doc told me the Crofab is a much better deal.

Next time you see a snake near your house, leave it alone and go back out the next day. See if it's still there.

My BIL went down to the ranch last weekend and didn't burn his trash and didn't haul it off. The coons got into it and spread it over Kingdom Come. That's the sort of thing that makes rats. If you create a niche, something will fill it. I spend the entire year stopping up holes and putting out rat poison. Finally get an indigo to help me kill the rats and now I've got rat food all over the place again. Long ago I got rid of anything a rat could chew up to make a nest and I keep poison out all the time.

I know I'll never get rid of them all so it's best to keep the indigos. An oddity on our place is that in the 38 - 39 years that I've been going out there regularly we have killed no small rattlesnakes. All of them have been in the 5' - 6+' category. All four snakes killed last week were over 5' long. These are not young snakes and I don't understand why we don't find smaller ones.

Alan

An interesting snake story:

A friend of mind was an ARMY Ranger in Nam, on a small LRRP team.
On a mission one of the guys needed to take a dump and crawled out of their hide to do so.
Soon there was automatic weapons fire and the team ran to his rescue only to find him with his pants around his ankles, trying to reload his CAR while a huge python (or whatever they have over there) withering at his feet.
He was copping the squat when the log (snake) next to him started to crawl away and scared him half to death!
A Huey picked them and the snake up and took them back to base, where the snake became a meal...

you do realize i picked my user name for a reason, ive been chasing the legless things since i could walk.....and its obvious you know jack chit bout snakes given you called a coral snake rear fanged when it is the only front fanged elapid native to the US......just cause you dont see a snake in the same spot 2 days in a row dont mean its not still around, used to be a bullsnake around my grandfathers place that i knew practically on a first name basis for several years cause it had a distinctive scar where i think a hawk had tried to grab it.....was always within 100 yards of the house....

woulda likely been a reticulated python.....

The only poisonous snake I've seen in three African safaris was a vine snake. We were hunting buffalo in the jess when I saw a snake on a branch just above the head of a tracer. He walked under it as did the PH and other tracker. It wasn't the color of a mamba and I figured that they had all seen it and didn't bother mentioning it at the time.

Later that night at dinner the subject of snakes came up and I mentioned to Rory that we'd walked by a snake. He was surprised and asked when. I said that he had walked right under it, just a few inches from his head.

He asked, "It was in a TREE?!". I then described the event and described the snake. He then says, "That was a vine snake! There's not bloody cure if one of those bites you!" He then went on about how they are not that aggressive. But I got the message that I should mention these things in the future.

In retrospect I was glad I resisted the urge to poke at it with my rifle barrel.

the indigos were prolly eating the small ones but the big ones were to big to tackle or something....indigos will eat sneakes and appear immune to rattler venom though they are just as happy eating rats and mice.......

they are an elapid......by definition elapids are front fanged.....try again.....



http://people.wcsu.edu/pinout/herpetology/mfulvius/index.htm

skull of a coral snake.....fangs in the front of the skull

My mistake. I see now, the coral snake has small, front fangs.

A few days at most? Well then there's no reason to fear snakes at all then, so you can sleep easily now.

No, I use my real name and a picture that I took. Now if I had that picture and used the screen name "Buck in a parking lot on a sunny day" that would be inconsistent. Like I said, you really don't need my help with this ignorance thing you've got going, but I'm glad to be of service. Even when you google for information you can't seem to get it right. Why do you expect to be taken seriously when you can't do that.

I'm sure you have an area of expertise, trying sticking to that. Evidently herpetology and solving the world overpopulation problem are not your forte'. Better yet, why don't you just "man up" and admit that kids getting snake bit is OK with you because there are too many of them is an asinine statement. Do that and I might consider letting the whole avatar inconsistency thing drop.

Alan

you really are a dumb arse.....venom works out of your system in a few days if they can keep yah breathing and your heart beating...mohave greens can kill in hours if antivenin isnt administered.........

Oh, for Christs sake Alan.....you KNOW you are wasting your time, don't you?

I've heard this fascinating story before, only it was a mountain lion with a missing toe.

SEE....I told you so!!!!!

I never said kids getting snake bit is okay with me, but it's certainly better to die from snakebite than starving to death.

I'm a dumb arse? Your grammar and spelling are terrible. How's the school system up there?

never claimed i was good at spelling or grammer, in fact i often admitt on my list of skills they are right near the bottom.....but ive got my facts right, you didnt.....

But I'm still learning. You obviously are not.

you seem to be learning mostly from chitty websites.....i learned cause ive actually been around the snakes.....i know how to handle a 20 foot python cause ive done it...i know coral snakes are front fanged venomous cause a buddy had them and i had to be careful when messing with them.....just like im prolly the only one thats posted on this tread with serious knowlege of the false water cobras posted on the OPs initial post, ive kept the very species he took pictures of in Argentina and handled them on a regular basis.....

You are kidding.....right?

.....just like im prolly the only one thats posted on this tread with serious knowlege of the false water cobras. . .

That explains it. You think you're the only one here who knows anything about snakes. I saw your pics up there, so I got some of my chitty information, as you called it, from you.

No. Aren't you still learning? Or do you already know all that you'll ever know.

Nice way to end...a "hissy" fit.

what chitty info? you were the one arguing bout coral snakes being rear fanged.....

never said i was the only one here that knows bout snakes, seen posts by individuals that seem to know as much or more than me depending on what portion of herpetology we are talking about....just saying i "earned my stripes" in this area and am not relying on chitty websites to try and bullchit my way through a conversation....

You were the one who said they were front fanged. I got that info from you. I learned most of what I know about venomous snakes before we had access to the internet. This whole thing started because I didn't kill a pygmy rattlesnake.

No....it started because you are a d!ck.

Disregard what I said about you comming to America. You belong down there.

Oh, now see what you have gone and done....you have hurt my feelings!

And you are still a d!ck.

Sorry. I didn't know you were so sensitive.

becuase you showed such disregard for childrens lives

God. I've never encountered so many stupid MFs in one place before.

That's crazy! Glad your Dog made it!

Yes, I think that you may be correct.....you are indeed sorry.

I understand now, why English people are offended when someone mistakes them for Australian.

I see it's useless, trying to explain something so complex, to people who are so simple minded, they believe the Earth is less than 7,000 years old.

Yes, they sent us to a place with thousands of miles of brilliant white beaches, billions of tons of mineral wealth, year round glorious weather, fishing to dream about....and a stable economy!

Whilst they have.....!

Yep.....I can see why nobody wants to be an Australian.



Ps, but wait a minute........some of my ancestors were here over 40 000 years ago, enjoying the beaches, fishing, Glorious weather.....!

Guess I must be doubly cursed.

you've never been to a Democrat rally?

I am betting he has.

funny thing is so did i......nothing magically happened since the internet happened that coral snakes were suddenly discovered to be elapids.....been common knowledge for over 100 years...

and the only reason i got half high and mightly bout likely being the only one that knows much about teh false water cobras originally pictured is i know enough about the species in captivity to know very few are offered for sale every year.....they are an odd ball species most dont want to work with......would have put $100 down on me knowing the most about them cause from previous threads i know very few guys here are snake ppl and even fewer are interested in large rear fanged colubrids....

this whole thing started cause you seem to think you know more bout snakes than ppl that have actually worked with them for a long time....and then you got pissy when our experience showed different than what some one told you......

I just like dead snakes.

I have read that the Mohave rattler has the most toxic venom of all the rattle snakes in North America.

Just a few weeks ago, a rattler escaped from the Atlanta Zoo and was found a few days later. The news paper article said it was a Tiger Rattlesnake, and was the most toxic of all rattlesnakes.

I had never heard of it, so I Googled it. According to Google, it is found in Northern Mexico and does have the 2nd most toxic venom of all rattle snakes. I can't think of the name of the No. 1, but from what I read, the Mohave is in third place as far as toxic venom goes.

Could Rattler, or anyone else give more information on these three rattlesnakes.

Near where I live, there are, or was, a group of people who handled venonous snakes. In an office I worked in, a ladie's FIL did this. One day he was bitten on his face by a Timber Rattler. He refused medical treatment for about 2 days, then he went, or his relatives took him to the hospital, but he had waited too long.

The doctors were unable to save him, but I do not know what type of treatment they tried. Probably IVs and anti-venom.

Although on LD 50 charts, the Timber and Canebreak do not rate as high as many other venomous snakes, the fatality percentage among people bitten by them is higher than average for some more venomous snakes.

Timber/Canebrake are fairly high on the list but are relatively timid and not prone to bite.

The most dangerous, I believe, is the neo tropical rattlesnake. What makes them so deadly is the wide diversity of venom makeup from location to location. They're another with a mix of neurotoxin and hemotoxin but it changes rapidly as you move through their natural range. Anti-venin serum from a population 100 miles away is likely to do more harm than good because it's just not the right mix. Even from specimen to specimen, caught in the same area, there can be such wide difference that serum isn't probably going to work. Another problem is, since they grow quite large, they can inject a surprising quantity in a single bite.

LD 50 ratings are but one factor.....as far as cobras go the king cobra aint particularly toxic but give the snake is so damn big it also has volume......my local prairie rattlers are more toxic than an eastern diamondback but the eastern diamond back is more likely to kill you cause its a bigger snake.....

the reason timbers and canebreaks tend to kill more ppl than say a mohave is cause more ppl live where they live and have much larger ranges.....its a numbers game, more ppl come into contact with timbers....

you pretty well covered it on the tiger ratter, and mohave....the rating is based on who did the study and where the venom was injected into the animal....venom into an artery kills alot faster and takes less than the same venom into muscle or delivered just under the skin....they are just other species of rattlers.....general rule is the farther south you go in the Americas the more likely the rattler you run into will have neurotoxic venom....rattlers of Central and South America generally run to the neurotoxic end of the spectrum and not so much on the muscle destroying end like most US rattlers and copperheads and cottonmouths....

BTW the third snake your prolly looking for on the list is the midget faded rattler from Colorado and Wyoming and it was of an intravenous study.....look at other studies and the tiger rattles and midget faded hardly rate.....where certain types of venom is injected matters about as much as what kind of venom.....

Knew I shouldn't have read this thread...

I couldn't give a hoot in hell if a poisonous snake is common, exotic, rear-fanged, front-fanged, hemotoxic or neurotoxic. They all give me the heebie jeebies. I know they have their place in the ecology -- just not in my personal ecology. If it's poisonous and in my immediate vicinity, it's subject to termination with extreme prejudice.

"the reason timbers and canebreaks tend to kill more ppl than say a mohave is cause more ppl live where they live and have much larger ranges.....its a numbers game,"

True, however, I have read that the timbers and canebreaks cause more fatalities than the toxology of their venom would indicate they should.

ppl not getting to help on time....based on the toxicity of their venom king cobras should kill as many as they do till you factor in volume produced and able to inject, same with a eastern diamondback.....a russels viper has half the toxisity of a monocled cobra but russels vipers kill more ppl? why they produce more venom......

timber rattler venom is nothing to sneeze at.....they are more toxic than species that kill far more ppl.....

i know when you get bit on a finger its not a good idea to tie a string around it and go out and shoot pool and have a few beers before going to the hospital. a buddy of mine found that out the hard way. spent 8 days in ICU

Is that a Texas thing?

he said it was far worse than when he got rear ended by a 18 wheeler and had his neck broke

Rattler, no comments on the neo tropicals?
I'm going on memory and it's been years.

neotropical rattlers? blindness is a common side effect in bites.....one species, the Cascavel Crotalus durissus terrificus, it happens in roughly 60% of bites if i remember right.....neurotoxins rule with theses species but enough other toxins are present to destroy muscle tissue.....

Snakes are the most fascinating of God's zoo creation. I respect and admire them.

Rattler on page 3 I posted a youtube... What kind of snake is that thing??

python.....said somewhere else in here that i thought it was a scrub python cause of the lack of much of a pattern......watching it again im not so sure thats what it is.....looks to stocky to be a scrub.....would help if i knew exactly where the video was taken......looks to heavy to be a retic for the length but an over fed retic would get chunky but its hard to over feed a retic that size cause they have a faster metabolism than most other large pythons until they get much longer....

im half pulling this guess out of my arse but im thinking it was a video was taken in the US and its a paternless burmese python.....basically a burmese python that was selectively bred to have nearly no pattern, its not an albino, it just has the background coloring and none of the foreground blotches.....

Thanks, all I know is I got up and ran around the room like a 7 year old...

deal with pythons much and yah learn not to jerk away

pythons, like most snakes have recurved teeth, when they bite and hold on if you jerk one of two things is gonna happen.....if the snake doesnt have a hold of anything with the rest of its body or its a small snake your just gonna fling the snake around and your not gonna accomplish a dang thing other than making the upcoming bruise worse......

if its a big snake or has a grip of something with its tail end a good chunk of whatever it has a hold of is gonna stay in its mouth while your rip the rest away and your really gonna bleed....

weirdest bite ive ever had was from a hatchling spotted python, one of the smallest python species that happens to come from Australia......my mom referred to them as pencils with teeth cause thats about how big they were when i got them.....i used to get all my snakes used to being handled cause its a small town, word gets out and lil kids want to see them, prolly spent more time showing them to my siblings friends than anything....

well i had just gotten these 3 spotted pythons and they were all wrapped around the fingers of my left hand, had my arm propped on the chair arm in the livingroom watching TV, just letting the snakes get used to being held but not paying much attention to them cause they seemed content sitting with my hand as their perch.....

what happened next took me about 5 full seconds to register.....guess i had my hand full of baby snakes a lil to close to my face and i was a lil to engrossed in whatever was on TV.....apparently the human eyelid blinking looks alot like a squirming newborn baby mouse to a spotted python hatchling cause next thing i know, i had a 10 inch long, skinny snake attached to my eyelid....as i said took me a bit to figure out just why i could no longer open my eye as the weight of the snake dangling from it was just enough to keep it shut....

a snake that small doesnt have much for teeth and spotted pythons dont have terribly long teeth as adults anyway.....got up, got a glass of cold water and poured it over the snake and it let go.....teeth didnt even go deep enough to bleed...

123456,

Not sure if the Tiger is that toxic, but they have a very small head compared to their body (and probably small venom glands), actually somewhat common in the hills around Tucson and Phoenix.

Pretty sure the Mohave is the most toxic in the US, but there are possibly two populations, Mohave A and Mohave B, and one has the neurotoxic components in the venom, the other is much more of a tissue destroying toxin.

Rattlesnake venom is a complex mix of proteins, and a lot more rattlers are being discovered to have neuro toxic components in the mix. The midget faded rattler, and the pacific rattler I believe have both had neurotoxins discovered in the venom of some individuals.

Danger to a human from a rattlesnake bite is a combination of venom toxicity, how much the snake has to give, how much of the venom it delivers, where it hits you, how you react, and how far (time-wise) you are from competent medical help.

There is a paper in the literature about doing DNA sequencing on different rattlesnake venoms (of the old Western Rattlesnake clade) and they discovered that a group that was thought to be related was really two groups, only distantly related, and that neurotoxic venom developed independently in two sub-species.

Sycamore

your pretty well right other than the tiger rattler does fall on the more toxic end but as you noted the smaller size factors in.....do know in the footnotes ive read about the midget faded that like the mohave's different areas have snakes with different toxicity but not as much work has been done with them cause they are alot rarer than mohaves and their smaller size makes them less of an overall potential threat to humans....

if yah happen to know where i can find the dna study you speak of i would be interested.....think ive missed that one somehow and would like to read it....

Big, Medium, Small,....all the same when they show up near the house for breakfast.

Saute' over a very low heat, Garlic, and a dash of Taragon,.....go VERY easy on the salt.

serve with Eggs, and fresh Corn Tortillas.

GTC

You certainly do not want to take a hit from any rattlesnake species, but my understanding is that the Tiger, Mojave, and Midget-faded have the most potent venoms of the NA species. The Southern Pacific and Mexican West Coast species are also quite toxic.

The Central and South American species of rattlers are extremely dangerous but I believe the lance-heads (Bothrops) account for more bites in that part of the world than Crotalus does. Some of these pit-vipers are incredibly toxic and their bites can be highly destructive.

Douglas, Douglas, Schuett, Porras, & Holycross [2002. Phylogeography of the Western Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) complex, with emphasis on the Colorado Plateau]. Pp. 11-50. In Biology of the Vipers [Schuett, H�ggren, Douglas, and Greene (editors). Eagle Mountain Publishing, Eagle Mountain, Utah. xii + 580 pp. + 16 color plates]

Shoot me a pm with email addy, I'm pretty sure I have the .pdf on a hard drive somewhere around here. Might have the paper by Pook as well.

Sycamore

actually the lance heads tend to have more of the tissue destroying componants than the tropical rattlers.....infection is a beotch in a third world country, the venom isnt what kills yah, the tissue rot does....

interesting offshoot of this venom talks, if your near medical attention the best venomous snake to take a bite from is one of the southeast Asian krait species, i forget which.....the venom is a pure neurotoxin that paralyzes the skeletal muscles and diaphragm but not the cardiac muscle.....hook you up to a ventilator and wait it out, once the venom deteriorates you can breath again and there is no other side effects unlike most other snake species that have either more destructive neurotoxins or have the tissue destroying toxins.....

So do the lance-heads have cytotoxic properties? I'd always been under the impression that they had a more potent hematoxin than their rattler cousins.

The other issue with the concolor, is where they live, very few people. The Mojaves have Phoenix and Tucson in their range, and all the southern California recreators tromping on them on weekends.

Take a triangle from Page Arizona to 4 Corners, to Grand Junction, that's about the range of the concolor, and I doubt if 10,000 people live within that space of what, 10,000 sq mi.?

That makes MT look crowded!

Sycamore

you do realize your asking me this at the end of a long day with pain meds in my system

quick look through the two books i have handy by the bed just say "tissue destroying" for the couple main species and specific note that fer-de-lance venom also destroys red blood cells and mucus membranes.....

very true....

Damn Greg! Ya never said ya got snakes when you invited me to your place!!

Later...

ps I still plan on showin up someday

Spent 1 1/2 year at Page, with most of my spare time on the desert. Can't recall seeing ANY snake at all. I like it that way.

Bruce

Power plant overhaul?

I have read quite a bit about Timbers and Canebreaks, and some experts think they are the same species but different coloration because of geographical location.

Other experts think they are either a seperate species or one is a sub-species of the other. I have also read that there is talk of doing DNA analysis to determine the exact status of these two types.

But, as of now, I don't know if anyone actually knows if the two snakes are related, and if so, by how much.

I do know that in this area, or actually on our deer hunting lease in South GA, the one pictured in Badger's post, with the stripe down it's back, is most often referred to as a Canebreak, while the ones without the stripe are referred to as Timbers.

As far as aggressive, the only snake venomous or non venomous, I have ever had strike at me was a Canebreak about 3 feet long. Fortunately, I was about 3 inches out of his strike zone.

I saw a movement and heard a slight noise. I did not know what it was so I looked closer and it struck again, again missing my leg by about 3 inches. The second time, even though I was looking at it, was so unbelievely fast that there was no way of dodging it if I had been in range.

It struck at me a total of 3 times, and I had done nothing to provoke it. I didn't even know it was there until the second strike, when I saw it move. Scary.

From what I see... everything's poisonous down under. I had friends growing up, triplet boys, plus one older brother, who'd lived in Australia from ages 4-7. Their Brit mother was a nervous wreck by the time they moved here. She said they could never leave a snake alone, and Australia was a bad place to raise reptile-obsessed laddies.

if it aint venomous its a python.....IIRC Australia has exactly 2 snakes that are neither a python nor venomous......

I killed that one in Stewart County on the Ga/Al state line near Lake Eufaula.

Our property is in Washington county, between Milledgville and Sandersville, in a community called Deep Step.

I have also hunted Stewart County several years ago.

Both areas, yours and mine, are about on the boundry line between north of there they are Timbers and to the South, they are Cane breaks.

We seem to have more Cottonmouths than anything. I mean the genuine article, not the banded water snakes many people refer to as Cottonmouths.

At the Regional Medical center ER I worked at for 30 years, we would treat about 15 Poisonous snakebites/yr. I don't recall any of them I saw as being drunk. Most were kids outdoors at night, frequently bare-footed, or adults reaching into the wood-pile or other likely place where mice hid.

thats been my experience aswell.....though if you take bite numbers as a whole across the entire US alcohol seems to be an issue in alot of bites....kids make up the second largest group and ppl just out working in the yard the third.....

Am scheduled to hunt in Belize next year. I think they call the big lance-heads "yellow-jawed Tommygoffs". Guess they also have some of the tropical rattlers down there.

http://consejo.bz/belize/snakes.html

nasty ones down that way.....wouldnt stop me from hunting but i would watch where i step and put my hands.....may i ask what your planning to hunt down there?

I printed a copy of this for my wife. I've never been fond of yard work.

Water buffalo(supposed to be the first year offered) and white-lipped peccary. Then some river and reef-fishing.
One cannot take one's rifles into the country. We will be using shotguns of residents.

I believe the Tommy Goffs are usually seen under the name of Fer-de-lance..the yellow jawed ( or beard..Barba Amarilla) is the Bushmaster...or indeed I could have them bass ackwards... But the two are there, and the tropical rattlers are REALLY cool lookin, though I dont know their proper name...I could have a REAL good time messing with snakes there!!!

Ingwe

my wife wishes my interest in snakes was a lil less so.....if i come across one it has my entire focus......she really gets pissy when i dive into the brush after a bullsnake when im dressed up for state meetings

she got damn pissed the one time cause she thought it was embarrassing as hell i dove down the side of a hill cause i saw a large racer a short ways down the hill in the middle of a conversation with someone she knew....i caught the racer though, good sized and didnt try to bite to bad....

i really think you and i need to go on an overseas hunt together

Oh Krapp Sheridan..we could have a BALL!!!

My last trip to Africa we went after some snakes...it was mega-cool
Puff adders, a cobra, and a Rock Python...the python hadnt been watching Steve Irwin on TV and when I approached him he tried to actively bite me!!!

It was GREAT!!!!

Ingwe

im working on Australia for 2013.......

Krapppppppp....let me start working on a savings account....

Ingwe

The Bushmasters apparently don't get as far north as Belize.
Here's a good site for descriptions and ranges of various poisonous snakes:
http://danger.mongabay.com/survival/afm/e.html

Here's a Yararaca Lance-head killed in northern Artgentina in winter. Although I have several pix of dead snakes, none were killed by me, but they were all(save the mamba) in places where they could have easily caused injury or worse to people/dogs.

Steve you are right on the Bushmasters...you could probably guess Im not big on killing the snakes..BTDT...hunted them for their hides for a number of years, killed more than my share...

Ingwe

Plan on taking more than you think you need. I ended up staying 6 months. Fascinating place.