Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Snake handling

I caught this guy under the lid of my propane tank.

I am powerful happy I don't have to worry about those kind of snakes under my propane tank.

Jake NoShoulders and I don't get along. Thankfully I don't have to deal with the bastids here.

Well, ive heard of snakes scaring the crap out of people but not this. You must be pretty scarey, Pappy.

What kind of snake is that?

A big copperhead!

In Arkansas one time my dad and I found a big copperhead under the lid on our 1000 gal propane tank. We were checking the tank and getting it ready to be filled for the winter. The snake was just laying in there coiled around the gauges and controls. He was probably 3 to 4 foot long and that size is deadly.

Snakes are good - even most of the bad ones. Well, I do live in Alaska, but I grew up Outside.... Yeah, snake poop/pee stinks - ask me how I know!

It's humans I have problems with, and not a one of them has ever physically crapped/peed on me - except for my sons.....

I always liked what we called "puff-adders". Might have been hog-nosed, for all I know. Have no idea what they really were. when vulnerable, they would roll over as if "dead". Roll them over right side up, and they would roll over belly side up. Time after time.

They were, BY DAMNED, dead!!!!

I handled this one last week.

My preferred way of handling them now.

Caught this in my neighbors flower basket sitting on her front porch.

Luckily the only poisonous snake found in Idaho is the Western Rattler, AKA Prairie Rattler. We have lots of garter snakes and a few bull snakes around here and I let them be. They eat a lot of crawly things.

Snakes don't like to be dangled. You would panic too if somebody picked you up by the neck and let your body dangle. If you grab one behind the head, always support the heavy part of the body with your other hand and they calm down quickly.

this guy turned up on my front porch one evening. He was quite pissy and would strike at you if you were within 4 feet of him. I had to look him up and eventually concluded it was a Texas brown snake. Max size 10-12 inches, and that's about how big this guy was.

The old Rocker Alice Cooper used to do a stage act where he'd walk around with a good sized (8-9 feet) albino python on his shoulders. One night on stage the snake chit on him, and the smell was so bad he had to fight to keep from throwing up.

If you're saying to just grab behind the head and let the tail hand down and do what it wants, that's a big negatory. I abandoned my normal method of grabbing a snake behind the head with one hand, while holding the tail with the other, just ONE time. Never again. A big black snake with an uncontrolled tail will immediately wrap around your arm and they can squeeze like a 1 ton hydraulic vise. I found out a big snake has a lot of stamina and the only way to get them to stop is to get some help to get them off your arm.

If I run into a poisonous snake I usually kill them. Non poisonous I leave alone. A couple of years ago a buddy of mine called me to come get a snake behind his office. It was a king snake coiled up on a bush outside the back windows and was upsetting his female employees. I walked over and picked it up and could hear the women screaming in the office. I took it home and let it go in the woods behind the house. A few days later my wife went out to light the grill and she came back in mad as a hornet. The king snake had gotten up in the bottom of the gas grill and after she lit it he was flopping all over trying to get out up through the grates instead of going out the bottom. Needless to say I got a lecture.