Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cottonmouths

Mackay, I grew up in Mtn. Home, Arkansas, between Bull Shoals Lake and Norfork Lake. Lot of water around there including rivers, creeks, and cattle ponds. When I was a kid, had a couple of very near misses with copperheads and another with a cottonmouth moccasin. A buddy was bitten on the ankle by a copperhead and as with your wife, he nearly lost his leg.

Sorry about your wife and hope she has recovered now. I agree with your assessment of poisonous snakes.

L.W.

Bottom picture looks more like a baby copperhead.

Looks like a mating ritual. Or as Tide_Change said, Brokeback Swamp.

Brother killed one that size near Sewell Creek around Marietta/Roswell in the 80’s.

He skinned it out tanned the hide on a board. Hell, he might still have it. It was a big fugker!

That’s what I thought too, until a guy with a lot more experience with vipers corrected me. Baby cotton mouths also have the yellow tip on the tail and can appear orange in color.. Two other things about the picture confirm the fact that its a baby cottonmouth. 1. The patterns are ‘pixilated’. A baby copper head has much smoother lines on the patterns that are shaped like a Hershey’s kiss. 2. The stripe coming off the eye running back is a definite cotton mouth trait.

https://www.pilotonline.com/life/wildlife-nature/article_b5c307e0-4440-11e6-ae34-cf9f0204f3eb.html

10/4. Thanks for the lesson!!!

As I read this, I have a better appreciation of shoveling snow!


Done some logging where Rattlers were thick. Every move was
planned. Every step. Every engine examined before checking the oil.
Sucks on the job.
Sure as hell ain't no way to live.

Where are you, up in Missouri?

I was just in Bull Shoals back in June ... water is so low in that lake, the entire area is depressed, people moving out and leaving property everywhere to go wild ... snakes are on edge. We saw a few here and there along the shoreline. It was enough that I didn't allow the grandkids in the water.

We've had record setting rainfall this year here in SC ... I've never seen so many snakes, especially cottonmouths and canebrakes,. But I had one that could have got me and he didn't so I put him in a bucket and took him back through the woods to the chicken houses. I've had'em cut me slack in swamps, walking through the woods .... but when they get up close to the house and put the dogs in danger and the grandkids ... they gotta go then if they don’t slither off first time I give them the wack.

Mid 80's, In College Park, a suburb of Atlanta, my dad killed one at he edge of my uncles lawn. Big bastard that measured 54".

25 or so years ago, I got invited to help brush a duck blind on the middle fork of the obion River in West TN. It was a great duck place and a weekend of work meant at least one or two weekends of hunting for the upcoming season. I was broke, and this relationship made sense.

So, here I go, off to the river Bank with a machete and pretty soon we've got a trailer load of cane cut. All of a sudden we run into a cottonmouth nest. Snakes every where. I run back to my 4 wheeler to grab my 20 GA. Other guy with me grabs two boxes of bird shot. I fired every one of those shells killing snakes and baby snakes. It took long enough every one else has congregated on the bank to watch. I told em I'd cut all the cane for that day. They could have the rest of it. Seems no one else was interested in the job.

me and my buddies used to run around the swamps in northern louisiana without thinking about it. that was until we saw one about 5 foot long swimming right through the hole we were just in a couple minutes before. kind of took the fun out of it. up here in PA we there are places that i like to go that are thick with rattlers. i only go there from end of november to about march.