Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Rattlesnakes

Yep, they all need to meet a garden hoe.

Yeah, because that happens all the time.

And snakes have more to fear from my kid than the other way around.

We lost a good dog and almost lost my dad to rattlers, I use to give them a pass not anymore.

You do know that you can be bitten by a dead snake? I would cut the head off before handling.

I've heard that strike distance quoted many times - but have witnessed different.

How about rattlebugs in all the trees around you?... LOL.

Skip to the 13 minute mark.

My son was bitten by a very large one that got into his sandbox as a small child of 4 years old.
After a grueling 40 minute ride to the emergency room, it was determined to be a dry bite.
Young snakes are actually more dangerous I'm told because they don't give dry, venomless bites.

That's what I told my late wife when I bought my S&W Governor. "Hey Babe, it's the ultimate snake gun." She just rolled her eyes and said "Do you need a different gun for every animal on the planet." Yup.

I have always had much respect for poisonous snakes and have been fascinated by them since growing up around them in the Golden, Co foothills. The most venomous snakes I have seen were in the spring time, the Florida swamps at Eglin and the hills of Pendleton. I caught a small rattler at Pendleton and jumped it back into Ft. Lewis in my ammo pouch! It regurgitated the mouse sometime during the adventure, but I kept it as a pet in the barracks .

How would you like to have one of those little suckers drop down the back of your shirt? 😳

If you get it on video, you could take it to PPV!

I love them all. September and October is the best time to look as the young are being born right now. Pit vipers are born live, non-venomous species by egg. In October, I can find 15-20 baby cottonmouths an hour. Rattlesnakes were rarer here, so maybe a few per hour.

As does any sane person, same for rattlers & copperheads too.

Vipers & humans do not co-habitat well together; anybody that thinks otherwise is delusional & in a state of serious denial.

MM

I'm neither delusional nor in a state of denial. I'm just not afraid of snakes. I've grown up walking and fishing where cottonmouths were thick. Never had a problem. I've squatted over and nearly stepped on cottonmouths I didn't see till I was 6 inches from them. Never a strike. The only time I've seen them strike is when they're getting fugged with. And I've seen the consequences of removing cottonmouths where they were close to people. A local business park here eradicated them from a ditch system cuz people were ascared of them. Not a single bite to anyone. Once they were gone the muskrat population exploded. You couldn't walk in the gardens near the water without falling thru up to your knee in a God damn muskrat tunnel. In the 55 years I've lived near cottonmouths, only two people here have been bitten. A drunk retard that picked one up, and the curator of reptiles at a nature park that was inserting chips in them so he could determine where they were hibernating, as part of his environmental thesis.

Same with Timber/Canebrake Rattlesnakes. I regularly walk thru pocosin forests and grassy areas in low shoes and socks knowing rattlesnakes are around. I gave up snake boots years ago. If you don't screw with them, they aren't a problem. The one I moved yesterday didn't strike or act aggressively in any way.

I've been bitten hundreds of times by nonvenous snakes. 100% of the time because I picked then up. I had a nearly blind (due to shedding) Black Rat snake bite me on the face and inside my lip when I posed it for a picture. Had to use a credit card once to get a King Snake off my finger. I still pick them up when I come across them. Snakes just aren't scary to me.

You're a weird mf'er 🤣🤣🤣

That's pretty much where I am with them. I don't like them near dogs, kids or wives. Otherwise I let them do their thing.

Absolutely!!!

They don’t get a pass ever on the Ranch.
Kill every stinking one of them I encounter.

East Texas granny said she could smell cotton-mouths in an
area and fish somewhere else.

I used to hear that crap from an earth hugging architect I worked with years ago. “GT those are endangered! In dangered?! Why yes, yes they are!”

Around here in s.w. and central Idaho, rattlesnakes will climb up into sagebrush bushes. Walk around in the sagebrush without watching carefully and you'll find your lower thigh being targeted by a rattler.

L.W.