Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Rattle Snake Encounters

Those "common" water snakes can be aggressive as heck. I have had several encounters such as yours.

While geocaching in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona earlier this year, sticking my face under ledges, etc, I ran eyeball to eyeball into this little guy. After an initial shock, I backed off, got the camera ready, and gently moved back in for this shot. His camouflage was perfect. Took his picture, and then found the cache I was looking for about six feet away under a different ledge.

I have run into quite a few of them hunting sage grouse and chuckar in Idaho. Mostly the "little girly" Great Basin variety. They all die if I can kill them but a few slithered away before I could get a bead on them.

My scariest encounter was at Camp Pendleton in Nov 2006. I took my flack & kevlar off and put it on the deck beside the AAV I was in to have evening chow. After I was done I went to pick up my gear and as I reached down I noticed movement and I jumped about 10 feet as I realized it was a baby sidewinder. It was real cold out and almost dark so I assume the snake liked the heat from my flak jacket. ( I had been sweating in it all day). I couldn't kill the damn thing because everyone outranking me told me to leave it alone. It was more of a "don't get hurt" thing than a don't kill it thing. I think it would have been safer to let me kill it than let it slither around everyone's gear. Sometimes (usually) officers don't think things through.

I've had a few run-ins, sometimes I kill 'em, sometimes (rarely) I don't.

My favorite tales happened to friends of mine. The first one got chased into the bed of his pickup by an uppity snattlerake that proceeded to park itself under the tailgate. He sat there for a while before realizing that there was a stray CCI shotshell on the dash that would work real nice in the .45 under the seat. It required some gymnastics & contortions to get into the cab from the bed without his feet touching the ground, but it all worked out in the end.

The other one was a coworker. I got back from lunch one day & there was a rattler coiled up in the parking lot - right where I was going to park. I swung around and backed in to the spot, keeping the snake on the far side of the car, got out, creeped around the rear end & chucked a couple rocks at it. Nothing. On close examination I discovered that it was an ex-snake - some smart a** had dispatched it, taken the rattle and posed it in the parking lot. Cut to the chase, co-worker is late returning from lunch....still later, phone rings..."I'm in the parking lot & there's a big snake out here". I ask him how long he's been sitting there - "about 20 minutes". Me: "It's dead, dumba**". Him: "Is it? I'll be right in."

WHY would you go purposley looking for snakes? I do not understand

I was out during Spring Gobbler season back in 2000. It was time to head back to camp a bit after noon (in VA can only hunt the birds till noon). I decided to take a short cut through "field of rocks" on my way down the mountain. I was half way through with one foot all the way up about to step when i heard that horrible sound. I never realized I could jump backwards on my other foot in the opposite direction then the direction I was headed so fast.

Needless to say I was bit freaked out. It actually took me several seconds to spot him (only 4 feet long) as he blended so well into those rocks and he was only a couple of feet in fornt of me. So now I'm half way trough this "rock field" and I'm thinking "where are all his buddies....which way to go"

I do a lot of horseback riding in the woods near home and had a lot of encounters with black phase timber rattle snakes. One day in late august a few years back I was riding an 8 mile loop and ran in to 5 that day. I always beleive they have just as much right to be in the woods as me. In all my encounters with them they always gave me fair warning of there presence and showed no aggression toward me as long as I left them alone to hunt their chipmunks.

Whoa! That brings back memories! Three high school buddies joined me for a Spring fishing trip on the Deschutes one weekend. After getting bored, we decided to explore up in the rim rocks. After stepping over two rattlers, we were all kinda antsy when one "friend" reached down and yanked on the cuff of a buddy's blue jeans. Memories of the resulting "rim rock dance" still make me laugh nearly forty years later.

This timber rattler tried to bite my ten year old daughter, after a 5 mile hike into the wilderness a couple of years ago. I still think of the coronary I would have had running with her in my arms back to the truck. This one got two doses of snake shot from a S&W 340PD.

Don

Disclaimer:
The above photo is a post-mortem, posed shot. I did the actual shooting, and the snake was in the mud closer to the water!
Also, I generally step around the vermin, without doing harm, but this one was in my campsite/fishing hole, and I had a kid with me!
Don

The only good snake is one already made into a hatband or cowboy boots!!!!!

See a lot of 'em here, anymore I just leave 'em alone, they can't help it they were born as they are, they're just trying to make a living, too. They do eat mice, I'm more worried about Hantavirus than snakebite.

Lots of these in Georgia. Usually kill 'em with a handgun or a long stick.......

I've came close several times over the years. One I almost stepped on a few years ago:





MtnHtr

Several years ago, a party of us went deer hunting in the early fall in South Georgia. As we were setting up camp, one of the hunters saw a Diamondback about 5 or 6 feet long right where he was going to pitch his tent.

We usually don't bother them, but as this one was right in camp, someone decided it might be best to make the camp as little safer, so he hit it in the head with a long stick.

We moved it away from the clearing, and continued to set up camp.

After we went to bed, the man who killed the snake though he would like to have the rattlers. It had about 14.

He didn't have a light, but he walked outside the tent barefoot and carrying a knife. He knew about where he had put the snake, so he felt around on the ground with his bare foot. He finally found it, and picked it up, feeling in one direction until he felt the head, then he moved his hand to the other end until he felt the rattlers. He cut the rattlers off and went back to bed.

Imigine his surprise the next morning when he took another look at the rattler and discovered that it still had it rattlers attached.

I was hiking one time and stepped over a ground squirrel hole, when my buddy behind me started freaking out. There was nice rattler coiled up right next to hole and I never noticed. I hate to think what he could have reached up and bit when I strode over him.

Another "test of nerves" type Rattlesnake encounter I endured came when I and two friends were climbing down off of a mountain near Brewster, Washington where we had been shooting Rock Chucks.
The three of us were walking single file down the steep mountain and we were in a narrow all rocky passage that lead the way we wanted to go.
At the narrowest part of the passage the two fellows ahead of me yelled snake!
We all stopped and looked for "it" - as we could hear it, but could not see "it"!
My friend Jack (in the lead) said "there it is in that crevice".
My friend Louie and I saw it instantly at about chest level and still 6 feet in front of the two of us, and it was a small Rattlesnake.
My "friend" Jack raised his custom 240 Weatherby Varmint Rifle all of a sudden and fired at the snake about 4 feet distant from him!
We don't know if he hit that small Rattler or not but the resulting muzzle blast and bullet explosion caused a small "raining" of other similar sized Rattlers to be blown OUT of that crevice and all around us!
Louie and I both cursed Jack and turned and ran back the way we had come!
As we sped back out of that narrow confine we saw several squirming and mangled young Rattlers in our path!
Thankfully none of the three of us were hurt by flying schrapnel or by flying pissed off Rattlers!
Jack later apologized and tried to rationalize his use of the Magnum at such close and NOISEY quarters!
He was simply scared into making a poor decision - under the influence of adrenaline we called it!
Theres an old saying "God protects fools and idiots" - or something like that.
Case in point that one.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Not a personal encounter, but a family member emailed the below photos to me, rcvd from someone else. The text w/ the photos said they were taken in the Whetstone mountains near Tucson, AZ. I can't vouch for the location since I don't know who took the photos.

Gasoline and match, or a 12 gauge with a box of #8s would clean up this mess real nice(My apologies to any rattlesnake lovers).

Rich

12 gauge & gas sound real good to me....I hate those bastards...

That set of pictures was taken by a friend of my moms... In the flats near the Catalins mountians in Tucson, Az.


This August, I was about to stalk some deer with my bow.. Decided to releave myself before I went over to try and get bloody.. A 5+ foot ( belive it was a Mojave) changed my mind. Would have killed and eaten him, but the bucks were a mere 500 yards away. Not worth the .40 shell it would have taken!