Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Deep Fried Rattlesnake

<br>Really quite simple, you cook it just like catfish. Dip it in milk and then drop it in a sack of flour and/or corn meal.
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<br>Much better for the youngins because there is fewer bones to deal with.
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<br>I cut the head off with about 4 inches of the neck,to be SURE I don't get into the venom sack. Soak in salt water for an hour,sprinkle on salt and pepper then proceed.
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<br>Served with Dr.Howell's Hushpuppies,this would be hard to beat. Enjoy...........

James, does rattler realy taste like chicken? The only sanke we have around hear is the common gardersnake, they are kind of small to try skin and cook. The nearest snake (rattler) is in eastern Wa. some 250 miles east of here. So should I elect to go find one of these critters just how do I prep it.?
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<br>Bullwnkl.

Nope rattlesnake don't taste like chicken, which is to say now days chicken don't taste like nothing. Rattler is more like rabbit. Easy to clean, after you cut off the head turn the skin back, grab it with a pair of vise grips and peel it off like a sock. The insides will come out too.
<br>BCR

<br>Bullwnkl,
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<br>What BCR said will work fine. Rattlesnake meat is pure white meat and very good. Sells for a premium,where you can buy it.
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<br>A interesting sidenote;
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<br>After you cut the head off,skin it and field dress it and place it in a pan of cold salt water....it will still move around at times, even a hour or two later.... Kinda of gives the wife the heaves,to see it wiggle like that.
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<br>Enjoy...James

When I eat them, I just fry them up. They cook fast, are very tender, and tasty.
<br> A word of caution. Be very carefull about handling them. I blew a rattler in two once with a 7X57. When I pinned down the body, to cut off the head, it turned and sunk it's fangs into the stick. I mean, this thing had stopped bleeding, and thrashing.
<br> The head should be buried, or burned. The venom remains toxic for a long time. E

If a steer hurt me as bad as a rattlesnake did back in the eighties,I'd probably swear off beefsteak!
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<br>E, that's good advice about disposing of the head,but I killed a small rattler once,cut off his head and threw it away.A couple minutes later I saw my Brittany Spaniel pup pick up the head and swallow it.I figured he was a goner but didn't figure I could do anything about it so that's just what I did [or didnt ] do.He never showed any ill effects from eating it.

The classic way to develop an immunity to snake venom is to drink the venom. You cannot have any open sores in your mouth if you do.
<br> Most of the snake handliers I've heard of do this.
<br> Me, I just watch where I step, and put my hands. So far, so good. E

E,
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<br>WHAT are you saying!!!
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<br>Drink the venom? I have heard of smoking a littlebit of it dried but I don't think that's for medicinal purposes. I think that is for REALLY enjoying a Led Zeppelin Album.(grin)

Last year, in Taipei's Snake Alley, I got to eat some huge cobra and I think, black mamba. Really good eats. The interesting thing was the sign which read something to the effect that "the snakes served at this fine establishment were definately not protected... enjoy!"
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<br>They make a big deal out of killing the snakes and saving the blood and bile, which they sell, watered down, in shot glasses. All of the snake handlers make a long production out of the whole deal and talk constantly about the deadly snakes and how they nearly killed themselves by being bitten. And all of them are missing digits, or parts thereof, which they claim are a result of snake bite. Funny how all of them are missing the final segment of the little finger. Now if you were going to pick a segment to chop off to make you more successful at your job, which would it be?
<br>art

First, rattlesnake, not bad, but do not overfry or it turns to leather. Also a little tough anyway. Frog is much better IMO.
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<br>Sitka Deer:
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<br>I've got a long involved story of drinking snake(cobra)blood in Bangkok. Suffice it to say, that it was not watered down, and tasted somewhat like celery juice and is helped immensely by a LARGE chaser of rice whiskey. A pre-dinner serving of rice whiskey wouldn't hurt it either.
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<br>Ate him, too, but it was overcooked. One extreme to the other. Blood was supposed to be good for eyesight and the back. Guess it worked, can still see(barely) and don't have back problems(yet).
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IIFID
<br>The snake I was served was barely cooked in a very hot wok, and quite spicy hot. Reminded me of good tuna.
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<br>The blood was cut maybe 8:1 and had little flavor, or effect.
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<br>Did get an incredible massage that brought out huge bruises which is why my back is still ok ;-) Somehow I couldn't understand at the time how come I got the massage from the largest lady in the house, and my son, who was too young to appreciate it, got the tiniest, cutest thing imaginable to rub his back. They all laughed at how hard she had to work to massage the huge American.
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<br>Sure was disappointed in the rice wines, native to Taiwan!
<br>art

Last April while out rockhounding with my brothers, I came up on a big, fat, brown rattler. He saw me before I saw him, I think, but he just kinda stayed put where he was on this big flat rock on the ground, at the base of a little juniper. He hardly moved and I thought he might be sick or something.
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<br>The day before, in The Grand Owyhee Cafe in Grandview, Idaho (the best pre-camping trip biscuits & gravy breakfast available anywhere, by the way) I'd looked for the hundredth time at the big framed set of rattler skins and decided I'd like to have one of my own.
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<br>So I picked up a big stick and mashed in this rattlesnake's head, and carried it back on the stick about two hundred yards to the truck near where my brothers were. We ooohd and aaahd around the snake for a few minutes--he was about three and a half feet long, with a real nice, deep brown color. We cut off his head and put it under a big rock, where my dog couldn't get it (my dog Jake thought the snake was pretty neat). Then I got out a razor blade from my kit and started cutting from the neck straight down the belly, and what I found I damn near can't talk about to this day without getting sick: that rattler had three little birds in his belly, and they all came out one at a time in the most nauseating, slimy, odious little bundles you ever saw. And boy, did it stink, and did that snake stink, and did my hands stink. Snake blood all over my fingers along with some kinda slimy snake-skin juice and snake fat...geesh! I've gutted deer and most lesser things and never gagged once, but I gagged and heaved about a thousand times gutting that snake after that first bird came out.
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<br>I got it done though, and he's still sitting in my freezer (well, now my mom's freezer, who's not crazy about it) waiting for me to get some glycerine and finish the job.
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<br>But I don't think I could ever eat a snake after going through that. Justin