About an hour and a half ago I was checking the water levels in the Spartan mosquito repellent tubes I’ve put out in our yard. I checked one hanging on a pine tree and as I stepped away from the tree, my peripheral vision picked up movement by my feet. I looked down and it took a few seconds to really focus and “see” what it was among the pine straw...a copperhead about 10-12” long! I had been standing less than a foot from that little emeffer, Scared the hair on my neck and arms right up to attention. Called my wife to bring me a shovel and in short order he was transformed into a “good” copperhead 😊

I like to think I’m pretty careful about that sort of thing but holy 💩 that really gave me the “willies”.

We encountered four of them over the 4th of July weekend.

I killed two early May and haven't seen another but Im really watching .

They get in the way and then strike when you either step on them or nearby. Bastards...

i stepped on a rattler about 2ft long when i was a kid. i was faster.

How do those mosquito repellant tubes work, how effective?

Yes very interested. Thanks for any info

They work. Just add warm water, shake well, hang ‘em up and they do their thing. No scientific data to report but the skeeters don’t try to carry us off after I put them out.

We have them here but haven’t seen one in a while. I’ve been hit two different time when I was a teenager. You won’t like it.

Kill them around the house annually. Killed one this year and seen a couple more.

I don't have the mosquito set up like you, however

My bug zaper attracts toads to scoop up the wounded and extra crispies.

The toads attract snakes


Sittin out by the bug zapper with a cold beera has risks

I watched one cross a dirt road into a soybean field last week. Darn thing was going right toward the house, about 200 yards away.

Send them on a detour. Make them good copperheads.

Darn things think they are invisible. I agree for the most part.

Don't mind snakes here in the USA with exception of copperheads. Kill'm all.

I don't want any venomous snakes around the house and have killed a couple of copperheads over the years. But compared to rattlers and cottonmouths they are the least aggressive and the least venomous. The only cottonmouth I've seen was a mean SOB. He was sunning on a bike path I was riding on. I thought it was a stick on the path for a moment, but stopped my bike for a closer look before driving over it. Glad I did. I stood behind the bike and figured he'd move off the trail when I pushed the front tire got close. He not only didn't retreat, he struck the front tire multiple times even as I backed away.

Hate them suckers. This past saturday was using a manure fork to load the yard cart with some piles of weeds the old lady had pulled from the garden a few days earlier when one of them suckers slithered out of the pile towards the fencerow. Quickly made him a good snake with a load of CCI snakeshot from the SP101. Almost picked that pile up by hand too but decided to use the forks. That wouldve sucked bad if he wouldve got me! 3rd one this year.

Another reason I don't like pine trees around the house.

They're in my part of the country, but for some reason they don't seem to be here on my place. I grew up on this farm, and am 69, and have never seen a poisonous snake here. They regularly kill copperheads a few miles from me, and a couple of weeks ago a man was bitten by a rattlesnake about 15 miles away as the crow flies. Hopefully, I never see one.

What I do have to be wary of are those damn brown recluse spiders. Every outbuilding I have is full of them, and I spray a couple of times a year trying to kill a few anyway.

Why? A snake is a snake. They do what they were created to do. You trespassed on his territory.

In the process of rebuilding my privacy fence. This past Sunday morning I was taking down some of the old pickets in the corner where my neighbor's fence joins mine. A few leaves and other yard trash had piled up and I stepped over it. Felt something roll under foot and looked down to see about an 18 inch copperhead struggling to get free. Only saving grace was that I had almost stepped on his head and he could not twist to bit me. Hate them mofo's.

And when you pick up a shovel or thumb the hammer back behind a CCI shotshell...........you're doing what YOU were created to do. 👍

Fortunately, Jake NoShoulders can't survive in my country.

When I saw title, I thought it another Civil War thread! 🤣

Glad he got the shovel and you went unscathed! 👍

Ran over one last time I was back east and in West Virginia, he was cross the road...

both left tired on the 4 Runner and the left tire on the trailer ran over it...

Stopped and walked back to where, he was no where to be seen...

So I guess the 4 Runner and trailer made him sore, but didn't kill him...

Thats my thought!!! Pulling the hammer back on the sp101 to fire a nice single action round of the CCI and squeezing off and watching the head vaporize had a satisfying feeling!!!

Never understood fear of snakes.
Nor any other critter, for that mater.

Humans are clearly the most dangerous things on Earth....

But snakes?
They're only about one one hundredth your height.
One one hundredth to one one thousandth your weight.
One ten millionth our intelligence quotient. (hoping for the best, here. Some would argue that....)
They stand no higher than your boot heel.
And to top it all off, they don't even have any arms and legs.

Perhaps we're not actually the most intelligent species on this planet.

We live in a copperhead crossing last spring/summer I killed 13 i the yard

I don't particularly fear snakes. I just don't like looking at them. And I don't like them chitting on stuff from the rafters in my shed. So I remove them in a manner that insures they won't come back.

Now the sneaky, camoflauged ones that can mess you up and cost you $100k + at the hospital........ Reckon a feller that wouldn't kill THOSE ones might not be the brightest critter.

[quote=Archerhunter]Never understood fear of snakes.
Nor any other critter, for that mater.

Humans are clearly the most dangerous things on Earth....

But snakes?
They're only about one one hundredth your height.
One one hundredth to one one thousandth your weight.
One ten millionth our intelligence quotient. (hoping for the best, here. Some would argue that....)
They stand no higher than your boot heel.
And to top it all off, they don't even have any arms and legs.

Perhaps we're not actually the most intelligent species on this planet.



I’m not afraid of snakes and had it been a rat snake, king snake etc. I would have caught it and looked it over and moved it out to the woods behind the house but a venomous snake close to the house (20’) has to go.

Had I been out working at my hunting club and come upon him, I would have just used a LONG stick to move it away from the area where we’re working.

OBTW, my son has a doctorate and is a college professor in biology with focus on herpetology and even he didn’t disagree with killing one that close to the house. Some of his interest of snakes comes from us catching snakes out behind the house, etc.

I'm not scared of snakes, I'm scared of being bitten...and all the headaches that would come with dealing with it after the fact. Really it's not fear, it's just common sense.

i have a grudge against rattlesnakes. one killed one of my golden retrievers some years ago. It's called a vendetta, an eye for an eye.
retriever weighed about 100lbs, so i figure those snakes owe me a similar weight.
two pounds a snake i need to send about 50 of them to hades.
i keep a bag full of their rattles to keep track.

When we bought a run down 195-acre farm in far North Texas just below the Red River about twenty years ago, it was infested with copperheads. Eliminating hiding places with a good cleanup and keeping the grass mowed short made a tremendous difference. Getting rid of any dead leaf accumulations and moving firewood away from the house also helps. We killed one occasionally after we cleaned up, but nothing like before.