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Rattlesnakes

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I've been stuck at a couple of times stepping on lethargic snakes late in the season. Luckily its been strikes to the boot or bottom of the shoe as my cat like reflexes sprung me into the air...;) I usually avoid snake like areas like rock piles or littered timber. I'm always aware as I walk in snake country and definitely just move at a slower pace. I also do not bother with snake boots/gaiters and have seen a fair amount curled up waist high in the bushes where it wouldn't help any ways. They scare the crap out of me but I'm also strangely curious of them.... Occasionally I'll make a snack out of one as they are quite tasty...

You couldn't pay me to grab one with its head naturally attached and breathing though... and I definitely have squealed like a girl on more than one occasion when crossing paths...
 
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I've had two encounters that really ring a bell.

First, I have a weed spraying business and therefore I also do agricultural pest control....i.e. Gophers. One of my customers had a pile of gophers over running his yard and asked me to setup a bait station there. With it being so close to his house I agreed to come out every morning at daylight and pick up the dead gophers so that his dog wouldn't get into them, and also every night. One weekend he called me and said that he'd be gone for a few days so if I wanted to just come and cleanup the gophers on Sunday night that would work for him. I rolled in there sunday with my wife and a trash bag expecting to find a pile of dead gophers......not so much. What I did find was 7 rattlesnakes scattered around the yard and only 1 dead gopher remaining. I'm 100% terrified of snakes, and would rather give them their space then actually get close enough to kill them. On this occasion there wasn't much of an option though, and my wife and I proceeded to kill 6 of them and the other got away before I could get him. I did notify the landowner though and he was as surprised as I was.

A buddy and I drew archery elk permits in Northern Montana in 2017 and were hunting a small chunk of state land. We'd been into a good bull a couple days in a row, and felt like we were starting to dial it in. We arrived at a small glassing knob just before daylight and waited for the sun to rise. As it's getting light we can hear the bull bugling over the ridge. I had some business to take care of before we went after him and I headed over to a little depression to do my thing. Just as I get my pants down and get somewhat comfy I look up and there is a rattle snake about 18" in front of my feet just flicking his tongue at me. All of a sudden I didn't need to go anymore. Fast forward a couple hours and we are working in on this bull. My buddy is setup just above the bull in some scattered timber and I decide i'm going to sneak down a ditch to get in front of him as he's following a hot cow. I'm on all four's making my way down when I crawl right into a rattlesnake, I keep my composure as this bull is only a couple hundred yards to my right. As I sneak around the snake and continue down the ditch I don't go 50 yards and crawl into another one! Once again I sneak around him and continue down the ditch only to run into another one! Four rattlesnakes in a matter of 3 hours. I'm assuming there was a den there somewhere close, but I could go without another one of those days. On a positive note, I did keep my composure and my friend ended up shooting the bull about 15 minutes later!
 
My neighbor was struck by a rattlesnake last year when he was riding his mountain bike. Freak accident. He was on a downhill descent and came around a corner very fast and there was a rattlesnake sunning itself right in the middle of the trail. He could do nothing so rode over the top of it. The snake responded by coiling, got caught up in the tire, and threw the snake up against my buddies thigh where it struck him right beneath the ass cheek. He got on his phone, called 911 and the medics were waiting for him at the bottom of the trail. It was really gnarly. Being that I've been around them my entire life and get rattled at a few times a year, I thought if you were struck you just went to the ER and got the anti-venom and then go back to life as usual. Definitely not the case. He spent 3 nights in the ICU and then six weeks in a wheelchair completely immobile. After two months he showed me where he'd been struck and it looked like frostbitten skin the size of a football going all the way up his buttcheek and down his thigh. It was terrible. It took him about 6 months before he was fully back to normal. Seeing him go through that experience made me way more scared about those damn things.
 
OzzyDave said:
Ours don’t have that “alarm clock” rattle on their tale to tell you when they are pissed at you. :oops:
Snakes do intrigue me. Rattlesnakes are a cool looking snake.
Click to expand...

There’s a lot to love about western North America. A relative lack of freaky-ass snakes is one of them. I don’t know how you Australian guys do it.
 
MTTW said:
Years ago a couple of buddies and I caught a rattlesnake about 40 inches or so. We took him home alive and decided we wanted to try eating it. We asked a guy about how to kill and prepare it for cooking. He told us that he usually drowned them in a bucket of water. To this day I am not sure if he was messing with us or not, but it sounded logical to some young guys that fit the demographic of most likely to be bitten by a snake.

I took a stick about 3 feet long and tied a boot lace to it and snared the snake. I twisted the stick until the string wound up on it and stuck the snake in a 5 gallon bucket of water. I held him down for a while and he wiggled around like a snake does. After a bit he quit squirming and held still with a few bubbles floating to the top of the bucket.

Sensing that the task was about done I knelt down to see if the bubbles had stopped. Sure enough he was done for. I unwound the string a little with no reaction, so I continued to unwind the string and started to pull the stick up. About this time the snake apparently got his second wind and came to the top at full speed. I was kneeling and he was headed directly at my nose. If you have ever had a spider on your glasses you know it will make you cross eyed pretty quick. That is how I felt. Jerking on the stick I got the slack out in the knick of time.

I was told that I screamed like a little girl that needed her mouth washed with soap. I can't swear that I didn't as it got kind of blurry for a few seconds.

We decided to use a more conventional method of dispatch.
After watching that snake move around in the sink with no hide, guts, or head for a few minutes I wasn't all that hungry. I remember it tasting ok but being very chewy. I haven't felt the need to eat one since.
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I remember as a kid an old wives' tale about if you kill a snake it doesn't fully die until after sunset that day!
 
This guy was killed with a truck. Regretted it after I saw how old he was but alas the deed was done.
 

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OzzyDave said:
Ours don’t have that “alarm clock” rattle on their tale to tell you when they are pissed at you. :oops:
Snakes do intrigue me. Rattlesnakes are a cool looking snake.
Click to expand...


I enjoyed everything about your wonderful county---except your snakes Lol

I posted earlier about the Black Mambo in Africa and it also does not have a "rattle" but they will rise up about 4 feet off the ground and then move across the ground, and fast ( like 10 miles an hour ) it is a scary looking thing to see. They are around 8 to 10 ft long and supposedly can be 14 feet long. When ask once how long was the ones I have seen, I said, no idea I did not measure them but I did move away from them at about 20 miles an hour lol

Back to rattlesnakes. In Arizona I think we had like a dozen different types of "rattlers"--I hated all of them. Dirtclod and lv2hnt--is that correct , about a dozen different types ?

We did go to a town in Texas one year for a "Rattlesnake Roundup", but I dont remember the name of the town. My husband went on one of the guided "hunts", I did not. But we did enjoy the various ways folks fixed them for the dinner table. Actually there was a cook off , but it involved more than just how to cook rattlesnake
 
My brother and I also tried to drown a rattler that had been hiding under a trough we had been shooting doves around all afternoon. He decided to come out as we were cleaning our doves next to the tough and scared the crap out of us. We probably held its' head underwater for about half an hour between the 2 of us and it was still going strong. I don't know how long it would take to drown one.
 
Speaking of rattlers, after doing my New Mexico applications, you NM guys see a lot of rattlesnakes?

I freaken hate snakes! But I would expect to see a lot of them in the desert states.
 
EUROPE:

Very close with your memory re: Arizona rattlers > actually 13 different species here. Thank the good Lord, I've only seen about 1/2 of those (not complaining, believe me!) ...
 
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