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Snake Shot

Leo Voisine said:
I envy those of you that live in area where you can go out in the back yard and shoot.

When I worked at Winchester I bought a .22 model 94 rifle. Nice little gun.

I don't have enough interest to join a gun club or anything like that, but I would love to just be able to go somewhere close and shoot cans or targets without all the legalities.
So it is disassembled and stuffed away in a private place - unused.
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I have a nice pellet rifle for that.
When I as young, my buddies and I use to hunt rattle snakes once in a while... They all came with their .22's I came with a 12 gauge!!
 
Frank Fusco said:
"We don't have rattle snakes here."

I once killed a pygmy rattler in the yard where my children played. I was told by and expert herpetologist PhD that they don't exist in my part of Arkansas.
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When I was a kid we were visiting my grandparents after they retired to the beach. Their house was more than a mile from the beach but that is not part of the story.

One evening we were playing in the street when the man who drove up and down the streets fogging for mosquitos came down our street. Blissfully ignorant of the dangers of DDT which was commonly used for fogging we ran behind the truck in the fog. I saw something moving in the street and stopped my sisters. I thought it was a snake and said so. They ran like scared little girls which is exactly what they were.

I stayed close to the snake and as the fog cleared I could see plainly that it was a rattlesnake although it was only 12" or so long. I called my uncle who was also visiting and one of the smartest outdoorsmen I knew to look and he immediately identified the little feller as a pygmy rattlesnake. As I recall this little snake had 4 buttons on its tail so it was probably full grown. It was a beautiful little snake with gorgeous markings. My uncle dispatched it with the heel of his shoe (UKG!)

Thinking of my uncle brings to mind another rattlesnake story. My uncle and cousins and myself were hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail up near Rogers Mountain in Virginia. We made it too late to the adirondack campsite and it was full so we just spread out our sleeping bags under the stars. It rained and and everyone had a wet sleeping bag. We learned that where we were was not too far from a little town so we hiked down the mountain to this little town and found the laundromat where we spent half a day drying our sleeping bags.

While the bags were in the machines my cousins and I decided to explore the town and found a little country store with junk food aplenty. We bought soft drinks, candy bars and gum. While at the checkout the old man behind the counter asked what we were doing in town as he was sure we were not locals. We told him we were hiking the Appalachian Trail. He said, "Well, you boys better be careful up there and look out for the buzz worms." "Buzz worms?" we asked, He smiled and said, "Rattlesnakes, boys, rattlesnakes!"

We thought he was kidding but the next day we were hiking and came to a tree down on the trail. I stepped up on the tree to go over it and happened to look down and right in the middle of the trail was a timber rattler coiled up enjoying the morning sunshine. That was only the second rattlesnake I had ever seen. That timber rattler was a beautiful snake. In some ways that snake's markings resembled his little cousin but it was a lot larger. My uncle did not dispatch it with his heel. We all took a wide path around that much larger snake.

The only other rattlesnake I ever saw in the wild was a very large Eastern diamondback rattler crossing the road from one field of tobacco to another. I had heard tales of people discovering big rattlesnakes under the lugs when they were priming tobacco but that big snake on the road confirmed the story for me. I had primed tobacco for a summer job and several of the older people had said to be careful pulling the lugs because snakes would sleep under them. I would not have wanted to find the snake I saw crossing the road curled up under a tobacco leaf!
 
I had several encounters with rattlers the first was while hiking as a boy scout. WE just made a detour and steered clear. Another was when living in Kalifornia, our neighbor 2 door down came running into the street, her husband was away at the time, yelling about a rattler in her back yard. One of my neighbor grabbed a shovel and handed me a 10 foot piece of 3/4 PVC pipe, my job was to pin the snake down while Mel, the neighbor took care of the snake with the shovel. It was about 3-4 feet long western diamond back. Mel skinned it and cure the skin. The most recent was about 5 or 6 years ago while taking off to go to the store I was leaving our development when I saw a van stopped in the entrance to the van. I looked and there was a 4 four Diamond back right in the middle of the road headed into the development. I took out my 9mm changed the magazine to snake rounds ( keep them on hand whenever I go out) and dispatched that one before he could get into the housing development. I too the dead snake and returned his remains to the other side of the road which is state trust land and un developed.
 
When I was in about 6th grade, we lived in the little village of Pojoaque NM. It's a rural place about 20 minutes east of Los Alamos, where both of my parents worked. One day after school our dog was barking like crazy at a chamisa bush. (Much of the "sagebrush" you see in this part of the country is actually chamisa, not sage.) I investigated and found a rather upset diamondback rattler coiled up under the bush. I was worried about the dog or our horses mixing it up with the snake so I decided it needed to be dispatched. Even though I knew where every gun in the house was stored, and knew they were all loaded, I knew I'd face the wrath of my dad for touching any of them without his permission. So I opted for my trusty ol' Fred Bear bow and the six or seven target arrows I owned.

I crept up as close to the the bush as I dared...I was certain that coiled up snake could leap large distances and bite my face off if I wasn't careful. I wasn't a real good shot with my bow and arrows, especially when I was trembling with a combination of fear and excitement. Out of the six or seven shots I took, only one actually hit the snake, and it was near the tail. Although the snake was semi-pinned to the ground, the head end was still very active. Active enough that I was afraid to reach under the bush to retrieve my arrows. Feeling horrible, since I was taught to never leave a wounded animal, I headed back to the house since I figured was out of options. I really, really wanted to go finish it off with a gun, but didn't want to deal with the fallout from my dad. So I just left the snake where it was.

The next day after school, I went back to the bush to see if the snake was dead. It wasn't there anymore. It had managed to crawl a few feet, dragging the one arrow with it, and I was able to retrieve the remaining arrows. The snake was mortally wounded, but still alive and moving slowly. On about my second or third shot, I managed to hit it squarely with a shot right behind the head. With the snake suitably pinned down, I was able to take repeated shots at it, retrieving my arrows after each volley. The poor thing looked like Swiss cheese by the time I finally stopped and pulled it out from under the bush. That night after my parents got home from work, I sat them down and told them the whole story. While my dad appreciated the fact that I hadn't broken his rules about handling guns without permission, he was a bit disappointed that I hadn't told him about the snake the first day so he could have put it out of its misery. The snake's skin was too perforated to be worth saving, but I did keep the rattles for many years after that.

At that same house, one day I found a small bull snake coiled up on the floor by the toilet in my parents' bathroom. Even though I was skittish about snakes, I knew that one wasn't deadly. I somehow managed to pick it up with a combination of a toilet brush and plunger, and took it outside to set it free.
 
there might be a day in my life still when I cross paths with a rattlesnake or some other mean looking scary snake.
theres only one thought that would cross my mind, and worrying about snakes eating mice or rodents is not of them.
it would be ok buddy, its me or you.
so I would use anything at my disposal to annihilate it.
if my wife happenned to see it, and it was near or in our home, it would cost me 30 thousand dollars as my wife would immediately put this house up for sale, and Id have to come up with closing cost, moving costs, and all other expenses.
so, Id look at the snake from a safe distance, what, 10 feet? and unload all the ammo I have in my house. Id start with mossberg 500. then switch over to ak 47, 45 caliber, 9mm 22 caliber, pellet rifle, bat, steel bar, steak knife, fork, my old nike sneaker, you name it, if I had a hand grenade Id use it also.

I hate snakes.

and the only good snake to me is a dead snake,

when we were in st augustine beach last year, where ever there was brush near the dunes going out to the water, there was some mention of snakes biting dogs, to be careful.

I made sure4 when I took my grandson over the dunes on the path to the beach, I carried him or wheeled him in the wagon. I hate snakes.
 
I used to have some pretty severe ophidiophobia (Fear of Snakes), but since moving here, I've kind of gotten past it a bit. I still won't pick them up, but I can appreciate them from a distance now.

I've come darn near stepping on rattlers a few times, and on gopher snakes several times. I still make some pretty funny noises and do a funny little dance when that happens.
 
I kept a few snakes in my time as pets. I had a corn snake, a black snake, a green snake and a king snake (not the red and yellow variety). I have always been fascinated with snakes and I don't fear them unless they surprise me.

I actually had a black snake drop out of a sapling we were cutting down to build a "fort" and land around my neck. Now that snake surprised me but he was rewarded for his attack by landing in the midst of seven boys who had razor sharp bush axes. We proceeded to make sushi of it long before we even knew the word existed.
 
We had a Very Large lizard living in the bean patch a few years back. It was solidly 18" or more in length and that was mostly tail. I'll admit that I had more than one "um nope nope" moment when running across him while picking beans. We left it mostly be though because it was eating a lot of bugs based on it's size.

I had more than a few run in's with rattlers in AZ. Once while rock climbing I pulled up to a ledge and met one eye-to-eye at which point I slowly lowered myself down and removed all body parts from striking. The other was when trail running I crested a small rise and speed and there were several mid trail, moving to fast to reverse I just kinda did the big jump and cleared them all then had a bit of a sit for a few on the other side until my heart rate was more of a thump instead of a BRRRR.
 
All this talk about snakes will probably give me a bad dream tonight.... I saw my dad pin a snake to a the log barn when I was a little shaver.... he was pinned by the tail and could strike at Dad, but not quite reach him at the end of the pitchfork... not sure what the snake was but we always called it a chicken snake 'cause they would eat eggs and baby chicks... it had been in the nest box in the alleyway of the barn and Mom couldn't reach the eggs, so dad reached in.... he made Mom hold the end of the pitchfork so he could let go and move to the tail of the snake... he whirled it and snapped its head off like a bull whip.... that snake chased me to the house until I was almost a teenager.

When I was a teen, probably a sophomore or junior in high school, I was visiting my best friend and his brothers at their farm... we went skinny dipping in the creek on the back of their property, then started shooting each other with rubber guns.... visualize 4 boys running butt naked down the creek and when I jumped a log laying in the creek, coiled on the other side just where I was going to land was a cotton water moccasin... don't know how I missed him but one foot landed one side and the other the other side.... I started yelling for the others to stop.... we beat that poor snake to death with our rubber guns.

The talk about shooting snakes with snake shot... never did that, but a cousin and I went down to the Coolidge, Texas city reservoir where there were so many snakes swimming in the water almost looked like maggots.... we sat high up on the bank of the reservoir with our .22 rifles, shooting shorts at them... can't say how many we killed or even if we killed any but was fun plinking away into them.
 
Ive seen alot of videos of people who keep big snakes as pets in glass tanks and the snakes would catch their arms and start to coil themselves and the owners are in alot of distress, need others to help get the snake off of them and clearly one can see the pain the snake is causing and thats just an arm. why keep snakes as pets I dont know.

when I was around 40, I went into someones house I know and they had a massive glass enclosure/tank with a large snake in it,and they knew how I felt about snakes. he asked me if I wanted to hold it, and I told him Im not even going into the room where the tank was. He opened the door of the tank room, and said to me, Im going to bring him out for you to see how harmless, and I pulled my gun out of my holster(at that time, I carried a cold 380 mustang), and told him if the snake gets close to me, I will shoot it. He said, but Ill be holding the snake, so I told him then I guess you think Im a great shot because that wont stop me from shooting a snake out of its cage.
He thought I was joking, but he didnt take it out of the cage.
 
When she was a teenager, my first wife took over the care of her brother's pet rock python when he went into the Air Force. When he joined the service, the snake fit comfortably in its terrarium and ate baby mice. By the time they donated it to the local zoo, it was eating whole rabbits and had to be folded into thirds to fit in its terrarium.

I'm not fond of snakes at all. Don't want to hold one, pet one, or feed one. But if someone wants one as a pet, all power to them. Many years ago I was sitting on the sofa at someone's house and they mentioned they had a large pet boa. I asked where he kept it and he said normally, it's in that terrarium over there, but it got out a couple of days ago...we're not sure where it is. My feet came off that floor and onto the sofa in record time, lol.
 
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