Gotta remember not to attract attention near a water snake

I happened to see a water snake (not sure if it was poisonous) coming my way, so I thought I'd scare it off using an oar to splash the water. I should have remembered what happened over 20 year ago when the same thing happened and instead of scaring the snake off, it increased its speed and slithered faster towards me. With only 10' to go, I fumbled bringing in the anchor and then put the TM on high speed to get the H away from it. :yikes

As it swam toward shore, it reared up with half its body out of the water still swimming with mouth wide open as if to say - DON'T DO THAT AGAIN! nononoNeedless to say, I had to pee in the worst way after it crawled on land.

Ha ha! A bullet has a longer reach than a paddle!

I'm a good aim - but not that good! (All I could think of was, go away, go away, please GO AWAY! :pray )

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Originally Posted by Spoonminnow

I'm a good aim - but not that good! (All I could think of was, go away, go away, please GO AWAY! :pray )

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Rat shot in a 357 I'll guarantee you're that good of a shot.

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It’s been said that rattlesnakes swim with their rattles out of the water and that cotton mouths are the most aggressive, that’s why I try to never swim with snakes. Unfortunately the ones on land can be much harder to identify, because some are two-legged. lol

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Unfortunately the ones on land can be much harder to identify, because some are two-legged. lol

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So very true! lol

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Originally Posted by Spoonminnow

I'm a good aim - but not that good! (All I could think of was, go away, go away, please GO AWAY! :pray )

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I carry a Rossi 5 shot stainless-steel revolver with the first three rounds snake (or rat) shot. At about 15' it makes a circle of about 2'. Out west of me is a very good bluegill pond that is the snakiest pond in Kentucky. I use the same approach you do. When a snake is swimming towards me, I slap the water with my fly-rod. Most times the snake will turn away. But three times in the last few years it kept coming. That aggressiveness tells me that it is a cotton mouth moccasin. All three of those times I asked the Lord for forgiveness because I was about to take one of His critters. I also carry it when I am on my tractor at home. I have NO problem with black snakes as they eat the vermin. However with brown snakes, I once again ask the Lord for forgiveness.

We have copperhead in NY and they can be quite aggressive.

�� I can see this scene perfectly in my mind!

If it swam with part of its body out of the water it was a cottonmouth. They will climb into the boat with you. They want to bite.


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Had a buddy hook a 4 foot cottonmouth years ago. Playing around and hooked the thing in the middle with a rattle trap. The edge of a paddle swung like an axe will do one in.

We used to keep a spiked wooden rod on the boat when fishing the reeds and buggy whips as more often than not they would come off the brush and into the boat and at that point it isn't a good idea to shoot them. At least according to 1 of my late uncles.

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nerve racking for sure!!

Cottonmouth Attachment 370774


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I was deer hunting the swamps of SE North Carolina many years ago. I was up the tree in my porta climber. I was ready to come down and lo and behold there was a 5 foot Cottonmouth coiled up at the base of my tree. Needless to say I remained in the tree for a bit longer hunting and then whacked home with a 270. Same swamp while clearing a dam/spillway before season almost got bit by a Cottonmouth. Hidden in some brush while using a machete. He bit the dust with a 9mm. Sheesh. Live in Ohio now and killed 2 baby Copperheads in my front yard last year. UGH

Best snake gun I ever carried in my boat was a single shot junior size .410. But my grandson turned 10 last year and I gave it to him.

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Originally Posted by "D"

Best snake gun I ever carried in my boat was a single shot junior size .410. But my grandson turned 10 last year and I gave it to him.

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I did the same thing back when I was frog gigging in breaks in the Delta. I carried it to a gunsmith and had the choke sawed off it and put the bead back on it. It wasn't unusual to shoot a box of shells in a night.We have snakes. I refinished the stock and gave it to my grandson when he was 7.

The judge loaded with 410 does wonders. I was bit on the right butt cheek by a copperhead when I was 2 years old.Im 57 now,but I remember running back to the house screaming with the snake still snagged to me.......I don’t let them get that close anymore.

We had a break that was loaded with frogs but no one would go in the for the snakes. We had to try it. We had to shoot 5 snakes off the beaver dam before we could drag the boat over it to get in the break. My buddy said he wasn't carrying no snake gun. He carried a Browning 12 gauge and 2 boxes of shells and used them all. I shot 2 boxes in my 410 as well. We did get a chest full of frogs though. Those were the days.

I'm sure plenty of you won't agree with me, but...

I'm retired now, but I spent my career as a wildlife biologist, and over those several decades I worked with a lot of different animals in a lot of different places - including snakes from America's north woods and marshes to its southeastern swamps and sandhills to its central plains to its southwestern deserts and mountains to the rainforests of Central America. And when I wasn't working with them, I was searching for them - especially for snakes - for recreation. I've snake hunted extensively while living in MN, WI, FL, TX, AZ and Guatemala (where I lived in a tent in Tikal National Park for 3 straight years), and nearly as extensively in various other places where I visited for extended periods. I've photographed a huge diversity of snakes in natural settings, even took the first photos anyone had ever taken of live snakes of a couple of tropical species, I've kept snakes as pets and I've bred them.

I feel VERY confident saying that I know snakes.

And despite all of those snake encounters in all of those places over all of those years, I've never seen for myself nor heard of a single verifiable report of anyone else actually being pursued by a snake. The closest I've ever come to having such an experience was living in FL and having a few big, old eastern diamondback rattlers who apparently felt they had so little to fear from me or anything else they might encounter (one such lived within 100 yards of my front door) that they didn't alter course to avoid me; if they were crawling in such-and-such a direction and I stepped in their path, they just continued to come, (rightly) trusting me to get out of their way. Unnerving, to be sure, but with no hostile intent.

When we talk about a snake being aggressive, what we really mean is that it's being DEFENSIVE. That might indeed include rattling (which not just rattlers do, by the way), hissing, lunging, musking and yes, even biting, depending on the species and the circumstance. They feel threatened and unable to safely flee, so they're standing up to the threat until they get a chance to escape. The classic tale about someone slapping at a snake in the water (which is usually a harmless watersnake but is nearly always assumed to be a venomous cottonmouth) with a paddle to try to scare it away and having it instead climb up the paddle or into the boat ISN'T a case of the snake coming after the person, but rather the snake being driven into a panic by what it perceives as an attack, and trying to find dry footing (if you'll pardon the expression) from which to defend itself.

Truly, if you leave the snake alone, it'll leave you alone! If it adopts a defensive posture or other behavior, give it a little more room so it can recognize that it has an out, and it will (eventually, when it feels it can do so safely) take it. I promise you! If you're in a boat, see a snake swimming nearby and feel you just have to do something, then I suggest you use your paddle to gently push it away until it heads off in another direction. (It's really not necessary, though.) I have imposed myself on snakes MANY times, and even still I've never been bitten by anything venomous. On one memorably foolish occasion when I was a young man I even crawled into a western diamondback rattler den in AZ to get some better photos of the breeding activity going on inside, and accidentally passed - on my belly, mind you - very near a few that were coiled up out of sight just inside the entrance. On numerous occasions I would find a nice pit viper coiled on a log in the rainforest and I would take the opportunity to have my lunch sitting on the log a short (but safe) distance away. These creatures don't WANT to bite, I assure you, and do it only as what they see to be a last resort.

But you know what the #2 way is for people to get bitten by venomous snakes in North America? By messing with them to try to move or kill them. (#1 is by messing with them to try to catch them or to handle them once caught.) Truly accidental bites is a distant #3. Dogs by their nature mess with small animals such as snakes when they encounter them, so they get bitten more often than people (but STILL nowhere near as often as they could be bitten if the snakes were of a mind to bite them), but they can be trained to leave snakes alone. I've spent many hours afield in venomous snake country with my German shorthaired pointers, so I always run them through one of the many clinics held throughout the south for "snake breaking," i.e. aversion conditioning, dogs. And I always look out for a dog until I know it's well conditioned, just as one would a small child. If you practice the following few simple rules, you will never get bitten by a venomous snake even in the snakiest places:

- When in venomous snake country, don't put a body part - not a foot, or a hand, or a butt - anywhere that you haven't looked at first. Seriously. In all of my field work and play, I have NEVER worn big, heavy boots, snake gaiters or anything of the sort. I'm just careful where I put my body. It works great.

- If you happen to encounter a venomous snake (or a snake that you think might be venomous), don't forget what I just said above. Where there's one snake there's often another, and another, and another, most of which you will never see unless you accidentally step on them or some such. (Pointing out the futility of killing those you see thinking that you're somehow making things safer thereby.)

- And leave that snake alone. That's it, plain and simple. Don't use it for target practice, don't whack at it with a stick (or paddle), and sure as heck don't try to count coup with it (showing how tough you are by getting close to it) or catch it. Just leave it alone.

ALL snakes are important parts of our ecology, you know. And once you understand a bit about them, they're all pretty interesting wildlife, too. Some of them are even beautiful!

My very worst snake encounter, purely for the sake of entertainment:

I was a teenager, I was off work for the weekend and the spring weather was fine, so I borrowed my mother's car to go snake hunting along the river bluffs in southeastern MN, the only part of MN that harbors venomous snakes: the imposing timber rattler and the eastern massasauga, a little swamp rattler. I wasn't fortunate to find either of those - snakes are really motivated to stay hidden and are really good at it; you pass by many more than you ever see, even if you know how to find them - but I did find a few fun things, including the largest garter snake I'd ever seen (indeed, the largest I've STILL ever seen). Perfectly harmless, but usually about as nasty a temperament (i.e. very DEFENSIVE) as you'll ever see. Because I was young and stupid I collected it to keep it as a pet.

Zipping at full speed down the highway on the way home, I happened to look in the rear view mirror of my mother's car and see that the snake had gotten out of the pillowcase I had secured it in by tying a knot in the top (turned out the pillowcase had a hole in it). It was in fact lying stretched out on my field gear on the back seat - and it was LOOKING STRAIGHT AT ME. I was plenty worried, but not about anything that snake might do to me. What I feared was that if I even took my foot off the accelerator, that snake was going to flee into the car's upholstery, I was going to catch holy hell from my mother for it and I was going to spend the rest of my weekend tearing her car completely apart to find it.

I decided I had to seize the opportunity of the snake's position by seizing the snake without slowing down. I looked forward and back to make sure there were no other cars nearby in case I swerved a bit, I got as good a feel for where I needed to grab as I could, and then using the rear view mirror to guide me I made my grab.

And caught it! Squarely in the middle, in fact. A good deal of thrashing, even whipping, ensued, as the bitey end of the biggest garter snake I'd ever seen bit me again and again on the hand with which I was holding it. It doesn't really hurt much, just like some quick pin pricks, but they bled profusely and in no time I had blood trickling down my arm into my lap. Much, MUCH worse, the OTHER end of the snake vigorously voided its contents as it whipped around, liberally dousing me and my mother's car with a mixture of smelly excrement and smellier musk. By the time I managed to pull over and stuff the snake into another bag, I was practically gagging, the smell was so bad. (Some snakes smell a lot and some hardly at all; I've always thought garter snakes to be about the worst of the bunch.)

Drove the rest of the way home with all the windows wide open. And. It. Didn't. Help. One. Bit.

Yeah, I still caught holy hell. And yeah, I spent the rest of that weekend and then some scrubbing that car out again and again and again. To tell the truth, I don't think my mother could smell it anymore because she smoked like a chimney, but I think I could still smell it when I left for college in the fall.

Lesson learned!

Good fishing, folks!

Gerry

Been ketchn and playing with snakes for 60 years myself and I can tell you for positive for sure I seen water snakes come fast as they can to a splashing fish on my line more than once . So to the average person it would seem the snake was “chasing” you but in fact it’s figured out how to get fish from fishermen.
Any other version of snake chasing you could be hard to believe unless you made a say 6 or 7 foot bull snake real mad at ya and then yep ,it will chase ya some ....lol
Pretty much every snake I ever seen in most cases went as fast as it could away from me ,a few tried to hide and some bolted towards me in their zeal to escape ,but short of that a snake ain’t chasing you ....that is the for sure .
Reptiles only look at the world 3 ways , food , foe or mate .....you aint food and you ain’t a mate
So the response will be run or hide ......unless cornered , then bring out what they have in their bag of tricks to make an enemy go away .

Thanks gbin, I'm glad to see someone post of the "other" side of snakes. I'll disagree with you on some points.

1. A (non-venomous) banded water snake is highly inquisitive in my experience. I was fishing last week and had two juvenile water snakes passing within a foot in front of my feet (in the water). I tried to run them off by touching them (not smacking) with my rod tip. They'd move off, but come right back. I did have a fish in a floating basket which seemed really interesting to them as well :).

2. Venomous snakes are often ambush predators (like bass). Just as you pull your lure over a log hoping a bass is there to ambush it (before even looking to see what it is), step over a log with a copperhead lying in wait and you're going to get smacked. It's a "reaction bite". I wouldn't consider that to be a defensive bite, but a reaction bite.

I do agree that snakes won't chase you down to bite you, but they will "stand their ground". Venomous snakes (in the south US) are pit vipers, and are short and fat (compared to the non-venomous snakes). They can't run away as fast so they don't look to escape as much as the non-venomous ones do. They'd rather you alter your course. They will opt for flight if they can, but they know they can't outrun as well as the thinner, more agile snakes can.

3. Dogs can survive venomous snake bites. They'll swell up and hurt, but they survive. The animal hospital gave our dog benadryl and antibiotics. We weren't as stupid the second time the dog got bit. We thought they'd have anti-venom.... Nope, $200 for bendryl and antibiotics (to protect against infection at the wound site). Turns out, after the second bite, the dog got smarter :). Both bites were on the paw. Don't paw at a snake. :)

But the whole "the only good snake is a dead snake" mentality is just ignorance.

Good times... with a rattler!

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Originally Posted by Schmoopie

Thanks gbin, I'm glad to see someone post of the "other" side of snakes. I'll disagree with you on some points.

1. A (non-venomous) banded water snake is highly inquisitive in my experience. I was fishing last week and had two juvenile water snakes passing within a foot in front of my feet (in the water). I tried to run them off by touching them (not smacking) with my rod tip. They'd move off, but come right back. I did have a fish in a floating basket which seemed really interesting to them as well :).

2. Venomous snakes are often ambush predators (like bass). Just as you pull your lure over a log hoping a bass is there to ambush it (before even looking to see what it is), step over a log with a copperhead lying in wait and you're going to get smacked. It's a "reaction bite". I wouldn't consider that to be a defensive bite, but a reaction bite.

I do agree that snakes won't chase you down to bite you, but they will "stand their ground". Venomous snakes (in the south US) are pit vipers, and are short and fat (compared to the non-venomous snakes). They can't run away as fast so they don't look to escape as much as the non-venomous ones do. They'd rather you alter your course. They will opt for flight if they can, but they know they can't outrun as well as the thinner, more agile snakes can.

3. Dogs can survive venomous snake bites. They'll swell up and hurt, but they survive. The animal hospital gave our dog benadryl and antibiotics. We weren't as stupid the second time the dog got bit. We thought they'd have anti-venom.... Nope, $200 for bendryl and antibiotics (to protect against infection at the wound site). Turns out, after the second bite, the dog got smarter :). Both bites were on the paw. Don't paw at a snake. :)

But the whole "the only good snake is a dead snake" mentality is just ignorance.

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I reckon we'll have to agree to disagree just a bit, Schmoopie. I'd say:

1) Those water snakes didn't feel threatened by you, surely, but I suspect their interest was in making a possible meal of your catch, not just satisfying their curiosity about you. Snakes can in some circumstances grow accustomed to having calm, slow-moving people around, too. I once knew a fellow in TX who had a coachwhip living in his yard that he would actually go out, sit peacefully beside and hand feed pre-killed mice. He considered it kind of a free-range pet.

2) Pit vipers might not flee rapidly, but with rare exception such as the eastern diamondback rattlers I mentioned they will indeed flee if given what they consider to be an opportunity to do so (as I said, that might take some space and time). Doubtless those eastern diamondbacks would have ultimately fled (albeit after defensively threatening me) had I hassled them, too.

Bites of people by copperheads (which I believe actively search for prey in the leaf litter more than they ambush) are actually quite uncommon considering how many of the snakes are out there and how many of those are undoubtedly being stepped over (log or no log) with great frequency. People just don't realize how abundant some of these snakes really are. I'd say that bites occurring in the scenario you described happen as a result of the snake feeling threatened, maybe even being hit or stepped on, even when dealing with dedicated ambush predators such as most rattlesnakes. These snakes have very good vision and vibration (e.g. from footsteps) sensitivity as well as heat pits; unless it's utterly dark they're not going to mistake a person for a possible prey item. It IS believed that bushmasters sometimes bite people in parts of South America as a case of mistaken identity, but they're a very large pit viper - bigger than anything we have here in North America - that commonly sets up their ambush along small forest trails, and people sometimes DO use those trails when it's utterly dark - foolish people!

All of that being said, it's a good idea in venomous snake country to step on, not over, logs in one's path. Again, don't put body parts where you haven't looked, first.

(Related note: In at least one study that I'm aware of involving timber rattlers in the Southeast, snakes that were found were deliberately disturbed by the researchers stepping near them and sometimes even gently kicking them while wearing protective gear in order to gauge the snakes' response. Timber rattlers are popularly thought of as an "aggressive" species. Very few offered to bite even when contact was made. Many didn't even rattle. They'd much rather we simply left them alone, and that's a good thing as otherwise there'd be way more bites than there are.)

3. Many dogs survive venomous snakebite - depending on the snake - but many dogs die, too. In addition to snake aversion training, I agree it's a good idea to vaccinate in anticipation of possible pit viper bite (yes, there's a vaccination for that, which I forgot to mention earlier) and also to pursue antivenin as part of treatment if a bite occurs and antivenin is available.

So we might disagree on some details, but I'm glad we agree overall on this subject. :cheers2

Gerry

P.S. You know what's always given me pause when I'm in their habitat? Brown recluse spiders! Some of the worst bites I've ever seen or heard of...

gbin

I read most of it. I never heard mention of cottonmouth. You just ain't ran into the right breed of snake yet. Head on down or up to Tanner Alabama and I'll arrange such a meeting with snakes that will show nuff get after ya.

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Originally Posted by catchNgrease

gbin

I read most of it. I never heard mention of cottonmouth. You just ain't ran into the right breed of snake yet. Head on down or up to Tanner Alabama and I'll arrange such a meeting with snakes that will show nuff get after ya.

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Didn't mention cottonmouths because I saw no particular reason to. I've known lots of cottonmouths, from FL to MO. They're usually encountered out in the open so they're much more prone to going into a defensive coil (and showing the open-mouth threat display that gives them their name) than trying to flee immediately, but they don't go after people. It is true, though, that a lot of people THINK that a cottonmouth is after them because they encounter the snake when they're out on the water, start hassling it out of fear of it, and the snake tries to climb onto something solid (an oar, a boat) so that it can have a hope of defending itself. It's also true that in the great majority of cases they're actually harmless watersnakes that the people THINK are cottonmouths. In either event, the snake isn't actually after anyone, and if you leave it alone it will leave you alone.

Gerry

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Originally Posted by rcfillingham

Cottonmouth Attachment 370774

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That is actually not a cottonmouth. Cottonmouth's have a dark stripe across the face, in front of and behind the eye. Cottonmouths also do not have vertical stripes on the lower jaw. I believe that is a member of the nerodia family (non-venomous water snake).

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Originally Posted by SpeckledSlab

It’s been said that rattlesnakes swim with their rattles out of the water and that cotton mouths are the most aggressive, that’s why I try to never swim with snakes. Unfortunately the ones on land can be much harder to identify, because some are two-legged. lol

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And much more dangerous