Rattlesnake

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I have an everyone has to earn a living approach to critters until they are just off the back porch. My daughter came in saying the cats had a snake and we thought okay it’s probably a garter snake till we went out and the cat was bopping it on the head. We ended up frying it up and it was pretty tasty but really bony.

The brown one we saw fishing and it was really unusually brown for our area.
 
Two at the same times. This was several years ago.

They were on our farm. Got them both with a pistol. The rest of the story is that they went under a flat rock and I think rock fragments splattered them when I shot. Either way...
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About 2 weeks ago and maybe 400 yards from my house. Someone apparently stopped and got the rattle before we saw it.
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On the road I live on. I try not to bother the ones I see on the road.
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Simon the goat after being bitten in 2020. He recovered fully and is still around:
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This guy was 3 feet from my barn a couple weeks ago. The wife saw him first and stood still and snapped a photo while the kids retrieved me.

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I have an everyone has to earn a living approach to critters until they are just off the back porch. My daughter came in saying the cats had a snake and we thought okay it’s probably a garter snake till we went out and the cat was bopping it on the head. We ended up frying it up and it was pretty tasty but really bony.

The brown one we saw fishing and it was really unusually brown for our area.
Man that is a freaking gorgeous pattern and color on that snake.
 
They really came out here about two or three weeks ago. I saw 7 (4 bull snakes, 3 rattlers) on the way to and from the gun smith and it’s only a ten mile drive.

This one may have made me emit an audible noise when I almost stepped on it on 10-24 last year. Hopefully it gets colder sooner this fall.

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I ran into one in 2024 deer hunting in South Dakota in November, it was 27° that morning when I left the truck and 2 hrs later coming back with a buck on my back he popped up outta the grass and started buzzing at me. I didn’t appreciate his attitude but I chose to let him live.


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How do you guys in the south ever enjoy the outdoors? Rattlers are one thing but copperheads and cottonmouths don’t come with a warning system, I’d never be able to focus I’d be too busy worrying about getting bit by a snake


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How do you guys in the south ever enjoy the outdoors? Rattlers are one thing but copperheads and cottonmouths don’t come with a warning system, I’d never be able to focus I’d be too busy worrying about getting bit by a snake


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Rattlers don't anymore either, almost nothing rattles anymore. If you look at the pic of the one in my shed I posted above it physically doesn't have rattles. We've killed three now that physically didn't have rattles. I don't know if coyotes or hogs are biting the tips off or they're evolving without rattles or what, but the ones with rattles don't rattle anymore either.

As for enjoying the outdoors we're just used to them. I guess kinda like a guy out West might just get used to the ticks in Idaho for spring bear. Generally just watch where you step and you tend to get a feel for where the type of terrain they frequent. Most of them don't want to bite you. My wife kicked a small one when she helped me pickup a generator to put in our generator shed. It was coiled up under the generator and we lifted it to walk it into the shed and she shuffled her feet walking and it took off hauling butt between us, easily could've bit either of us and thank God she didn't step on it to pin it down or I'm sure it would have. Some properties and areas are worse than others. One of my primary public places I hunt down here I've never seen one in 16+ years hunting every year with lots of boots on the ground. When we first started building our off grid cabin down on the coast we killed 10 of them over a weekend just in our camp area, we saw a few more on the dirt roads around but don't mess with the ones away from camp.
 
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