A little excitement after church…
We came home to a quite large Timber Rattlesnake at our back steps we use as an entry. Normally all snakes get a pass, except for pit vipers in the yard! Too risky to catch and relocate. There is a church about 50 yds. away with children frolicking in the yard as well. It’s destined to be skinned, we’ve eaten them before but I’m not sure I could manage the twitching and headless striking. Yeah, with all the people, goats, cats, dogs, birds, we just can’t tolerate Rattlesnakes. If the women had not been around we might have tried a safe (?) capture for the University. But rapid action was needed this time.
Now what to use to dispatch the critter?! A flurry of shuffling AR’s, AK’s, and shotguns with tubes filled with buckshot. Seems we are set to work over Memphis tanks, but not so much slithery snakes. Finally I remembered my old horded box of .22 LR #12 shot! It’s getting pretty rare today. Mr. Buzzy took a stand behind some shovels at the entrance to my shop. With the anemic “rat shot” it would be perfect. The couple hundred tiny pellets would do the trick and not mess up the hide. I’ve shot wood bees on the wing with them before they commanded $1 a shot price. (New motivation to keep some home rolled snake shot around)
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Roman did honors. Removed the head, and bagged it. The little .22 house gun did it again. Sick goats, vermin, very handy. It’s replaced the old M63 that I can’t see the sight on as well. It’s a good little rig. Mr. Snake is on ice, awaiting thaw and skinning. Anyone want to try some fried snakey?
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My question is why he would not have dispatched that
damn snake immediately if not sooner. People say there are good snakes and bad snakes. The good snakes are snakes that have been recently killed with a vengeance. A bad snake is one that hasn't been shot or stomped yet.
WB once told me that he found several species of snakes in their wood pile. That woodpile would have been the local fireworks display as quick as I could get a can of gas and a match.
Those that read in one of my handgun hunting books about snakes on one of my hunts in Australia where we ended up eating a monster Brown Snake that the guide had killed with a hatchet. In the book I mentioned the snake was skinned and cut up in 8 or 10 inch segments and put in a 3'cast iron skillet. As the skillet got hotter the pieces of snakes started moving around and around the skillet and every now and then the front of one of the snakes would raise up like a live snake and move like it had a head and made like it was striking.
Against my better judgement we ended up eating that snake, but the guide told us to just tell ourselves it is just a chicken although two days later the wife of one of the hunters was still shaking and if you touched her when she wasn't expecting it she went into a screaming fit. Needless to say she didn't eat any of the snake. In fact she slept in the guide's Land Cruiser for the next week.
The guide took the snake's head and put a treble hook in it and a line and pitched it into a creek behind the camp. He said a big turtle would come and get it and we could have fried turtle the next evening. I think I had a better idea for him of where to put that snake's head.
Found this guy slithering about one day.
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