Timber Rattler

[Caustic Burno]

Ryder nothing is 100% foolproof when dealing with rattlesnakes

 

[Bright Raven]

Ryder nothing is 100% foolproof when dealing with rattlesnakes

CB, I don't know where you are in Texas. As you know, there are several species of rattlesnakes in Texas. The Timber, Western diamondback, Prairie, Mojave, etc. to name a few. What do you have where you live? From your posts, it sounds like they are under every other rock. Can you be more definitive? I have never seen that many snakes anywhere. In fact, you have to spend some time finding a rattlesnake here in Kentucky. Can you actually go out on any day and within a one mile circumference of your home find a rattlesnake? Thanks.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Yes you can go out and find a rattlesnake especially in the spring or after the first cold front and they are trying to fill up before hibernation.
They move like crazy then. You better not step off the porch when it gets cool either without looking they like to curl up by the slab.
When I was a teenager cousin his dog and I went out one morning snake bit the dog and my cousin both.
Dog died almost instantly and Dr said my cousin most likely would have if
the snake hadn't bit the dog first.
They have had my attention ever since.
Ninety percent here are Timber Rattlesnake the other being Eastern Diamondbacks
Bush hogging makes them move as well.

 

[ddd75]

Ryder nothing is 100% foolproof when dealing with rattlesnakes

CB, I don't know where you are in Texas. As you know, there are several species of rattlesnakes in Texas. The Timber, Western diamondback, Prairie, Mojave, etc. to name a few. What do you have where you live? From your posts, it sounds like they are under every other rock. Can you be more definitive? I have never seen that many snakes anywhere. In fact, you have to spend some time finding a rattlesnake here in Kentucky. Can you actually go out on any day and within a one mile circumference of your home find a rattlesnake? Thanks.

i lived in the Appalachia region of ky for several years and their were massive amounts of rattlers.

I almost ran over a pure white albino around 8' long.

I was back about 2 mile from the house and was putting up barb wire.. hit in one strand on this old stump and went on my way.. came back around about 30 minutes later for the next strand.. heard this noise like i hit the barb wire... started walking forward.. then RATTLE!!! ! ZINGG.. right in front of me.. momma snake must of had some babies in the stump.. she came right at me full speed .. if I would of tripped or froze for a second she would of had me.. she struck out twice at me chasing right at me..


I got to a shovel and then she tried to run back in the woods to get away.. I said.. I don't think so.. B!TCH!

 

[ddd75]

also when my wife was pregnant over there she attracted them like crazy. she'd go out for a walk and they were literally coming from everywhere right to her.. it was nuts.. she had to just stay around the house.

 

[Bright Raven]

Ryder nothing is 100% foolproof when dealing with rattlesnakes

CB, I don't know where you are in Texas. As you know, there are several species of rattlesnakes in Texas. The Timber, Western diamondback, Prairie, Mojave, etc. to name a few. What do you have where you live? From your posts, it sounds like they are under every other rock. Can you be more definitive? I have never seen that many snakes anywhere. In fact, you have to spend some time finding a rattlesnake here in Kentucky. Can you actually go out on any day and within a one mile circumference of your home find a rattlesnake? Thanks.

i lived in the Appalachia region of ky for several years and their were massive amounts of rattlers.

I almost ran over a pure white albino around 8' long.

I was back about 2 mile from the house and was putting up barb wire.. hit in one strand on this old stump and went on my way.. came back around about 30 minutes later for the next strand.. heard this noise like i hit the barb wire... started walking forward.. then RATTLE!!! ! ZINGG.. right in front of me.. momma snake must of had some babies in the stump.. she came right at me full speed .. if I would of tripped or froze for a second she would of had me.. she struck out twice at me chasing right at me..


I got to a shovel and then she tried to run back in the woods to get away.. I said.. I don't think so.. B!TCH!

Was this over in Lewis County? I have a friend in Kinniconick who sees several every year. When you lived in Kinniconick, did you know Maurice Esham?

 

[greybeard]

Take a trip down to Freer next weekend (Apr 28-29). That big rattlesnake statue in town isn't there for no reason. I may head that way myself.

 

[ddd75]

CB, I don't know where you are in Texas. As you know, there are several species of rattlesnakes in Texas. The Timber, Western diamondback, Prairie, Mojave, etc. to name a few. What do you have where you live? From your posts, it sounds like they are under every other rock. Can you be more definitive? I have never seen that many snakes anywhere. In fact, you have to spend some time finding a rattlesnake here in Kentucky. Can you actually go out on any day and within a one mile circumference of your home find a rattlesnake? Thanks.

i lived in the Appalachia region of ky for several years and their were massive amounts of rattlers.

I almost ran over a pure white albino around 8' long.

I was back about 2 mile from the house and was putting up barb wire.. hit in one strand on this old stump and went on my way.. came back around about 30 minutes later for the next strand.. heard this noise like i hit the barb wire... started walking forward.. then RATTLE!!! ! ZINGG.. right in front of me.. momma snake must of had some babies in the stump.. she came right at me full speed .. if I would of tripped or froze for a second she would of had me.. she struck out twice at me chasing right at me..


I got to a shovel and then she tried to run back in the woods to get away.. I said.. I don't think so.. B!TCH!

Was this over in Lewis County? I have a friend in Kinniconick who sees several every year. When you lived in Kinniconick, did you know Maurice Esham?

yes thats exactly where it was. I don't know him. I know the riffes, colliers, maddox, that group. horse riders group.

 

[kenny thomas]

Take a trip down to Freer next weekend (Apr 28-29). That big rattlesnake statue in town isn't there for no reason. I may head that way myself.

Greybeard, is that the big rattlesnake Roundup? It's hard for me to imagine some of the numbers I have heard were there.

 

[greybeard]

Take a trip down to Freer next weekend (Apr 28-29). That big rattlesnake statue in town isn't there for no reason. I may head that way myself.

Greybeard, is that the big rattlesnake Roundup? It's hard for me to imagine some of the numbers I have heard were there.

Depends who ya ask. Sweetwater claims to be the biggest in Tx, but so does Freer and Taylor.
Last year, 2016, Sweetwater roundup brought in 24,262 lbs of rattlesnakes--that's only how much weight was bought. That beat the old record from the '80s of 18,000 lbs. This year, the organzers put a cap on it. 6,500 lbs.

The World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup takes place in Sweetwater, Texas, every year. This year, however, so many snakes were rounded up that there's hardly a market for selling.

While 24,262 pounds of rattlesnakes were bought at the expo in Sweetwater, there were still about 75,000 pounds of rattlesnakes left over, as reported by the Abilene Reporter-News. With no buyers, there's a huge question now on what officials will do with the remaining stock.
http://texashillcountry.com/sweetwaters ... e-roundup/

All total, that's right at 50 tons of rattlesnakes.

 

[farmerjan]

That picture is enough to make me pass out. And I raised some plain garter snakes as a kid and will catch black snakes and relocate them near to old barns etc where there are an abundance of mice....but venomous rattle snakes....ugh.

 

[kenny thomas]

Greybeard, any idea if they turned the extra snakes loose or what happened? Is there a roundup this year?

 

[greybeard]

Don't know what happened to the excess. Yes, the Sweetwater roundup 2017 was March 10--always the 2nd weekend in March. Roundups are usually early spring, before the vile serpents leave their dens. I talked to one of the handlers with the Freer roundup a few years ago. Said the only snake his group won't handle in the ring was copperheads. "Too aggressive."

I watched one of the handlers get down on an opened up sleeping bag, and they placed a dozen or so coiled up rattlers on him and around him then zipped the bag up. He slowly wriggled out the top of it without getting bit.....

 

[dun]

I watched one of the handlers get down on an opened up sleeping bag, and they placed a dozen or so coiled up rattlers on him and around him then zipped the bag up. He slowly wriggled out the top of it without getting bit.....

You can;t fix STUPID

 

[Ryder]

I watched one of the handlers get down on an opened up sleeping bag, and they placed a dozen or so coiled up rattlers on him and around him then zipped the bag up. He slowly wriggled out the top of it without getting bit.....

You can;t fix STUPID

Not stupid. Insanity.
What people wont do for attention.

 

[M-5]

I saw today where one of the animal rights groups is protesting the rattlesnake rodeos around the country as cruel and inhumane.

 

[TexasBred]

I saw today where one of the animal rights groups is protesting the rattlesnake rodeos around the country as cruel and inhumane.

An analysis found that last year's event pumped $8.4 million to the local economy, and the Jaycees use the profits for community projects, including feeding people on Thanksgiving.

 

[TexasBred]

Here's how the liberal Washington Post describes it. Disgusting they don't worry about almost identical things happening to unborn children except we don't eat them.

Back in 1958 local physicians were treating upwards of 50 snakebites a year and cattle were dropping like flies, dying of suffocation after their grass-snuffling noses swelled up from rattlesnake bites. In an effort to halt what they saw as rattler overpopulation, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, or "Jaycees" for short, organized a massive cull, a community-supported hunt that went on to become a tradition: equal parts country fair and slaughterhouse. It has grown to be the biggest event in Sweetwater, and, as the self-anointed largest rattlesnake roundup in the world, a Texas tradition. And it's happening right now through Sunday.
Five thousand pounds of snakes, half the statewide take, are rousted from their hiding places by hunters who flock from all over. This time of year the reptiles are often lulled into a listless lurking, but the hunters use copper tubes to pump gasoline fumes into holes and rocky crevasses, flushing the animals into the open and capturing them.
They're then kept alive until the Roundup, where they're dumped into a holding snake pit. Sex and weight data is recorded for each, and their poisonous venom is milked, to be sold to pharmaceutical companies. The snakes are then euthanized with a bolt to the head, beheaded by blade-wielding Jaycees on bloody stumps, and "processed," which is a polite way of saying skinned and gutted—various organs are also sold overseas. It's a gory procedure, as one journalist described:

"The snake's tiny hearts are set aside into a gory pile, each one still beating out its own rhythm—a hundred little pebble-sized hearts still twitching with life."
The long filets of meat are then deep fried and served up to salivating onlookers for around $5, or heaped high for the annual rattlesnake eating contest.

Like any event of its kind, it's not without its detractors. Animal-rights groups have long protested the gory gala, describing scenes of horrible cruelty. Protestors turn out to picket, major news outlets such as CNN run anti-Roundup op-ed pieces, and even venerable National Geographic is calling for a halt, albeit in the name of snake friendship.
Since only around five people die from snakebites in the United States every year—half the number of lightning-strike victims—it seems the justification for the weekend-long party may be getting long in the tooth, especially to animal lovers.
"It's about money," Michael Price, a local herpetologist who has been working in the area for a quarter-century, told the Midland Reporter Telegram. "It's become such a tradition, and it brings in a tremendous amount of money to the community. That's my biggest issue; it's not about population control, and it's not about safety. It's about money, and it is what it is."
Long past the guise of population control, the Roundup is now as much about the town's survival as it is killing snakes.
Every aspect of the event has been monetized by the Jaycees, who use the approximately $2 million they raise annually to fund community projects and youth sports, and to help the poor. For a mere $20, festival attendees can skin a rattler themselves, stripping the hide off of the 2- and 3-foot-long carcasses hanging from hooks. Afterward, they make bloody handprints on a wall and sign them, a testament to their bravery. 
All told, the Roundup has an economic impact of over $8 million for the town, no small sum for a region in which 24 percent of the population lives below the poverty level and plummeting prices have decimated the once-booming oil economy.

 

[greybeard]

and plummeting prices have decimated the once-booming oil economy.

Wind turbines probably out number pump jacks 4:1 around Sweetwater nowadays..

 

[TexasBred]

and plummeting prices have decimated the once-booming oil economy.

Wind turbines probably out number pump jacks 4:1 around Sweetwater nowadays..

I wouldn't mind a couple of wind turbines on my place. They pay pretty darn well.