Rattlesnake

Winelover

North Central Arkansas
Six different kinds of venomous snakes are found in Arkansas. Copperhead, Cottonmouth, Western Diamondback, Timber, Western Pigmy and Texas coral snake. Copperhead is the most prevalent...................not in my experience. Been here six years and only came across two...............and I'm constantly looking for snakes. Weed wacked a small Timber, once, by mistake.

The most common snake, is by far, the Black Rat Snake. They can climb, straight up a tree or building, in nothing flat. P1020601 (800x600).jpg

P1020600 (800x600).jpg


Cindy took these pictures, walking Bella. This one is over 6 foot, in length.
 
Last edited:

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
Amazing to watch the Black snake climb a tree unless of course ya happen to be a nesting bird, squirrel, rodent or some such. They don't wrap around the trunk or limbs of the tree, just go straight up like they had fingers grabbling the bark. As snakes go though they are a good snake, doesn't take to many of them around and the local field mice etc population is greatly diminished.

7 years here and I have seen one cotton mouth, a tiny little one about 4 or 5 inches long. He didn't seem to like me too much, coiled up with mouth wide open showing the pure white inside acting like he thought he was a lot bigger than he was. It was right next to the chain that I tie up the dog with, it did not survive the encounter. Little doubt the dog would have thought it was a playmate.
 

oscarflytyer

Well-Known Member
Snake up a tree story...

Few years back, middle of downtown Birmingham AL. On a HS campus. Headed back to the truck/parking lot to go to another game. As I rounded the front of the truck, there was a HUGE snake, stretched full out. Prob 7-8' long, and big as my arm. I nearly went up on the hood of the truck AND pulled my gun. Wife hates snakes, but did tell me not to shoot it! Only reason I didn't completely freak out was that it wasn't coiled. And wasn't aggressive. it just looked at me and turned South and did the barber pole wrap up a tree. It donned on me that it was probably someone's pet Python or the like, escaped. But I am not a snake ID expert...
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Pythons in Fla get a bounty, dead. Damned things are like vacuum cleaners wiping out
all small to medium mammals in their area. Finding some really big ones. I am not afraid
of snakes at all (well except the unseen venomous ones) but would be happy of all these
exotics were killed.

Bill
 

Kevin Stenberg

Well-Known Member
Bill i have seen several documentaries stating the pythons are decimating most native animals. Gaters - Mink - Coons - all kinds of water birds. All disapearing .
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Yeah, they are paying a bounty now, on a 'per foot basis', which is good, kill the big
breeding females.

Bill
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
I did two tours at Ft. Hood, Texas, as an MP. I was in the traffic section, so could go anywhere, and had no specific patrol area. I saw and killed a lot of big rattlers that came out on the blacktop to warm up at dusk. Never saw over 11 rattles on any of them, but they were rather large in diameter. One area of west Ft. Hood was off limits to training exercise , and the number of rattlers there was considerable. I hunted dove there and on more than one occasion killed five rattlers on a single hunt. When retrieving doves it was a good idea to watch your step!! Plenty of Copperheads there also, and the wife mowed a coral snake in our yard once. She wasn't too impressed with that, since we had two kids under five at the time, that played in the yard.
By far the snakiest place I've ever been was Knotts Island, NC. I was in the Navy and stationed at NAS Oceana Virginia at the time, but lived on Knotts Island. The number of moccosins there was hard to believe. My landlords grandson and I would actually hunt them just for kicks. They were the Florida strain and really stunk when you killed them. One afternoon in October Ronnie and I went to repair some deer stands. We each brought along a 20 gauge and about a box of shells each. The snakes were just starting to go into hibernation in the Pine woods we were in, which adjoined Mackey Island Wildlife refuge. Every turned up root system or hole in the ground had several snakes outside trying to sun themselves. We would shoot several with every shot and ran out of shells before we did snakes!!! The woods just reeked. Took about two days to get the smell out of my system. Long walk out with no shells left also!