I have gotten quite a few e-mails from people going out to catch venemous rattlers in texas and southern alabama and want to know how to catch them! IS this not the DUMBEST question you have ever heard! Sort of like me asking a physicist how to make a nuclear bomb and needing a quick ansewre. It takes practice catching em sucesfully without incident, and not to be attempted by anybody unless they know what they are doing. I had a guy e-mail me one day sayiing he had got bitten by a small pygmy rattler and wanted to know what to do? When i told him to get to the hospital ASAP, he said it was small snake, so it would probably go away. Well aftre his hand swelled to three times its normal size, and he pased out from the excrutiating pain of having your skin stretched to three times its normal size without being pregnant( LOL) he decided my info was a good idea. I am leaving the URL of a site anybody interested in catching rattlers without any experience should definetaly see. Scroll down and look at the picture of the guys hand. It looks like it was blown apart by a grenade. It was a picture two hours after he had been bitten. I have handled in my life every specie of non-venomous snake in the USA, and probably about 500 venemous snakes LIVE from taipans, cobras, gaboons, rattlers ect ect, and i still get the TINGLE every time I approach one. It is called RESPECT! If you aRE AFRAID OF A CERTAIN SNAKE, DO not TRY TO CATCH IT, AND NEVER KEEP IT AS A PET JUST TO BE COOL. iF YOU ARE AFRAID OF AN ANIMAL YOU SHOULD NEVER OWN ONE. While i am not afraid of snakes and never have been, I do totally respect them. Out of the hundreds i have handled, I have been invenomated only once. And let me tell you, it is not fun. While it is easy to get cocky about it when you catch a lot of them without incident, never lose respect for threm! This is when you get hurt! So to those out there who want to go catch a rattler to get one for a mount, look at the pictures on this website, and ask yourself if it is really worth it! ( www.venomousreptiles.org)
Tom
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Tom;
Give yourself a big pat on the back. I hope people listen to you. I myself have been invenimated by a timber rattler. Its definitly no fun. People when you read this PLEASE listen to what Tom is saying.
Coyote
Some might call people going down to Texas just to kill a rattler an uninformed person. Rattlers, just as all other snakes, have a certain place in the wild. They reduce, and effectively so, the populations of small rodents that can plague farms and other areas. Just because their bite is painful and possibly deadly for us does not mean they are evil. Do these people accept spiders for controlling insects or owls that also control rodent populations? Not only do I beleive these rattle snake roundups are ecologically idiotic, but I have seen studies that show that because most of the loudest rattlers are caught, the remaining rattlers, which will never be eliminated, have become more quiet. Quiet rattlers are even more dangerous because they don't advertise their presence as well.
The world is overpopulated so I say: let em go try to catch as many as possible. Maybe they'll get bit and learn not to mess with such things. Or maybe I'm being naive and you'll never change people's phobias. As a final note: I would like to see rattle snake rounduppers use all that energy to learn more about rattlers and their importance. Then maybe they would see the light.
Rattlesnake roundups are awful and kill the population! Only animals that have been of a loss due to captive breeding efforts should be preserved, not snakes that are in the wild! I got bit by a copperhead and let me tell you it hurts like hell, don't mess with these snakes at all!
-Steve
u smell and suck i hope the snake bits ur little shrivveled up pen is off u retarted fudge