Bad Year for Snakes

[pianoman9701]

"P-man, I haven't been hungry enough to consider eating a snake."

They're pretty good.

[yakimanoob]

+1 for the bugs in the South.  Spent my first 28 years in Alabama (Birmingham and Auburn).  I'm actually in AL today on vacation visiting friends, and we walked around Chewacla State Park - saw a big friendly copper head that let me get to within about 3 feet and just stared at me. 

Joked with my wife that it's easy to forget that we grew up in the jungle, literally.  We don't tend to use that term 'round these parts, but when I visited Nicaragua and went hiking in the official jungle, the similarities were striking. 

[Idabooner]

I usually don't start killing snakes until August. I have been killing one a week for the last three weeks, and then today I killed two by the house, and missed another as it shot down a hole under the foundation.

Still not as bad as the first year I lived here, with 78.

Talking to others around the Valley, seems they are having the same trouble. Time to visit the snake dens in the fall & spring.

Idabooner knows the country..

I used to own 80 acres of pasture next to where wolfbait's place is.  We would get a snake or more every time we went up there, the place was crawling with them.  Always carried a 357 or 38 loaded with #9 shot hand loads.  The worst experience I had with snakes was when the kids and I were cutting some trail, the step daughter went exploring off a ways, I heard her screaming and screaming, I went tearing over there and she was two feet off the ground up on some brush, a big rattler buzzing right under her feet, had her in it's sights, no way I could get closer than 6-8 feet because of brush so I  told her to look a way in-case of pellets ricochet from the brush.  Got a good shot on the snake and no pellets in her legs.

[outdooraddict]

I might have just lifted my legs in the middle of reading this and peeked under the computer desk

[Kenaiwild]

SE Wa.  We only kill them when they’re within a half mile of our cabin over there and we got 9 that week.

[bowhunterforever]

That's a good one kenaiwild

[magnanimous_j]

Fangy types with venom?

I grew up in the SE Georgia pine barrens and swamps.    Big Diamondbacks up to 8 ft long.  The scariest were the big cottonmouths.   Laying next to a log and you never saw one, the camo was excellent.    Killed one that weighed 29 pounds.

And this is why, when I got out of the Army. I swore to never go back to the South. Nice people, pretty country but you folks down there have a snake and bug problem. Bugs as big as a grown mans fist.

I can live with snakes, but God I hate bugs. Especially in the South, where a walk to your mailbox can get you a nice case of Lyme Disease.

Hard pass.

[!Xabbu]

Yep.   I was born in Brunswick, GA, right on the coast.   Nice fishing but too many  nasty critters.  And too much social unrest.

My last duty station in the Military was McChord AFB, Tacoma.   Like you, I did not want to go back to the south, I got a job in Port Angeles and stayed.   This was in 1976.

I first came to Port Angeles in 1976 and helped clean up the C141 inner Constance crash. Were you at McCord when that happened?