Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What kind of snake did I kill?

ARRGGGG, dats a King Snake, he eats rattelsnakes and copperheads fer lunch, he's a goodern, Ole Big Boy here at the farm is around 8ft long last time I saw him.

In 15 years I havent seen a venomous snake, rabbit, squirrel, or any king of mouse/rat in the yard, i think he eats 'em all.

And there's a forearm sized hole going under the back slab by the fireplace, I think that's where he holes up during the winter.

Gunner

*faint*




It'd be him, or me, the place wouldn't be big enough for the both of us. >shudder<

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY dislikes snakes more than me. I'll admit to going medieval on all I saw in my younger less informed days.
Now I try and simply observe, appreciate, and move on. Not 'holier than thou' by any measure. Simply where I'm finally at.
Matter of fact, I've got a black rat snake living in my little (10x10)storage shed at the cabin. It's been there 3 or 4 years running. It's around 7' long (I guess about as big as they get) now and absolutely HUGE! I don't even use my shed now since last time I went in there we wound up face to face (literally about 18 inches from my face) and I just decided he could have the place for the summer. Have a mentioned I don't really care for snakes? Having said that, if I stumble across a venomous snake especially in places it's likely to encounter a human, that's the last day it'll slither. Also, it is illegal in Georgia to kill a non-venomous snake.

one of the worst azz chewings I ever received from my dear mother, was when I used a stick to sling a big black snake out of our yard back into the hayfield where he belonged.


geez that woman hates snakes, her dad (my Pops) had taught me black snakes were good to keep the mice population down and thus the binder twine on our bales of hay intact


like many things in life, fear trumps common sense most often


I've lived in AK for so long, snakes give me a real start myself now.

prowling the woods as a kid, it just becomes 2nd nature to not step over a log without seeing what you're going to be sitting your foot down next to.

I've pretty well lost that habit and it scared the bejeezus outa me the last time I went tromping through the old home woods and had a snake slither away from my clodhoppers

I remember thinking, Gawd amighty, give me bears and skeeters any day!

Saw a snake crawling along the pool deck one fine day. It was a big one, over three feet long. So I grabbed a shovel, that way if it was a rattler I could bury it with the same shovel. Turned out to be a common king snake, so I gathered it up and placed it gently on the other side of the fence where it could hunt for vermin. Wife had seen it and asked why I didn't kill it. I told her that king snakes are immune to rattle snake venom and eat them, other snakes and lizards and mice, and all the rest of the things she finds scary.

She asked if I could capture it again, seeing that it would eat lizards, she had a few lizard people at work she would like to introduce it to.

Thanks for reading the thread KDK, seems a few here just reply without reading.

I done the research Swampman700 posted & familiar w/kingsnakes now. I lived on a lake in FL and use to kill water type snakes all the time, but never seen a King.


Suck a dog dick BrentD

well part of it is "the only good snake is a dead snake" phylosphy of a number of people here just cause they dont want to be around venomous snakes......funny thing is easiest way to keep venomous snakes off your property is to encourage kingsnakes, bullsnakes and ratsnakes to live on your property....one reason is as others here have said, kingsnakes will eat venomous snakes....some species of kingsnake are more inclined to do it than others but all species will do it.....

second, atleast around here, ive not seen where a rattlesnake can compete against bullsnakes around buildings....rattlesnakes are sit and wait predators while the other three ae very active hunters and if you have a number of them on your property they tend to knock rodent levels down to a level that rattlers go look elsewhere for food....granted if your inundated with mice and rats they prolly cant keep up but in the end i would rather have the non-venomous snakes around the house than the rodents...

but anyway by killing the good snakes your actually making it more likely you will run into the venomous snakes cause like it or not you have rodents on your property and they attract snakes...

I distinctly remember the last non-venomous snake(s) I killed. It seems in the spring all the snakes come out of hibernation on the same day (literally). My back yard is a beaver pond so we've got LOTS to choose from. One spring day several years ago a decent sized rat snake was outside the fence and my very young son was playing inside the fence. I hit the fence to get the snake to move on his way and instead he came AT me and rushed inside the fence! He crawled up in a bush and simply watched. I went inside for the Sheridan and my neighbor became intersted of the activities. I just 'thought' snakes bothered me until I met that neighbor. THAT boy (and a BIG boy at that) was simply terrified of those things. Anyway, one shot and that snake was done. About 2 minutes later I see another INSIDE the fenced in yard. Same fate. About 5 minutes later my neighbor is hooping and hollering as one had just climbed inside the engine compartment on his truck. Same fate. 3 in less than 10 minutes. That subsequent year was the first and last time we also had a rodent problem around here. Lesson learned.
They all get left alone now to do what they do very very well. Did have one somehow get in the garage and crawl over my wife's foot. She recovered quicker and better than I would have.

neet vid thanks.

up here we call them king or gopher snakes.

norm

Kill em or leave em, I don't care...But a lot of folk would make the case that wolves in your backyard serve a valuable purpose too.

ya but I can generally out run a snake!!

whole lot of difference between a 120 pound wolf and a half pound snake.....plus a 6 foot bullsnake can live within city limits without causing any real harm....

Indeed, they do.

Of course they say you're an idiot, and stupid to boot.

An illegal one.

In Tennessee, it is illegal to harm, kill, remove from the wild,
or possess native snakes taken from the wild without the proper permits.

LOL, he wont bother ya, I have stumbled up on him around 5/6 times over the years and he just looks up and peacefully goes about his way, still kinda spooky lookin' when he raises his head 2ft off the ground and looks back at ya.

Gunner