COTTONMOUTH problems

[Hydenseek]

Cottonmouth: the most evil and aggressive critter in North America

 

[savagedasher]

Livening in Florida their is only two kinds of snakes l fear
Live ones And Dead ones

 

[dedogs]

Cottonmouth: the most evil and aggressive critter in North America

I disagree. Ever heard of the Clintons?

 

[msinc]

As a father of a 12 year old boy that loves and lives in the woods every chance he gets and also the owner of two pretty decent coon dogs, I am not exactly what you'd call a "fan" of any kind of poisonous snake. One thing bears mentioning given all this snake killin' that's going on here...be careful how you word it to a game warden or cop. Many states have laws against arbitrarily killing or sometimes even "disturbing" a poisonous snake. They usually have a clause about defending yourself or your animals and livestock though. The fines are ridiculous, so chose your words carefully when discussing the snake you killed this morning to a LEO. Just sayin'.
The one I have the most respect for is the diamondback. They can strike accurately half their body length. As to the "warning" given by rattlers...most people would not know it if they heard it, unless they are experienced. What you hear on TV is some idiot shaking a maraca. To me a rattler rattling sounds more like a high pitched cricket buzzing or some other kind of insect making a higher pitched continuous buzz or chirping noise. Definitely not the fast paced "chicka chicka chicka" of Hollywood. Did I just say Hollywood is outa touch with reality???......wait, what!!!!????
One thing I have to wonder...what is the preferred food of a cottonmouth???

 

[rardoin]

Cottonmouth: the most evil and aggressive critter in North America

Not even close....I would put Hillary at the top.

OOPS...@dedogs beat me to it.

 

[rardoin]

Any Junior Brown fans???

 

[timeout]

Any Junior Brown fans???

Awesome!! I never heard this before.

 

[earlcurtis67]

Love Jr brown. E

 

[Tommie]

Interesting. I grew up in the woods in south Louisiana and we had plenty of copperheads in the pines/hardwoods and cottonmouths along the bayous and sloughs. The copperheads were more likely to strike out if I was within a couple of feet and the cottonmouths only if 'molested' or nearly stepped on. Of course we did a lot of cottonmouth molesting. The largest one we killed was 5'8" and found another dead by the hwy at 5'6". I currently live in a moderately sized city a couple of hundred yards off a river. In the past 5 years we had 3 adults and one dog hit by copperheads in the landscaping within 4 houses of mine. Two hits produced short hospitalizations.

I guess Arkansas copperheads are more polite.

 

[Bojo]

3°f here in erie pa last night. About 18 inches of snow and 12°f now. We gor a get about 1hr away before snake territory starts. Maybe the snow is not so bad after all.

 

[DennisH]

Copperheads are my problem, then comes the cottonmouths!

Many disagree with this, but I had several cottonmouths come after me. Their mean and aggressive. And they "stink" bad!

Too many kids around here, so we all "eliminate" them when ever possible. Many times a "shovel" did the trick, but you have to posses a lot of patience.

Squirrel hunting early on in the season, before daybreak getting to your area, I have stepped on a few. It didn't take long for me to make a decesion to only hunt after the first freeze!

 

[DennisH]

Livening in Florida their is only two kinds of snakes l fear
Live ones And Dead ones

You meant to say: Big ones, and little ones, didn't you?

 

[hillbillydruggist]

I had been thinking about this....placing a large piece of tin on the ponds edge with a string tied to it, then flipping it over real fast.....then take care of the bad ones

 

[DennisH]

I had been thinking about this....placing a large piece of tin on the ponds edge with a string tied to it, then flipping it over real fast.....then take care of the bad ones

It would work!

 

[Texas10]

I used to live in Gaston NC. I would go down in the summer to the boat ramp area under the bridge that crossed the Roanoke river going into Roanoke Rapids. There was a section of calm water that was called the tail race which was an overflow area for the Roanoke Rapids dam. In the hot summer this place was alive with cotton mouths. I would take a Daisy pump up BB/177 pellet rifle that would shoot about as hard as the old 22 long would with the max 10 pumps. I would shoot snakes until I got tired pumping that rifle up. Used to go fishing with and old fellow who was my neighbor in some of the ponds and creeks and rivers in the area. Once down in the Hertford NC area we were brim fishing out of a john boat with cane polls and crickets. My neighbor was an old pro at skulling with a paddle that would just ease the boat around on the water. We were easing down the river and came around a corner and there was a tree that had fallen into the water and there was a gust of wind that caught the boat and was about to blow us into the tree. The boat was a fiberglass boat so I reached out to grab a limb with my left hand and push the boat away so we for sure did not poke a hole in it. As I reached toward that limb there was a cotton mouth laying on it with his head back ready to strike. Quick as lightening I dropped my pole out of my right hand and grabbed the paddle that was laying right by my seat and chopped down on that snakes head chopping it off. The old fellow that was in the back of the boat said "I don't think Marshal Dillon could beat you to the draw." That one was so close I about needed to change my shorts. The old fellow carried an old 410 shotgun in the boat for snakes. We have had them drop out of trees and almost drop in the boat and some of them were HUGE. When they would start to shed their skin I am told they go blind for a while and they really get aggressive. We have had them come toward the boat acting like they were in attack mode. They got a dose of lead shot. Later when I got my own boat I carried a T/C Contender pistol with a 10" 45 Colt/410 shot shell barrel for snake duty. One fellow that moved into the area from up north someplace had a new Bass Tracker boat. He had one of those HUGE cottonmouths drop out of a tree right into his boat and he pulled his 357 mag pistol in a panic and blasted with all six shots and did kill the snake but he also blew 6 pretty good size holes in the bottom of his boat. Just lucky it was in the front of the boat and he quickly fired up the boat and got it up on plane which lifted the front out of the water and ran it to the boat ramp before it could sink.

It could'a been worse, he could'a been an astronaut on the ISS.

 

[pirate ammo]

got to thinking about this, this morning. Texas-- Cottonmouths, Diamond Backs, Copperheads, Coral Snakes, Scorpions, Gila Monster Lizards, Black Widow Spiders, Illegal Aliens,
Get down around Sabine Pass, you got Mosquitoes the size of Turkeys, and then you got all the D.U.I. people around Austin. Darn, this is a danger filled environment,,

 

[rkittine]

In addition to Alaska, I have read that there are no poisonous snakes in Maine. Poisonous or not, I skeve snakes. Big worms aren't my friends either.

When I lived in Louisiana, cotton mouths were a real problem. I stayed out of the woods and off the ponds.

One of my instructors in flight school was born and grew up in Louisiana and he would go out on the flight line in the morning and chase any snake he saw, grab it by the tail and swing it so its head would shatter. One morning he did that but the snakes head curved backward and he was bitten on the hand. I told him I would drive him to the hospital and he told me to forget it, that he had been bitten so many times he now longer even got sick.

He took me fishing on day on a marsh and rowing towards it, we have one drop out of a tree into the boat and one slip over the gunwhale into the book also. He flipped them out with the end of the oar. It was the last time I went freshwater fishing anywhere near there.

Bob

 

[Lucky Shooter]

Cottonmouth in boat.

This was written for my granddaughter after she requested true stories of my life.

I accept any condemnation of the use of gunpowder and alcohol-----a practice I avoid.

Old Friend Buddy and the Boat


It was a beautiful fall day and spending the afternoon indoors would have been a crime. We’d had a little nippy weather but it was a bit warmer with squirrel and duck season underway and I just knew I had to escape the funny farm for the afternoon.

I called Buddy and suggested we throw a boat into the creek and ease around a little to see if we could bust a few squirrels and maybe a duck or two. He gave me a typical answer-----“I don’t care.”-----which meant something like “sounds good to me”. It damn sure sounded good to me.

I showed up at his place with a small Jon boat and an electric trolling motor, along with a couple of paddles and a battery. Buddy had that certain big grin on his face that I suspected meant that he’d had a snort or two. My suspicions were confirmed when he patted his hunting coat pocket and informed me that he didn’t intend to run dry down on the creek------no surprise to me when he pulled out a half pint of whisky.

We both admitted that we expected to have good day----and he commented that great expectations usually were a good predictor of a dog day. We didn’t really care because being outdoors on such a fine day just had to beat anything else we could have done that afternoon.

The creek runs from a mountain cove to the river and it’s upper reaches are often very dry. The lower end of the creek rises and falls with the river levels----------we’d have plenty of water to float our boat.

I operated the trolling motor from the rear seat and Buddy sat on the middle seat---ready to “burn’em down”. We’d barely gotten started and he had already “burned down” a few squirrels and a Wood Duck-------maybe this was going to be a good day. I decided to let Buddy do all the shooting and I’d run the boat and retrieve what he shot.

Buddy took a little nip here and a little nip there and soon got too hot to wear his coat. He folded his coat neatly on the floorboard-------and softly laid his bottle on top of it.

He continued to shoot and nip as we proceeded toward the mouth of the creek---this was a really a good day. Before we got to the mouth of the creek, we found that a large tree had fallen across the creek. We found a way to go under the tree and moved on to the mouth of the creek, turned around and headed back to pass under the fallen tree-----no problem getting under the tree again.


We were obviously going to run out of daylight soon and the trolling motor was speeded up a bit. Things were proceeding very well until Buddy reached down for another nip and jumped backward over the middle seat-------his rear end almost knocking me out of the boat. There was a quick and obvious explanation for this action-------there was a big fat cottonmouth coiled up on his coat, next to his bottle-----------and he’d almost put his hand on it.


It was pretty crowded in the back of this boat and I was trying to calm Buddy down and keep the boat under control------and not very successful at it. I couldn’t see much but his rear end in my face but suggested he use his paddle to kill the snake and flip it out of the boat. This wouldn’t work---the paddle was too close to the snake and the damn thing was trying to bite him.

I was afraid he was going to shoot the snake-------along with a hole in our boat’s floorboard------and was begging him not to shoot.


I suggested he pin the snake down with his gun barrel and use my paddle to kill it. Well, he did pin the thing down with his barrel-------but so far behind the head that it could still strike at him and almost reach him.


I was so distracted that I was no longer controlling the boat-------it was going around in a big circle. We were “lucky” that we were in a big “turnhole” in the creek and had space to allow us to run our circle without running into something ------and pitching both of us forward on top of the snake.


I finally succeeded in handing Buddy my paddle and he was able to pin down the snake’s head, crush the head and pitch it out of the boat. This wasn’t enough revenge for Buddy so he plowed a shot into it in the water------no more snake problem.


I was able to get the boat under control, stop the motor and get Buddy out of my lap and back on his seat. With things back under control, Buddy was finally able to take a well deserved nip and cap it all off with one of his patented remarks, “ damn a damn snake, let’s get out of here.”


Our final tally for the day was several squirrels, two ducks, a cottonmouth and a memory that won’t be soon forgotten. We had a lot of laughs over this experience but it was no laughing matter before we got free of the snake.


We’re not sure just when, where and how the snake got into the boat but suspect it fell out of the tree on one of our passes under it. We figure the snake landed on his coat without making the noise it would have made if it had landed on the aluminum floorboard--------but-----we’ll never know.


Buddy lost his battle with cancer in 1994 but he and the memories of our escapades won’t soon be forgotten.

 

[savagedasher]

I have the cotton mouth problem every morning when I wake
I snore also so many wife says

 

[LarryDScott]

I have the cotton mouth problem every morning when I wake
I snore also so many wife says

Yep and you can use a CPAP to stop the snoring and the cotton mouth will still be w/you. LDS