.22 Lever Action Rifle For Snakes?

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I hate the copperheads only snake I've had the will try to attack you. I don't mind them to much but when a big copper head is chasing you off a river bank, then there fair game to kill.
 
That is fine shooting. I leave snakes be around my house in KE Kansas. Fortunately they are all garter snakes or blacks snakes wit han occasional ring neck. All harmless and beneficial. I see a rattler now and then where I hunt praire dogs, but they are usually flat and dead in the road. If I saw a load like those copperheads, I'd be grabbing the shotgun....gives me the willies.
 
I have ran across a pit like that one time. I get nervous around that spot now. I was hauling off scrap metal that had been tossed down into sinkholes around where I grew up. Knew lots of farmers and hunted most of the farms so I knew who to ask about cleaning up scrap. There was one sinkhole that was incredible... I got about $800 worth of old appliances out of it, not to mention the old broken iron farm equipment that went with it... but once I got down to the nitty gritty of the last couple stoves and fridges. I was tossing a grapple for coils and stove eyes luckily so I wasn’t waist deep in it... but I emptied the 9mm I carry in the woods and all spare mags... 18 in and 2 17rd mags, the marlin 60 ate a 50 rd box, and the 20 ga ate a 25 rd box. I didn’t hit much with the 9mm but I was about 3/4 with the 22 and got a few doubles with the shotgun. After all that I came back poured diesel and threw a lit rag. If nothing else I didn’t want to smell rotting snake when I got the farm equipment. Breeding balls is what I have been told was the most likely reason for such a congregation.
 
Wow, I live less than 60 miles from Thackerville. I was bitten by a water moccasin when I was 14. Had never heard of a dry bite until I was bitten. Was given a tetanus shot and sent on my way.

I don’t like venomous snakes and kill them if they are close to my house or barn. Otherwise I leave them alone if I encounter them. I do not use a firearm to dispatch snakes. This is what I use, no kidding. I pulled a picture off the Internet because I didn’t want to walk to the barn and snap a photo. Mine is exactly the same, it just looks older.
4BE2B17D-012A-467C-A7E4-48A8F86AFA78.jpeg
 
About pythons again... they're land snakes that come from Burma (the vast majority of the ones in the 'glades) so they're perfectly comfortable in marshy jungle type environs...

If I ever took up hunting them - it would be in cold weather when you can find them sunning themselves in the open... My weapons of choice would be a 12ga shotgun and a machete. Not one of them would go in the bag with its head still in place one way or the other... The "pros" (if there is such a thing) that hunt them are getting paid a bounty by the state and also selling the meat and hides so they have a reason for taking them by hand, still alive... I have no such limitation. Anyone trying to take pythons alive had better be part of a team since a one on one encounter might not turn out the way you'd planned... I've seen one video of a snake handler that had a bad encounter with a medium sized python he was handling (the snake was only 13 feet long -not a big one..). He was demonstrating in front of a camera how to feed one at a zoo or herpetarium... At any rate it was pretty clear from the video that if he hadn't had help on scene the snake would have killed him.... but it wouldn't have happened quickly at all...

With all the terrible troubles the pythons are causing - I can't understand why pet shops are still allowed to not only sell pythons but actually breed and hybridize them. More than a few of our current problem snakes were originally pets that were released by their owners when they became too big to handle...
 
The ground is still frozen but it will not be much longer.
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In OK on the Texas boarder? We didn’t even have a single snow that didn’t melt when it hit the ground this year. Awfully muddy with all the rain lately but far from frozen earth.
 
Yeah, Thackerville, Oklahoma is now being crossed off the list of places I want to vacation at and run barefoot thru the grass.
 
jmorris said:
In OK on the Texas boarder? We didn’t even have a single snow that didn’t melt when it hit the ground this year. Awfully muddy with all the rain lately but far from frozen earth.
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My thought exactly but I figured it had to be a typo of some sort.
 
Ratshooter said:
A couple of years ago my son came in the house and said there was a snake on the front walk. I went out and looked and sure enough it was a young copperhead. So I got a 5 gallon bucket and picked him up by the tail and put him in the bucket. Then drove over to the RR tracks a couple of miles away and released him. Everyone thought I was crazy.
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You convinced me.
 
a ruger sr22, not a rifle dispatched this one. i was out plinking alone in the desert and stepped right next to it. i jumped a mile high and it moved off. i lost sight of it, got more worried then saw it again. i emptied a mag of minimags into it and, worried about his cousins, moved off to a different plinking spot closer to the turnoff. look just past the sr22’s muzzle. i plink at that place regularly but have never returned to that same spot.
 

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I was playing golf with some friends and we were riding down the cart path when the two in the cart in front yelled back Copperhead, kill it, kill it! We stopped our cart before we came to it and it was lying on the cart path coiled up as it must have been warmed by the cart path. This friend of mine in the lead cart was still yelling kill it, kill it, kill it! I snuggled a six iron underneath it and tossed it into some tall grass. We were a long ways from the clubhouse and I knew that no one would be tramping through the area that I deposited the snake in. Just because I could kill it didn't afford me the right to do so. If it had been next to the clubhouse it would have been a different story.
 
jstert said:
a ruger sr22, not a rifle dispatched this one. i was out plinking alone in the desert and stepped right next to it. i jumped a mile high and it moved off. i lost sight of it, got more worried then saw it again. i emptied a mag of minimags into it and, worried about his cousins, moved off to a different plinking spot closer to the turnoff. look just past the sr22’s muzzle. i plink at that place regularly but have never returned to that same spot.
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That sucker is hard to see. I know about jumping. You should have been there when I stood on the rattlesnake and when I looked down to see why my left foot was moving I jumped straight up and turned a full 180* and landed many feet away. Then I ran on my tippy toes with my knees coming up to in front of my face. Then I stopped and said "he ain't gonna scare the &%@$ out of me and get away with it". So I could see him crawling through the grass and then stop and curl up and then started to rattle. I gave him one barrel then the second barrel of my shotgun. I went and looked at him. Cut off the buttons. Scraped out my britches and went home.
 
SwampWolf said:
What? You didn't "pick him up by the tail" and release him a couple of miles away? It seems you're not so crazy after all! ;)
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No. That snake didn't get a pass that time. He was a little POed as was I. Neither one of us was in a generous mood at the moment. Besides I didn't have a bucket with me. He would have crawled right back out of a 5 gallon bucket anyway.:uhoh:
 
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SwampWolf said:
Or you could have saved some evidence of cowardliness by claiming, "I wasn't scared. I had to sh-- anyhow".
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I wasn't a coward. I just had a snake induced call of nature. I'm not afraid of snakes. I just like meeting them on my terms. And in a field of foot tall grass is not one of them.
 
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My bud I loaded the 32 long shot shells for was in the hospital a few years ago. He had bypass surgery and I had been up to see him at Hugely Hospital in Ft Worth. When I was leaving there was what looked like an Anaconda right out in the street. So I stopped my truck and walked over to him. I was going to grab him by the tail and put him in the bed of my truck. But as soon as I touched him he shot off and went under my truck and of all things crawled right up on top of my spare tire.

Great I thought. Just stay there till we get home and you're mine sucker. Well somewhere along the way he bailed out. I just wonder what other drivers thought when they saw a 6' snake crawl out from under my truck and what stories they tell.:D
 
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I was reading some stories told by Game Wardens a long time ago and one of the stories was that a GW saw a couple of guys walking out of the woods with a large cloth sack. So he stopped them and asked what was in the sack? He said the next time someone tells him they have snakes, he's gonna believe them. I guess he didn't like snakes either.
 
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