A word of caution when dealing with snakes...

[LuckyDuck]

There are few creatures as beautiful or as deadly as the cobra.

Naturally, men of our stock are attracted to such critters and for millennia have asked themselves "if only I could harness that beauty & lethality"...and our ancestors have forever thus tried to tame the beast only to find out generations later that the cobra cannot be tamed and once more-we found out that they're quite prolific and reproduce far faster than anticipated.

Did you know a single cobra can lay between 10-30 eggs? I didn't before going down this noble endeavor and before I knew what was happening- I was left with a snake pit as deadly as they are beautiful...

I sought to my elders, I looked towards our ancestors on how I could possibly reign in this den of cobras and wield their strengths while understanding their potential for harm and also appreciating their beauty and suddenly a solution was presented from of all places but the jungles of Vietnam...

I needed a bonafide snake-eater to watch over the rapidly growing snake pit... I searched high & low and found myself a true champion to watch over my flock...

Pictured above is my snake pit- a CCO, Kobra Carry & Kobra Gov't along with my latest addition to the Ed Brown Collection, a Gov't Special Forces model.

-LD

 

[Riomouse911]

At first I thought that you were leading us towards the Colt marque.

Love those Ed Browns!

Stay safe.

 

[9x56MS]

I think they nailed it beautiful and deadly.

 

[Rubone]

We have Prairie Rattlers on our place. Only Diamondbacks are in the safe...

 

[Bronco72]

I have had a pet Python since 1967; Colt that is

 

[LuckyDuck]

Alrighty-

Did a bit of tweaking with the 5" Kobra & 5" Special Forces. and thought this may be of some interest to others and figured I'd share here...

In both instances I added the EB one-piece "hardcore" magwell matching the finish and stippling pattern for each. If you haven't tried to undertake a magwell swap on 1911's it's really stupid easy to do. To make things easy, wrap a rubber band around the grip safety so it's depressed and keeps everything together (I found the rubber bands that wrap asparagus from the grocery store to be perfect). Grab yourself a 3/32" punch to knock out the mainspring pin from the frame (also should be easy/take only minimal pressure to push out) and a 1/16" punch to knock out the retaining pin in the mainspring itself (to snag the "guts" since you'll need them for the new mainspring housing most likely) but again once you depress the housing cap it'll push out with next to no resistance...

Do everything in reverse and throw in the new mainspring housing and you're back to watching Jeopardy before the commercial break is over. So here's the end result of my tinkering...

Looks well enough and as expected the finishes match up perfectly. I was surprised how well the stock grips worked with the magwell addition (looks clean to me) but I may later decide to get some grips from VZ or somewhere else to cover up the mainspring pin on the frame... time will tell.

The one part though that I was hoping for (and which I think will be of the most interest) is that I was hoping that the radius in the magwell would match up to the bevel in the frame and in that regards... it does not... Here's some pics of how it "matches up"...

So not nearly as "clean" as I was expecting and "blended" it is not. That being said- does it do its "job" and still feed magazines? Yes, yes it does (certainly helps to have a bumper pad though).

Hitting my pic limit... onto part II...

 

[LuckyDuck]

So that's where I'm at presently, was hoping it'd be a bit closer internally but it's flawless externally and functions as needed. I'll play around with it in this configuration for a bit and see how I like it. Worst case scenario I go back to the standard mainspring housings or decide to have the magwell blended.

Hope that's of some help to someone here.

-LD

 

[lightman]

Snakes huh! If its the poisonous type I break the law and deal with it. If its the Colt variety I shoot it and lovingly clean it and put it away!

 

[jmr40]

If its the poisonous type I break the law and deal with it.

I'm not aware of any poisonous snakes. Lots are venomous, however. The rule is; if you bite it and you die, it was poisonous. If it bites you and you die it was venomous.

This is a pic I stole off the internet showing a den of Copperheads found after someone cleaned out a brush pile near home.



I leave the non-venomous snakes alone but have killed several copperheads in my yard. Most with a shovel, but one with a shotgun. I spotted it and sent my 10 year old son into the house to get a shotgun and a few shells while I keep an eye on it.

I fired one shot and it didn't even twitch. At 1st I thought I'd missed but it was dead. I must have gotten lucky and got a single pellet in the brain. Chopped it's head off with a shovel just to be sure.

I've had a few Colt 1911's over the years but only one revolver. A King Cobra years ago.

 

[Ignition Override]

A former nurse was a crewmember on one of my many trips years ago.

During her nursing career she once watched a screen which was on, or nears a guy's leg. His leg had been struck by a rattlesnake.
Staff could actually observe the Progress of the venom Moving Inside His Leg, as the venom moved away from the wound "up" his leg. Freaky, nasty hematoxic stuff.... But far more survivable than many neurotoxic venoms.

I've no idea what type of monitoring advice(s) they use in ERs or in which state it happened. We were tired from a long duty day as we listened, enroute to a hotel in Northbrook IL.