James H. Cagle
I’ve heard about the professional snake hunters. They come together by the hundreds to some part of the country where snakes also come together by the hundreds. The hunters hunt the snakes. They run hoses down into their dens and pour gasoline through the hoses to make the snakes come out, so they can catch them. The hunters use all the latest equipment and technology for hunting snakes. When they catch them they eat some of them in every imaginable way. They give some of them to labs so they can make antivenom with their venom. I don’t know what they do with the ones left over.
But long ago, in the good ole days, before I heard about these professional snake hunters, my brothers and I hunted snakes. We didn’t have any protective clothing or professional equipment when we went snake hunting. We went barefoot through the woods and fields in a pair of shorts carrying a good tobacco stick to kill the snakes.
When we got ready to go snake hunting we went to the barn to get our tobacco sticks (the sticks tobacco was strung on) and headed for the woods. We went down the cattle lane and then turned for the Cyprus head (a swampy place with a lot of Cyprus trees). Once in the cattle lane I saw how a black snake, which is not venomous, had a squirrel wrapped up in its coils and was constricting it. I didn’t bother them and when I came back by on the way home the snake was still there, but the squirrel was now inside of the snake. I knew this because the snake had a pot belly.
My brothers and I went to the Cyprus head because it was home to rattlesnakes and copperheads. We were sure to find several snakes there and dispatch of them with our sticks. We didn’t kill any black snakes or king snakes because the black snakes were good about killing rats and weren’t venomous. The king snakes were not venomous either and also killed rats, but were also big enough to kill and eat rattlesnakes.
But we did chase the black snake, often called the black racer. On one particular occasion when we couldn’t find any poisonous snakes to kill, we found a large black snake and began chasing it. It stayed on the old logging road that ran through the woods, but when it got in the bushes we beat the bushes until we got it back on the road. It wasn’t long before we were winded and stopped to catch our breath. We lost sight of the snake and I thought it was probably also catching its breath. Snakes do get winded and have to catch their breath, you know, when they’re chased through the woods by little boys.
We looked around for the snake and finally saw it up ahead of us in the grass. It had raised its head above the grass and was looking back at us. We took off after the snake again, but this time instead of running away it turned and started coming toward us very fast. We naturally turned and ran. The snake was harmless but just the idea of being snake bit didn’t sit well with us, and we knew we were not going to kill it. After running some, we turned around and the snake was gone.
If you’re going snake hunting another good thing to have is a snake dog. Dogs will, by nature, avoid snakes. But, when you have a dog that catches on to your snake hunting activities they can be an asset. We had one dog that would run ahead and start barking when he found a snake. My brothers and I would go see what kind of snake it was to decide whether or not to kill it.
A good snake dog also knows how to quickly kill a snake. They get the snake to strike and the second the snake is stretched out they sink their teeth into its middle, then begin shaking and jerking it from side to side. In this way the snake is literally shaken into pieces. One snake dog I had was bitten by a rattlesnake and died. She was a black Labrador retriever. She had the snake cornered and was about to go in for the kill when a limb touched her back leg. This distracted her for a split second and gave the snake the time it needed to bite her. She did kill the snake before she died. There is no antidote for a dog if it is bitten by a poisonous snake. But if the dog that has been bitten can lick the bite, or if another dog can, it has a chance of living. I know this from watching my dogs.
I once came across two king snakes fighting over a rat. One king snake had the rat in its mouth. The other king snake was coiled around the first snake and had its mouth around its throat to keep it from swallowing the rat.
I was walking into the house one day wearing my broad brim garden hat. When I opened the door to go inside, a foot long rattlesnake fell off the upper door onto my hat. It then fell to the ground and slithered under the house. As far as I know it never got inside the house.
Snakes are very numerous in the south and just a part of life. If one is not careful they can be bitten by one. I do not recommend anyone going snake hunting the way my brothers and I did. I don’t know how my brothers and I survived all our snake hunts without being bitten. It was only God’s goodness and protective care over us.
