[AT] Working a tractor at night

[Billy Hood]

  Got to ask what do you do with snakes or rather what do the ones that buy them do with them? 

  /Mattias


  We used to say that when we killed hogs that we used everything but the squeal--well in rattlesnakes it is much of the same.  The meat is eaten or processed for sale.  The skin is preserved and used for belts, hatbands ect.  The venom is milked and used for research.  The head and tail are used for knick-nacks (heads enclosed in clear resin ect).  Certain internal organs are saved for medical, religious or "other" uses.  The orientals consider the bile a substitute for Viagra.  When the  leftovers are considered as a percentage of the total weight, it is less than 5%.  

  In West Texas Rattlesnake roundups are a springtime ritual.  Orginating in the fifties, as a means to reduce populations for local ranchers, they are popular.  At the Sweetwater, TX roundup, literally tons of collected snakes are collected in a week long event.  All are processed and sold and the profits used to benefit the local community.  Snake hunters are paid by the pound and there are prizes and awards for the most snakes, largest, and most distance traveled.  This does not seem to reduce the population according to local folks, but the PETA type people protest all the roundups.  Rattlesnakes den in south facing slopes (where they can sun as the weather cools in the spring.  The accecpted method is to pump presurized gasoline vapor into the den with a sprayer.   The gas vapor leaves the snakes somewhat disorientated, but leaves no permanent damage.  This forces the snakes out onto the rocks where they are placed in boxes, trash cans, sacks or other containers.  The favorite is a plastic trash can strapped to a dolly.  The dens are in rocky country and usually not close to where you can park a truck.  Two neighbors, my son and I, worked a den in Coke County on a ranch that had not allowed snake hunting in 40 years and between us pulled 900 lbs of rattlebugs out over two days.  Some hunters use a pair of tongs about 3 1/2 feet long that pinch the snake when the handle is squeezed.  The best and fastest tool is a snake hook.  You take a golf club sans head and braze a 4" right angle end on it.  The snakes are lifted from the middle and dropped in your container.

  Those of us who farmed, ranched or worked in the oil field in Rattlesnake country were always trying to spot a new den location and of course we revisited the old ones each year.  They always produced year after year.  Got in lots of hiking and time with friends.  We kept snakes caught out of season (most snakes sold in early spring) in an old concrete cellar.  Just had a trap in the door and  dropped them in. Water stood in the bottom corner and we fed them rats that another snake hunter raised just for that reason.  Just drop a bucket of rats in the cellar once a month and clean out the cellar come spring.  

  Bear
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