Snake Wars

[Florida Bullfrog]

It's a wonder that you wernt bitten by that baby cottonmouth and the others. You must hunt in the Osceola wildlife area. I stopped hunting years ago. All the places I used to hunt are now subdivisions, that was up in Georgia near the sub base at Kings Bay.

I do hunt the Osceola on occasion, mostly during small game season. I used to keep 1,500 acres on its border that was my deer lease.

 

[FBMcrazy8]

Their number is a function of where I live. My farm is a singular homestead on the finger of a high pine ridge in the middle of thousands of acres of lower woods and swamplands. Almost like a island. The habitat is naturally a snake magnet and made moreso by the presence of eggs and chicks. I free range my birds 24/7 except when they’re separated into pens or coops for controlled breeding. Some of my coops are hard for them to get into and others are not.

I find the snakes raiding nests after dark. Every night I go around the farmyard and check on birds I know to be brooding. During the day I often find canebrake rattlers but they don’t mess with the chickens. I will also sometimes see white oak snakes and rattlers on the road. All of my dogs have been bit by venomous snakes here at least once.

Lots of snakes here:

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Rattler in my hunting blind between my legs. Look under the camcorder where I threw it on him to jump out.

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Rattler in hunting camp by my ATV bay.

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Coral snake in my hunting blind. He tried to go in my backpack.

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White oak snakes mating in my shed. The big ones in the 7-8 foot range.

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Baby cottonmouth I stepped on barefoot on my porch.

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White oak snake crossing the road. I see them regularly on the roads.

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Cottonmouth at the hunt camp.

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Rattler off my front porch that bit one of my dogs.

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Baby canebrake rattler on the road.

I have a pic I can’t share of a baby rattler at the scene of an emergency where it was coiled up by where the patient’s head was. The EMT didn’t know he was standing and reaching right by the snake.

BTW my hunt camp was in Baker county between Olustee and MacClenny and my farm is in Hamilton county.

That is just crazy! I don’t envy you…I love snakes but at a safe distance. And there in Florida…they can stay there.

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

No, no, NO way in Hades! THAT is why I live in snow country. And I shall vacation on the tundra. Sorry about your chicks, eggs and..omg, DOG! It’s a sellers market, ya know

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

No, no, NO way in Hades! THAT is why I live in snow country. And I shall vacation on the tundra. Sorry about your chicks, eggs and..omg, DOG! It’s a sellers market, ya know

I couldn’t give up my swamp paradise except for the greatest need or the love of a woman (but my wife loves it too).

 

[Captain13]

There are dfinitely some snakes up at Kings Bay. I was stoned there in the Coast Guard. The tropical storm las month brought the cotton mouths out of the St. Mary’s River to the higher ground in town.

Anyway, you might try planting Marigolds around your coop/run area. Marigolds release a smell that snakes don’t like . From what I understand, it affects their ability to track food sources.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

There are dfinitely some snakes up at Kings Bay. I was stoned there in the Coast Guard. The tropical storm las month brought the cotton mouths out of the St. Mary’s River to the higher ground in town.

Anyway, you might try planting Marigolds around your coop/run area. Marigolds release a smell that snakes don’t like . From what I understand, it affects their ability to track food sources.

My mother has a lot of old-time, backwoods knowledge and she recently suggested marigolds to repel a snakes around the house for this reason:

I almost kicked this timber/canebrake rattler in the head barefoot in my yard as she was trailing up a cockerel she killed. I planted my foot an inch or two from her face. She was crawling around the post of my gate and I caught her in my headlight beam just as I stepped my foot down crossing the gate.

 

[Captain13]

That was a typo in my post above and I can’t edit it. I wasńt “stoned” when I was stationed in Kings Bay, I was stationed in Kings Bay when I was in the USCG.

Florida Bullfrog, you were lucky. My neighbor killed a 4 foot Canebreak Rattler a couple of weeks ago at 10:30 at night. He thought it was a pecan limb at his garage and was about to pick it up when it started to coil.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

That was a typo in my post above and I can’t edit it. I wasńt “stoned” when I was stationed in Kings Bay, I was stationed in Kings Bay when I was in the USCG.

Florida Bullfrog, you were lucky. My neighbor killed a 4 foot Canebreak Rattler a couple of weeks ago at 10:30 at night. He thought it was a pecan limb at his garage and was about to pick it up when it started to coil.

I knew what you meant, I didn’t even register your post as saying you were “stoned.”

Ever hear about a marine at King’s Bay shooting an ape on base back in the 90s?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Last night at midnight I was doing emergency repairs to cow fence and I heard this timber rattler singing. I killed it and inside was one of this year’s juvenile yard birds.