comments on venomous snake handling

careylane · #1 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 12:28 AM

I have been impressed with the knowledge of some of the folks here and even though we have different opinions on steve erwin I would still like to learn any potential knowledge available as would I am sure many here. so I would like to start having disscusions on various venomous snake handling ideas and hopefully we can all learn something new because when you have it all figured out than You can't learn anything new.
So to start I would like to hear opinions on short stout vipers. Staying out of strike range is always a key to not getting bitten but what happens when they are short and quick and you cannot safely stay out of strick range. Puff adders are fast and not much of a chance of touching a young puff and staying out of strike range. Of course we always have small tree vipers such as bush vipers, pope vipers and the such, small little fellows who do not like letting go of the limb and are way too small to stay out of range and even though the copperhead is not as dangerous as puffs or gaboons they are quick little buggers. So how about some ideas on handling short quick vipers. Thanks guys and look foward to your opinions.
Careylane

JuliusSqueezer · #2 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 01:04 AM

2 hooks are better than 1

ChicagoCubs22 · #3 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 01:42 AM

well im 16, and i watch Jeff Corwin, Austin Stevens, and Steve Irwin regularly, and i make observations of them as a viewer. All i can say is the snakes first should be comfortable as where they are and what there sorroundings are. A snake that tries to crawl away can be timid, but handling should not restrict those movements. I'd say that getting past the snakes mid section with your hand is a no-no...

Perhaps with most short vipers handling should be restricted to hooks...but from what i've seen some rattlesnakes can be docile, usually the new and unencroached species. Some of them just want to get away from humans instead of thinking they are a threat...

careylane · #4 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 01:54 AM

I appreciate everyones wisdom. You pay alot of attention to what is going on, I hope you stay after it and learn more and more, good luck. Steve haters be easy on him, we all are here to learn and share our knowledge.

BWSmith · #5 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 03:12 AM

With stockier vipers such as Puffs and Cottons, two hooks should be used to help disperse the weight of the snake and lessen the risk of broken ribs due to its own body weight. A snake hook has little surface area, so the weight of the animal is on one or two ribs. Two hooks helps this.

Smaller ones simply cannot be tailed safely. This is particularly true of many members of the Bitis genus (i.e. Puffs and Gaboons). These are relatively lethargic animals but are capable of launching a very accurate strike, over their body, with little or no warning prior to impact. Gaboons are notorious for exploding into a strike with little warning other than the movement of their pupils.

Two hooks are also advantageous with arboreal vipers. Particularly if one of the hooks is an "L" formation. The L makes it easier to relinquish the hook from the snake's prehensile tail. Usually it takes a bit of work and juggling. Two hooks are also a good idea because they have a habit of climbing the hooks to a point that you simply have to let the snake have it.

Dbutton · #6 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 05:17 AM

Well first off I want to know what you mean by handling? If by handling you mean taking the snake out to show somebody such as doing a demonstration then I am a one hook man. I already have 38" arms and I don't really need a long hook anyhow because the snake would have to be 7ft. long for me to tail it on a standard sized hook and also that is the way I was taught to handle them, with just one hook. But as BWSmith said, smaller ones jsut can't be tailed safely anyhow. That is how I got bit by a 3ft. eastern at the top of the shin. He was just too small and came off the hook while placing him in the catch box and swung back towards me.
For capturing venomous snakes I prefer tongs though. And with the new wide mouthed gentler tongs it really is the safest way to go for both handler and snake. If I still kept hots I would use then for moving snakes for cage cleaning too.
Well that is my 2 cents worth anyhow.

David

BWSmith · #7 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 06:18 AM

Hooks are actually much less stressful on the animal. It basically becomes a branch to them. Tonging is #3 on the stress chart. Milking is of course #1 and completely unnecessary for anyone not working in a venom lab. Pinning is number 2, again usually unnecessary when you can just do number 4, tubing. Number 5 is tailing with a hook (since no venomous snake should be tailed without one). And number 6 is hooking. Of course, anything above #6 involves non-contact restraint such as trap boxes. Hey, that was not bad off the top of my head. I should write that down.

I love my pair of Gentle Giants. But I only use them on animals about 1% of the time I use them. Usually they are used for removing cage items, etc. The few occasions I have used them on snakes include wrangling one out from under caging, pulling Cottons out of a swamp, and pulling racers and Coachwhips out of trees. For use on animals, I consider tongs to be an "emergency backup".

Dbutton · #8 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 06:23 AM

I think you did just write that down.LOL.

JuliusSqueezer · #9 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 06:52 AM

I use my tongs to feed large things to large snakes. Anything over 9 feet gets fed off tongs. If I have to move the canebrake or the cottonmouth, I have to use tongs. they are way too flighty for a hook and their flight path is usually where ever I am standing. I have found though that they freak out far less if I tong somewhere between the middle and rear and then hook in the front. If I use the tongs up front, they both strike repeatedly at the tongs and / or their own body self envenomating and breaking fangs off...no fun at all for either of us in the aftermath. Once out and onto the floor, they can be easily hooked...It's just that pulling them out of a front opening cage thing that makes just a single hook fairly useless when they go all mambapsycho on me. Copperheads? Copperheads are good little snakies...I never have trouble hooking coppers. they even seem to enjoy the ride. I've never hooked a bush viper or other arboreal viper but I'm assiming it's similar to corallus. 2 hooks rocks. Get what you can on one hook and use the other to tickle the tail and coax them into moving off the branch and onto the hook...and then be like Zorro with that other hook once they start climbing your way. Act fast but precise and gentle....or else you will have a very sore finger or two.

Db...how can you argue that one hook is better than 2 and in the same breath describe your getting bit on the shin? lol...Apparently your way didn't work out so well.

BWSmith · #10 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:00 AM

Quote:

If I have to move the canebrake or the cottonmouth, I have to use tongs. they are way too flighty for a hook

I never had a problem hooking those two snakes

JuliusSqueezer · #11 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:08 AM

The canebrake was a foot long when you got him...He's grown both in feet and in agression. Part of the problem is that they are both in 4 foot cages now with lots of things to hide in and under and room to get speed up so they flee when I go in after them and a single hook is no match for either of them and they know it. Maybe I will move them to floor level cages so I can just scoop them out onto the floor. I can't do that now. They are too high and might twist an ankle or something if they fall

Dbutton · #12 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:12 AM

You are right, it didn't work out very well for me. That is why I would rather use tongs for capturing venomous. Now maybe 2 hooks would work fine with aboreal species of venomous snakes, but I have not tried them either so I can't really relate any experience to that. But I have captured a couple hundred of cottonmouths and easterns with tongs and they work really good in my opinion. That one incident was just bad judgement on my part. It was cool out and about 3am and I didn't think that the snake was very awake, but he was I assure you. He was all limp and lazy until he saw the box and then, how did you put it? "when they go all mambapsycho". I learned my lesson I assure you.
But that picture of BWSmith holdign that cottonmouth on 2 hooks still gives me chills since I know that they can shoot right up limbs that diameter in a flash. I would personally rather have a better hold on anything that has the potential to be that pissy at a moments notice, but my experience with cottons is all with wild caughts and they are never, never ever nice or laid back.

David

BWSmith · #13 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:20 AM

There are no tongs out there that could be used on that Cotton. She is over 4' and over 8 pounds (last year). But remember that the image perspective has an odd perspective. Those are both 40" hooks that she is on. She is not nearly as close to my body as it looks.

JuliusSqueezer · #14 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:23 AM

Yah...I use tongs a bit more often than BW does...but I have grown to prefer using tongs along with a hook....tongs in the rear and hook in the front...Kinda like tailing with a hook except I don't have to bend over and that's a plus because I have back issues. Once they are out of the cage or the swamp or bushes...two hook handling is easy and safe...well...safer than one hook anyway. Nothing with vens involved is "safe" except watching them on Discovery or Animal Planet.

Dbutton · #15 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:25 AM

Well that may make me feel better, but your face in the picture has that "Don't you dare try it" look on it. I didn't mean in any way that you don't know what you are doing, I just don't trust cottonmouths at all in any situation.

BWSmith · #16 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:28 AM

Quote:

I just don't trust cottonmouths at all in any situation

Words to live by.

Brett has seen me work with that one.

JuliusSqueezer · #17 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:36 AM

heh yah ...I've hooked her before too. Brian made me get her out of a trashcan once. I think we had only met a few times at the time and he was testing me. I didn't end up in ICU that night so I guess I passed lol. She's a hoss. 8 pounds doesn't sound like much but when it's concentrated into 4 feet...it's a lot. The hooks actually bend a bit under her weight. BTW...she was free handled once. ...once. the guy that tried is currently pushing up daisys for his efforts.

Dbutton · #18 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:47 AM

You are kidding right? Some idiot tried to freehand a cotton mouth? DOn't tell me, it was some sort of religous thing right?
The trash can thing is really funny to me because my mother still tells her friends stories about me and our trash cans full of snakes. I would come in from being out in the swamps behind our neighborhood all day and put all the hots in one of our trash cans by the side of the house and hose them down to keeps them cool. Then I would weight down the lid and go inside and tell my parents "Don't mess with the green trash can" and they would ask why and I would tell them never mind why, just don't mess with the green trash can. Then they would get the picture and tell me that I had better get rid of those poisonous snakes soon or I would be in trouble. Well soon to me back then was a day or two.LOL. And I did get rid of them too. Right over to Ross Allen's wildlife park to be milked right after I got paid for them!

David

JuliusSqueezer · #19 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 07:56 AM

haha yah...She is the notorious PK. PK stands for "Preacher Killer" Some Kentucky snake handling preacher picked the wrong cotton (pun intended). It's nice that she wasn't killed. Most snakes that kill people die shortly after.

I keep trying to get Brian to come freehandle Guido so I can change his name to BK. I want a cotton with a cool story too. they are really ugly snakes and a cool story helps justify their existance.

MustangRde1 · #20 (**permalink**) 02-11-2005, 12:26 AM

I cant add much to BW and Julius, other then taking your time and leaving them alone when you see they are in no mood to be worked with in any fashion. As to justifying them Hey i breed them and love um though BK would be a good name

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