Wasp Rice Shot Loads: .38/.45LC

[steve urquell]

Copperheads and rattlers are my sworn enemies. There are no cottonmouths where I live or at least I have never heard of anyone seeing one around here. I consider the copperhead more dangerous than a rattler because he does not rattle to give warning and also, they seem to be more mean tempered than rattlers. Get within striking distance and they usually strike. It a purely defensive reaction but one than can mean a lot of trouble. I have a healthy respect for both and keep a sharp lookout when in the woods. Don't ever step over a log in the woods without first checking under it and on the other side, I know from experience they like to lay there. It is good ambush territory for them. james

Yep, copperheads are responsible for most bites here because they won't move when you walk around them and people step on them and get bit. I was setting up for a party here and backed up and bumped my heel on one of my landscape timbers.

Looked down and a big copperhead was laying on the other side of it. Never moved. I got lucky. Went in the house and grabbed my .22 pistol and took his head off. Pretty big one as you know they don't get long, just fatter.

[TNsailorman]

I have always thought that copperheads have a vicious look to them. Like I said, the fight is on if I see one.

[steve urquell]

I have always thought that copperheads have a vicious look to them. Like I said, the fight is on if I see one.

Yep. My nurse wife came home from work today saying a patient came in to her urgent care clinic. Reached down into her flower bed and got nailed by one. Sent her the the ER.

[TNsailorman]

When I was very young our next door neighbor was an older woman in in 60's. She had lived most of her life on a farm with her husband over on the border close to the Kentucky and Tennessee line. Over time she was bitten 3 times by copperheads while she worked in her bean patch. Twice while picking beans and once while hoeing her bean patch. She said the first bite made her very sick for days and only the doctors care pulled her through. The second bite made her sick for one day and swelled some but was nothing like the first bite. The third bite she said didn't even affect her all that much, sick at her stomach and ran a temperature but did not put her off her feet. Her doctor told her that her body was building up resistance to the venom every time she got bitten. I have never heard this before or after but she was a Christian lady and I do believe both she and her doctor thought she was building up her resistance to venom. james

[HWooldridge]

People can build up tolerance to snake bites - it's just that most people don't get bitten more than once. I had a blue heeler dog which I know for a fact was bitten four times in the course of her life - the last one was a big snake and hit her at least twice. She lasted most of that same day but finally gave up the ghost. My wife shot that rattler with my 44 SAA (in the head, with slugs, no snakeshot loads).

There was a herpetologist in Florida some years ago who had been bitten by several different venomous snakes during his lifetime and lived through each one, until a king cobra hit him with a big load. That one killed him.

[steve urquell]

Bill Haast was a herpetologist who injected himself with venom and had high resistance to bites.

"Mr. Haast was bitten at least 173 times by poisonous snakes, about 20 times almost fatally. It was all in a day’s work for probably the best-known snake handler in the country, a scientist-cum-showman who made enough money from milking toxic goo from slithery serpents to buy a cherry-red Rolls-Royce convertible.

A secret of his success was the immunity he had built up by injecting himself every day for more than 60 years with a mix of venoms from 32 snake species."
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/18haast.html

[HWooldridge]

Bill Haast was a herpetologist who injected himself with venom and had high resistance to bites.

"Mr. Haast was bitten at least 173 times by poisonous snakes, about 20 times almost fatally. It was all in a day’s work for probably the best-known snake handler in the country, a scientist-cum-showman who made enough money from milking toxic goo from slithery serpents to buy a cherry-red Rolls-Royce convertible.

A secret of his success was the immunity he had built up by injecting himself every day for more than 60 years with a mix of venoms from 32 snake species."
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/18haast.html

That's the guy - I recalled he was killed by the cobra but apparently not. Maybe all that snake venom helped him live to be 100!