Hi Matt,

>> What's the largest atrox you've come across? Are 2m specimens in existence?

Define "atrox"... I have been trying to for 10 years and still can't...

More seriously, I caught a 170 cm female in Venezuela, although that was one of those "cf. atrox" that Campbell and Lamar placed into asper but that are actually closer to atrox. 200 cm specimens are not rare in northern Venezuela, by all accounts - they do reach asper-like sizes there. The largest "proper" atrox I caught was a 130 cm female in Suriname - and that was the largest specimen by a long shot out of 40 or 50 I caught there. The other amazing thing was that this single snake probably produced about as much venom as all the others put together - scary!

I measured a 198 cm female in Ecuador, but that was captive bred, so I imagine it may well be larger than anything you are ever likely to find in the wild. I have not found any preserevd specimens that even approached 200 cm.

>>I've found, that as long as you don't try to physically pin them(wild aspers), they aren't terrible to bag. They run, but rarely strike. Only when restraining to pin have they gotten irritated.

Lumping asper and atrox together for the purposes of this dicsussion, most of the ones I have dealt with have been like that as well. If you find one coiled up, and you can hook it and bag it in one smooth operation (requires ProBagger or similar), then it's a piece of cake. Obviously, if you drop it or fumble in some other way, you get fireworks. Specimens caught on the road usually just try to run - they bite when pinned, as you say, but nothing too unmanageable. A combination of jigger, tongs and hoop bag allow a safe capture in a matter of a few seconds.

>>Your worst asper experiences, were they simply bagging, or restraint for scale clipping, venom extraction, etc??

The most dicey one was catching a four footer while carrying only a hook and a bag under my belt - the only way I was going to get that one into the bag was by pinning and necking it. Pinning a a very upset Bothrops on soft leaf-litter is not recommended. At all. And once, I was doing venom extractions and sampling on a series of atrox, with a colleague from a venomous snake institute, in an extremely hot shed, which got some of the snakes seriously excited. A couple went so nuts that we decided it wasn't worth the risk to sample them. Since my colleague was a veteran of over 100,000 extractions, I was happy to respect his judgement on that one

Apart from that (and a few fumbles that were down to me, not the temper of the snakes), I have never really found them all that difficult, provided I have the right equipment. One of the benefits of the long and thin build of them is that, although they can move fast, they are actually not very strong in terms of muscle power, which makes control pretty easy once you pin them. Also, except for very large specimens, they can't put all that much body mass into their jerks, unlike some rattlers, so once you have necked them, it is not too hard to keep a safe grip wven if they do struggle.

For field capture, having a bagging device, tongs and a jigger (for road cruising) takes 90% of the heat out of it, except for very large animals, which I don't like to use tongs on.

Cheers,

Wolfgang
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