Account : Monday night leaving south Alpine. 27 snakes on road between the 2 picnic areas with warm temps. At about 11:30 we go south to hit our motel at the Longhorn and try RR. At the first cut south of the Elephant resort and wildlife management reserve we hit the road block and I mean ROAD BLOCK of > state trooper, border patrol, deputy sheriff, and 2 game wardens. All very friendly and courteous. Asked to see our license and insurance of vehicle. One game Warden came over after the sheriff asked the obvious of if we were snake hunting of driving semi-slow. We said of course. Then one on the game wardens came over and asked the obvious if we had any animals on board and we said of course. At this point he asked to see them and if he could and we did then the other game guy came over and said he wasn't from this area and wanted to see a " other rattlesnake " than a western diamond back. After several minutes and only then did the first game warden ask if we had any license or permits to hunt reptiles. We showed him ours and he said thanks for having them. After discussing the rules of hunting reptiles we were off but 15 miles down the road another road block by another border patrol, state trooper and deputy sheriff. the sate trooper asked for drivers license and the older deputy sheriff said after we told him we were stopped already and that we were snake hunting said that he wouldn't care if we took all of the snakes, cactus and rock back with us ?
After several more nights of hunting we were blinked by several other sheriff departments and really not a stop by=but we did and they never even got out of their vehicle but yelled out at us if we were snake hunters and be careful due to drug trafficking in the area.
Total of trash snakes in 5 nights , 97 with 75 % being atrox. RR was almost always on the hot side as the same on Black gap . Almost every night the snakes were about shut down after mid-night. The only significant find was a very young and no doubt neonate black tail in which i have never ever found in all of my years.
The other good news ( well maybe ) as that the Longhorn was very fair of price compared every other motel and as the days went on gas prices dropped and kept dropping. By the time we left on Sunday the gas price of Study Butte and Alpine had dropped by 27 cents in Study and by 32 cents in Alpine.
One other note on the stops : I assume but with conviction that half of these law enforcement agencies people were new and possibly in training as several looked very young and by the comment/s that they made. It could of been a training exercise as I think someone else said on here. The permit thing didn't seem to be an important factor on these stops. There was concern if we had any firearms with us though.
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Arm chair herper and trash snakes
Replies (7)
Asking me if I have a firearm while in that area is like asking me if I am still breathing.
But I do so without a violation of the law and to date have not had to show my firearm to LE. They ask if I have it, I say yes and tell them where / what it is. They say OK. And that has been it. I really doubt they want anybody to pull a pistol out for any reason during a stop.
Sorry about the road block thing... I always hate not knowing if this will be 2 minutes or 2 hours when I am stopped. It sounds like you had a good time though...
I remember reading years ago that BBNP was "the highest" drug traffic area along the Mexican border - during that time the Mexican Federales and drug runners had a big firefight across the river in the village of Boquillas . . . then I recall reading that the volume of traffic had gone elsewhere (Tijuana?).
I've never even seen any obvious illegals while snake hunting in the Trans-Pecos (can't say that elsewhere - I've seen several in SoTX, lots in AZ and CA) and I really have to wonder if the drug trafficking has gotten anywhere near the levels of old in BBNP.
I'm certainly not criticizing the LE officers out in the Trans-Pecos right now . . . but I have to wonder if the very high cost involved in mobilizing the large numbers of officers out there right now is at all justified.
Troy
ture of the very last very recent murder of the KING drug pin and while the possibly biggest drug lord was killed in Santa Elena Village back in the late 80ties, there has been a wanna be take over ever since but murders abound on trying to re-fill that position. The movement of trafficking was indeed moved out of the Presidio and OJ area but returned , by my reading and understanding, some short time ago and back to old ways of the immediate area but now more happening around Red Ford. In other words, I take that the area along the River Road and the roads including up to Marfa and sometimes 118 went unchecked for sometime and in the past but just got noticed again, But do you all think this is just about illegals and drugs ? Nope ! Something bigger is thought to be on the horizon and shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
In redundant, please purchase or read that book by Terrence Poppa about the most famed drug lord of the region. It explains just how we ( herp hunters and others ) were unsafe but didn't know it in the days. Also there is a very GOOD on-line newspaper that reports ALL of the going ons and happenings down there. It reports daily of news.
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Do you have the name or a link to that on-line newspaper?
I live off 118 and my kids go to school in Study Butte. I appreciate a good resource for info on border security issues.
Daryl
That is so strange! I've been going to west Texas for 20 years and never have I ever found one of the "trash snakes" everyone refers to. What do they look like? LOL
of some other snake aficionados down through the years and of my humorous side and it being repeated on my last trip by another herper, thought i would use it ( the term ). No, i don't believe that any snake could actually be called a trash Snake but to each his own i guess. So with that in mind and with over 50 some trips in over 30 years down in the region, i guess as some of you have seen over thousands of " trash snakes " ! LOL !
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One man's trash is another's treasure: Just before I left Albuquerque to move back to FL in the 80's, a couple of NM Herp Society members told me that, if I could find yellow rats and FL cottonmouths (I said I couldn't avoid them) that they'd pay $100 a pop for adults in good shape. It floored me that someone would want something that bordered on "junk snake" status.
Bill
