Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my name is zac gauthier i am a 14 year ld i have been into snakes all my life.soon i hope to catch venomous snakes where i live the venomous snakes are in abundince.i live in the mojave
desert part of california and you cant have exotic venomous without a perment,but according to coastil reptiles you can keep up to 2 native species .any advice on when i should catch them?

Zac, take my advice, at 14 you are too young to be messing with the snakes where you live, the mojave green is a vile tempered beast with a very hot bite, the sidewinder is nippy and fast, and so on. You should wait till you are older and wiser, you may think that you are young and agile, but son, a bite from a rattlesnake is nothing to take lightly. go to SHHS.com and go to the picture gallery, click on "snakebites" and see what you could be in for. much pain at the very least, loss of a limb or even your life at worst. now you may think its cool or whatever but stick with catching gophers, and rosy boas etc. please think about this and do the smart thing.

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Try www.venomousreptiles.org
I find that site has some of the best info on venomous reptiles, and a really great photo gallery

i couldn't agree more. i've seen mojaves really mess up full grown men, they're definatly not a beginer snake. once your older i would also suggest looking into other snakes.... rattlers (in my opinion) are for more advanced handlers and are not good starter snakes. if you're really serious about getting into hots WHEN YOU'RE OLDER, i would suggest getting racers or coachwhips for now, and handle them as if they were venomous so that you can get a feel for handling quick snakes that aren't afraid to bite. good luck to you, be safe!
-will

thanks guysthat realy helpedi will wait a couple years before i start what abou mangrove snakes they are rearfanged and are legal in california.i was going to get one and buy tongs,hooks etc.what about that?i curently keep 1.0 carpet pythons and 0.0.1 shovlenose sand snakes.one of my faverate snakes is the southern pacific but the antivenom crofab dissolves before it nutrolizes the venom.

zac
i anything is spelled wrong sory.

my old teaher knows i am going to ask him to teach me he used to breed gaboons.

Totally agree with everything which has been said ... hot herps make great display animals however one mistake and you can land in a whole heap of trouble very fast. Just to add my two cents to the warnings already given (as I see you have changed your mind about wanting to keep a rattler for now ).. Gaboons can be just as dangerous ... a bite from them is a serious matter. Having spent enough time catching, extracting venom from and working with Gaboons, I would never recommend them to an inexperienced hot herper. At 14 you have many great years of working with reptiles ahead of you, the hot herps should wait a while.

Good Luck, John

My advice to you would be that you should keep away from venomous reptiles of anykind (even the mangroves that you spoke of). You have plenty of years ahead of you to work with venomous. With some of these animals all it takes is a tiny break in concentration and you could lose your life. Read absolutely EVERYTHING you can about these magnificent creatures. Work with some of the nonvenomous that are more likely to strike at you like reticulated pythons, scrub pythons, tree pythons, whipsnakes, racers, etc.. This is how I started to get myself used to handling problem snakes. Talk to people that keep venomous reptiles as much as possible. If you work at learning as much as you can in 4 or 5 years you will be much more ready to take on the responsibility of keeping a venomous reptile.

Hope this helps.

TW

I would agree with the other posters who say that you should wait a while, get some experience with a hot keeper, wait somemore, get somemore experience, and then if you really think it's worth the possiblity of loss of life or limb, then get one...but like others have said, CA is full of nasty venomous(nasty referring to the bite of course, not the snake) snakes, like the Mojave, the Southern Pacific (of which anti-venin is often not affective), etc...it is easy to look at a snake and assume you can wrangle it, but that is an all to often fatal error...don't make your parents cry, go out and get some experience at a zoo or with a private EXPERIENCED keeper, and then consider getting one...one other thing, all states require you to be 18 to purchase venomous, i'm not sure if this rule carries over to actually keeping venomous, but you could get into some legal trouble also...not to mention if someone else were to get bitten, you'd be responsible.