JOURNAL WORLD (Lawrence, Kansas) 07 June 04 Snake handler decides to leave the pit (Mike Belt)
Lane: Dallas Brakeville has been handling western diamondback rattlesnakes for about a dozen years, but he knew it was time to quit last year when one slipped out of his grasp during a demonstration in Ottawa.
His decision was reinforced last winter when he was bitten by a diamondback during a sports show in Omaha, Neb. The snake, luckily, didn't inject any venom.
"I was very lucky," Brakeville, 63, said during a recent interview at his farm near the Franklin County town of Lane.
Brakeville grew up catching nonvenomous snakes, and he's always had a fascination with them, he said. But it wasn't until 1989 that he and two brothers started hunting rattlesnakes in Oklahoma. He also started putting on demonstrations with rattlesnakes and other venomous snakes for Boy Scouts and other groups and events in the Franklin County area.
At a motel in Okeene, Okla., Brakeville met two other Kansas snake hunters, Gary Bliss, from Downs, and Andy Stewart, of Liberal. They decided to form what they called the Rattlesnake Wranglers and do their own snake shows, starting with a sports show in Jonesboro, Ark. After a couple of years in Jonesboro they got calls to conduct demonstrations at the bigger winter sports shows in cities such as Kansas City, Mo., and Minneapolis.
Brakeville, a retired meter tester for Kansas City Power and Light, said he never got nervous with the dangerous snakes.
"I'm not nervous or afraid, but I'm very alert," he said. "You are pretty much on your own when you are handling a rattlesnake."
Brakeville was putting on a safety demonstration for the city of Ottawa last year when a diamondback he was holding twisted free. Brakeville caught it safely, but he considered it a wake-up call.
"I've got some arthritis in both hands, and I can't hold them like I used to," he said. "I decided it was time to quit."
But Brakeville didn't want to break his commitment to the other Wranglers to do their sports shows this past winter. In Omaha, Brakeville was standing in a pit with 100 rattlesnakes when he felt something warm running down his leg into his boot. He left the pit and discovered it was blood from a snake bite just above the boot. He went to a hospital and learned the snake didn't inject venom.
"I didn't even know I'd been hit," he said.
Brakeville used to keep about 150 western diamondbacks and other rattlers, along with venomous snakes such as copperheads and water moccasins, in containers in his basement. He either caught the snakes himself or purchased them from other snake hunters. He obtained state and commercial licenses allowing him to keep the creatures. Large numbers of snakes were taken to shows so they could be rotated every two or three days.
"The snakes get tired," Brakeville said. "If you don't rotate them, it could kill them."
The venomous snakes are gone, now. The only snakes Brakeville keeps are a couple of nonvenomous corn and milk snakes. They're in display cases in his living room.
"Sometimes people will still call me and say they have a rattlesnake and ask me if I want it," he said. "I don't. I'm done with them."
http://www.ljworld.com/section/stateregional/story/172344
JOURNAL WORLD (Lawrence, Kansas) 07 June 04 Snakes inject town with tourism dollars - Rattlers beckon throngs to roundup (Thad Allender)
Sharon Springs: James White grabbed three prairie rattlesnakes by the tail, uncoiled them with a light shake and bit down on their tails. He swung the snakes as they dangled from his mouth, then dropped them to the ground.
"Boy, they're hot today," the veteran snake handler from Texas said as he worked the snake pit.
It was 91 degrees, the hottest day of the year so far in Sharon Springs. The rattlers weren't happy.
"Come on fellas, cooperate," White said as he nudged them with his boot, trying to get them to strike. White and three handlers, known as the Fangs and Rattlers, were circling in a pit filled with 135 rattlesnakes gathered from various parts of western Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas for the 13th annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Sharon Springs.
The two-day festival, held May 7 and 8 in Wallace County on the Colorado border, is the only one of its kind in Kansas. It attracts snake hunters, reptile lovers and adventurers looking to spend a weekend with one of the West's most storied predators.
White, 56, was married in a snake pit in Onaga, and has been handling rattlers for 48 years. He holds a world record for dangling 10 rattlers from his mouth at one time. He's only been bitten once.
The announcer proclaimed White "the oldest and the best snake handler ever."
In the early afternoon, groups of snake hunters slithered into the festival sunburned and dehydrated. They had spent the morning chasing rattlers around prairie dog towns, home of the snakes' favorite meal. Scott Plankenhorn, from Sublette, and his snake hunting buddy Kenny Fields, from Garden City, unloaded their buckets filled with 45 prairie rattlers into the Fangs and Rattlers' snake pit. They caught the bulk of their snakes near Garden City.
"We hunt rattlesnakes for relaxation," said Plankenhorn, a foreman in a feed yard.
Plankenhorn and Fields sold their catch to Judie Withers, a local dealer and the roundup's organizer, for $3.50 per pound. They pocketed about $150. Withers said she planned to sell the 135 rattlers she bought at the roundup to a buyer in Colorado Springs, Colo. The buyer cans the snake meat and makes wallets, boots, purses and other fashion accessories from snake skin.
A few choice rattlers, typically the larger western diamondback species, were taken to a small shed at the festival called the "processing center." The snakes were butchered and the raw meat sold at a nearby booth. Deep fried rattler was for sale at the booth.
Withers estimated the show drew 2,000 people, more than doubling the town's population that weekend.
"No vacancy" signs were lit up on all three motels along U.S. Highway 40 in Sharon Springs. Without the roundup, Sharon Springs might dry up and fade away, Withers said.
"We're a poor county," she said, "and we didn't have anything going on here."
Drought and increasing competition from corporate farming operations have dealt many western Kansas farmers and ranchers a huge economic blow. Withers said residents in Wallace County were seeking ways to reinvent themselves and explore new ways of generating revenue.
"We needed something to help the local economy," she said.
When Withers was told by a friend about roundups in Texas and Oklahoma, she passed along the idea for a similar event in Sharon Springs to local officials. Led by then-state Sen. Sheila Frahm from Colby, legislation was soon passed in Topeka to allow the commercial harvest of rattlesnakes. The bill enabled the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks to issue rattlesnake hunting, dealer and buyer licenses for only the western third of Kansas.
"This is something Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita can't touch," Withers said.
The Kansas Herpetological Society, an organization dedicated to conserving and increasing awareness of amphibians and reptiles, opposed the bill. The society called the roundups "cruel, destructive and dangerous."
Eric Rundquist, an animal science technician at Kansas University, researches prairie rattlesnakes in Barber County, along the Oklahoma border.
"The population of rattlesnakes in western Kansas took a huge nosedive 12 years ago," Rundquist said. Though the cause for the decline is unknown, he said, the roundups certainly don't help.
"For them," Rundquist said, "it's strictly economics."
The society still opposes the roundups, but is no longer fighting them publicly.
"We gave it our best shot back in 1993," Rundquist said.
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