Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Im looking into getting some good professional equipment mostly because im tired of building my own and having them break and having a lot of snakes get away before i can get a hand on them to bag. Iv been looking on Tongs.com and came to conclusion that i need a set of tongs. I was thinking about getting the gentle giant tongs and or getting one of their many handeling sticks, or both.

What do you all use? What works for you? Any advice on equipment.

RV
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Corns 0.0.3
0.0.1 03' Amel
0.0.1 03' Normal
0.0.1 04' Ghost
Ratsnakes
Yellow Rat 1.0.0 i think
Everglades 0.1.0 cb 97'

my lil sisters under my supervision
0.0.1 Green water dragon ---- "Dragon"

Worrying a lot about gear= Catching few snakes. Honestly, waistpack or small backpack with camera, some bags plus a screw-top plastic container, Cliff Bars, water, LED headlamp, little telescoping snake hook, long forceps, cell phone, and two Sawyer Extractors. Otherwise, how complicated is it? See snake, catch snake or take picture of snake. Take that money you would have used to turn yourself into Inspector Gadget and use it to pay for food and gas, instead. The bucket, tube, two-hook deal, etc. are fine around the snake room but in the field, there really isn't any North American rattlesnake that can't be managed with a small/medium-sized hook and your free hand on its tail. Good luck with your decision.

I am with you. I bring a whole car load of stuff when I go out but most of this stuff is survival stuff just in case sence I commonly spend several days in the bush. My normal inventory when I take off looking for herps from camp is my backpack with my snake bite kit, Pistol, binoculars and camera in it and maybe a couple of cans of soda. I use a home made hook that I made out of a shop broom handel, a hose clamp and a welding rod. So far the hook has proved verry reliable. Proably the best piece of equipment I have that helps me cover manny manny miles of herping in one day is my ATC and all that is is an old ATC90 that I got for free and had to put a little money into. However the 90 was last years toy, this year whiule herping I will be trailoring a Suzuki 250 eduro.
My reptile collection and research

www.mcmartinville.com/chris/reptiles/trips/equip.htm

Of course, I'm biased because it's my site.

The one item I didn't include that I need to on my next round of updates is: work gloves. Not only does wearing gloves help when flipping rocks/plywood/metal to reduce cuts and scrapes, it also helps reduce the number of fire ant stings (if you live in such an area).

I do like my Gentle Giant tongs, but the modification they need (which I haven't done yet) is to apply a strip of weather stripping to the bottom, metal tong (the upper tong is rubberized and is effective and helping snakes "stay put," but large diamondbacks and bullsnakes can muscle their way through the tongs by gaining leverage against the rubberized tong and slowly working past the metal tong). The weather stripping was suggested by a friend, and makes the metal tong "grabby" like the rubberized tong.
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Chris McMartin
www.mcmartinville.com
I'm Not a Herpetologist, but I Play One on the Internet