BOZEMAN DAILY CHRONICLE (Montana) 18 August 05 Livingingston real estate agent hunts rattlers for kicks (Ben Pierce)
There's a chill running down my spine this afternoon, though it's not the fault of summer storm clouds or a cool breeze. Temperatures are creeping toward 90 and I'm getting sweaty, traversing a hillside in fishing waders as the Yellowstone River carves its way through Paradise Valley to the east.
I'm hunting western prairie rattlesnakes with Michelle Goodwine, a life-long Livingston resident and real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. She grips the handle of her snake grabber and hook, implements used to control the rattlers, as we walk toward a known snake area.
Shale slides down the gradient below leaving my legs wobbly, as much from fear as the loose ground. My comfort level plummets as Goodwine tells me this is her most dangerous den, a holding area for rattlers during the winter months when they hibernate in the earth below.
"If you're going to fall, fall on your butt," she tells me. "It's better if they bite you in the butt than your hands."
I don't want to fall, or get bit for that matter, much less in the butt, and I'm beginning to question the sanity of my position.
But Goodwine is calm, even jovial as we whack the rocks and brush along the hillside hoping to stir rattlers from their hiding spots. She's hunted this land in the past and assures me the snakes are here.
As my hook moves through the dried grass, I swear I hear rattlers all around. They are lurking, ready to strike through the cracked rubber of my wading boots with glistening fangs.
"I was convinced I would get bit," Goodwine says of her first time hunting rattlesnakes. "I was prepared for it."
That was 15 years ago.
Since then the excitement of hunting rattlers has only grown for Goodwine.
She has been sprayed across the face and hands with venom, but has never been bitten. She tells me she's in it for the thrill of the hunt, but maintains a healthy respect for the dangers of her favorite activity.
"I have a respect for rattlesnakes and I make sure not to lose that respect because that is how people get bit," she says.
Goodwine is one of a dozen or so snake hunters that scour the ranchlands and hillsides of Paradise Valley in search of rattlesnakes. Her name has gotten around and whenever there is a problem with snakes she receives a call.
"I've been doing this long enough, and it's a unique hobby, so people know to give Michelle a call," Goodwine says while I poke into the dark reaches of the den halfheartedly hoping for the tell-tale buzz of a rattler.
We work our way down the hillside as grasshoppers snap their wings making me jumpy and anxious.
Suddenly all sounds cease. The distinct buzz of a rattler plummets from my imagination and becomes incredibly real.
My eyes grow wide as a pile of tangled snake writhes near a rock outcropping before me. For a moment my words stutter behind bated breath.
"I found one," I call meekly to Goodwine, who says the same to me.
"Pin it!" she shouts. "I'll get this one and come to you."
I press my hook into the pile of twisting flesh feeling my heart pound hard in my chest. The rattle sounds loud and I realize there is more than one snake here. The buzz is all around casting a tense edge on the afternoon air.
Goodwine appears in view, a rattler twisting in her grabbers. She tosses the snake in the downhill sagebrush and goes to work on the vipers at my feet. Her hook digs beneath the rock and three more hissing snakes appear.
She hands me a green gunnysack as I try to keep my eyes locked on all five snakes, but the rattlers disappear into the land and I'm left with only the eerie sounds.
Goodwine lifts a snake with her grabbers and I open the sack wide to accommodate the creature as she calmly lowers it into the bag. She keeps the snakes alive until it's time to cook a meal.
"It tastes kind of like chicken," says Goodwine's brother Zack Black.
As we walk from the hillside with several pounds of agitated rattlers twisting in the gunnysack, my heart calms down and I realize how much fun I've just had.
"It is so exhilarating," Goodwine says. "Such an adrenaline rush."
Michelle's rattle cakes
Cakes:
1 cup minced rattlesnake
3/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup minced red onion
1/4 tablespoon minced cilantro
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 dried tomatoes minced
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Paul Prudhomme's seasoning
Sauce:
1 jar Alfredo sauce
4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
Splash of jalapeno Tabasco sauce
Mix together cake ingredients and sauce ingredients in separate bowls. Bake cakes at 375 degrees for 20 minutes, flip and bake for 10 minutes. Top with sauce and serve.
Livingingston real estate agent hunts rattlers for kicks