THE ITEM (Sumpter, S Carolina) 02 October 05 Watching for snakes can slow down hunter (Earle Woodward)
For those that don't read this article on a regular basis, let me recap a little bit of my last offering.
I was deer hunting and had an opportunity at a nice little 4-point buck. After watching the buck for about 10 minutes, I got a broadside shot and drew my bowstring. If you've ever hunted with a bow, rifle or shotgun, then you know that once your mind begins the function of releasing the string or pulling the trigger, there is virtually no way to stop the motion. The split second that my mind told my finger to release the string, the buck jerked his head down and to the left and bounded off. My arrow flew right over his back.
At first I thought it was something that I had done wrong, but after replaying the shot over and over in my mind, I came to the conclusion that what really startled the deer was the rattlesnake that I came upon when I got down from the stand to retrieve my arrow. It was just dumb bad luck that a snake, the deer and the arrow were in the same place at the same instant in time. It made me mad.
I had the occasion to hunt again later in the week. I was in a stand that had not been hunted all year long due to the prevailing winds. The winds had been coming from the northeast for several weeks and you really need something out of a more southerly direction for this particular stand. The winds finally shifted and I was determined to hunt the "Long Field" stand. There was a trail leading across the Long Field, which is a layout field and full of tall weeds, which leads to a soybean field. The deer use the trail so often, the grass and leaves are all gone and nothing is there but tilled dirt. I have seen plenty of deer on this trail and was anxious to have a crack at it.
I stayed in the stand until it was almost too dark to see, without a hint of a deer. I crawled down and took the short walk back to the truck where I deposited my safety harness and day pack. In my haste to leave the area around the "Grape Vine" stand the other night, not wanting to spook anymore deer and more than a little nervous about rattlesnakes, I had left a spare safety harness on the ground; now seemed like a good time to go and get it.
I drove around to the entrance to the trail to the Grape Vine and got out of the truck. The first thing I did after exiting the truck was strap on my .357 with a "snake shot" round loaded into each chamber of the cylinder. I'm not taking anymore chances until we have a hard frost. After that, most -- albeit not all -- of the snakes will go into hibernation.
The trail into the Grape Vine runs across a creek and through some fairly thick underbrush, and then opens up into a clean forest floor before going through a sagebrush field. It is amazing how one's mind will dictate the actions of your body. Knowing that there was a sizable rattler in the area, my feet moved slower and I searched the underbrush with the beam of the flashlight more carefully. I didn't want anymore surprises.
Taking almost twice the time that it usually takes, I finally made it across the sagebrush to the clean area at the base of the stand, which overlooks a massive wild grape arbor, thus the name "Grape Vine" stand.
I began searching the ground around the stand from a good 20 feet away and to my dismay, there was the snake laying too close for comfort to the harness I had left.
I think he was there in the first place based on the fact that the grapes had produced a lot of fruit this year. Those that fell in among the twisted vines dried and left the seeds for the mice and small birds to eat. As long as the food for the small critters was available, he was not going to leave.
With the snake so close to my harness and the fact that he was still within the same 20-foot circle he had been in five days earlier, that left me with one sure option: introduce him to my two little friends, Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
The S&W barked over here and bit over there: one shot, one kill. The snake was right at four feet in length and had seven rattles and a button.
As a rule, I don't kill any snakes, rattlers, copperheads, etc. They are part of nature's plan, but I also have to frequent that area, and the last thing I want is to step out of a tree stand after dark and onto a grown rattler. That problem has been solved, at least for now.
Watching for snakes can slow down hunter