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TRIBUNE-REVIEW (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) Snake sackers compete in rattlesnake roundup (Marsha Forys)
There are no losers when it comes to rattlesnake sacking.
"Everybody who goes in the pit, if they come out without a bite, is a winner," Jeff Mitchell, president of the Mon River Reptile Association, said Sunday at the 7th annual Lowber rattlesnake roundup.
Mitchell, who also is a competitor in the poisonous snake sacking event, still was shaking as he grabbed the hand of his partner, Greg Richardson, shortly after the event ended early yesterday evening.
The two men have partnered in the poisonous sacking competition for three years, taking turns as handler and bag holder. Yesterday, they were in the pit back to back, with Mitchell handling the five Western Timber Rattlesnakes first as Richardson held the bag, then Richardson taking over as handler in the next round.
About two hours before yesterday's competition, Richardson, who finished third in last year's event, talked about what it's like to climb into an 8-foot-by-8-foot, fenced-off "pit" with five venomous snakes.
"It's all mental. I keep thinking about it all day," Richardson said. "I'm not superstitious, I just keep my mind focused on what I have to do. I know I'll never be faster than those snakes, so I just try not to make any mistakes."
Asked if he had a plan for the competition, Richardson said, "Everybody has their own technique. I can't really say what mine is; I'm not sure. I just plan to separate the snakes, grab them as fast as I can and get out of there and start drinking."
Meeting up with Richardson again about an hour before the competition, he wasn't quite as confident.
"I'm really nervous right now," he said, rocking back and forth from foot to foot. "I'm not scared. If I was, I wouldn't be in there. But I am nervous."
That nervousness didn't show much, just minutes before the competition began. Richardson was very focused as he got a kiss from his daughter, Samantha, and calmly waited for his turn. Even a near miss for two fellow competitors, as two of their snakes climbed back out of the bag, didn't seem to phase him.
Then, when it was his time, Richardson climbed into the pit, and he and Mitchell went calmly about their business: first letting the snakes out of the bag, then separating them, using their bagging tool to hold down the snake near the head, grabbing the head and then the midsection as they literally threw the reptiles into the bag.
When it was all over, they both breathed a sigh of relief and gave each other a hug. They knew they weren't among the day's top finishers, but they were happy for the competition's two-time winners, Rob Gongaware and his bag holder, Bob Roycroft.
Gongaware and Roycroft were the last to compete, outperforming the field with a time of 15.88 seconds. Their closest competition was the team of Robert "Cowboy" Urban and Randy Thomas with a time of 21.21 seconds. Chris Slatosky and Tom Millward finished third with a time of 27.27 seconds.
Gongaware, who also finished third in the state rattlesnake sacking competition, held this year in Potter County, talked about his partner and yesterday's win.
Asked why he spent very little time separating the snakes, compared to his competition, before pinning them and throwing them into the bag, Gongaware said, "I just go for it. I can do that because I've got a great partner. He's my soul mate. He knows my moves and I know his. It's that experience that helps us win."
While neither Richardson nor Mitchell finished among the top three in the field of nine teams yesterday, Richardson, with a time of 35.31 seconds, couldn't help ribbing his partner, who finished with a time of 44.99 seconds.
"I beat you again," Richardson said, pointing out that Mitchell taught him how to sack when he got into the sport about seven years ago.
Admitting he was a little disappointed with his performances yesterday, Richardson said, "I'll get over it. I'll be back."
"The snakes just didn't lay right for us today," Mitchell said.
Snake sackers compete in rattlesnake roundup

TRIBUNE-REVIEW (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) 20 July 03 Snake roundups draw mixed reactions (Carl Prine)
Some might call him brave. Others, foolish.
But Joe Youler, 45, a construction worker and avid outdoorsman from Fayette County, doesn't have time to think about that. He's standing in a sawdust pit behind the Lowber Volunteer Fire Department with nine slithering coils of rattlesnake twitching within a bite of his ankle.
And Joe Youler takes deadly rattlers seriously. They've nipped him seven times since 1982.
"It's a fascination with the snakes," he says as a black pit viper uses its tongue to smell his jeans. "Every one of us who goes in here is family."
Today at 5 p.m., Youler will tempt fate once more, easing himself into the pit to "sack snakes," stuffing diamondbacks into bags in a race against the clock to see who's champion of this year's rattlesnake roundup.
With ribs on the grill, suds on tap and a flea market as a backdrop, the seventh annual rattlesnake celebration is like the Fourth of July for tiny Lowber, Westmoreland County. The town puts on a gala parade. More than 70 children line up to bag nonvenomous vipers. The Sabbath brings the men who handle snakes, fisting the vipers into bags to win plaques and bragging rights.
The snakes -- imported from Southwest for the sacking spree -- become Sunday dinner. The Pennsylvania rattlers get to slink back to their dens.
The firefighters hope to earn $11,000, enough to make an annual payment on the town's fire engine. For a village department dependant on donations, rattlesnakes mean fire protection.
"It's mostly all the money we get," said fire chief Vince Matthews.
But after five decades, a large coalition of forces has coalesced to fight the snake hunts, and the state regulators who grant permits for the summer festivals also want them to end.
Critics of the roundups call the events a cruel exploitation of snakes. The hunts, they say, stress an increasingly teetering population of rare snakes and drain public health resources because hospitals are forced to treat bite victims with expensive antivenin. Since 1996, snakes have injected poison into four men at the Lowber festival. None have died.
But roundup enthusiasts say it's good clean fun, and want conservationists, biologists, doctors and animal rights activists to mind their own business.
"If these guys are going to keep hunting, they'll bring the snakes back, or they won't get to hunt next year," said Jeff Mitchell, chairman of the nonprofit Mon River Reptile Association, which uses the roundup as an "educational outreach," teaching kids that snakes are good for the environment.
"That's what it's about. The sacking, that doesn't have anything to do with club."
Sanctioned by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, regulators grant nearly 1,000 permits annually to residents who want to chance their luck scuttling up ridges -- where rattlesnakes prefer to live -- to grab deadly vipers from their dens. For hunters going to the roundups, they can snatch one snake each per day, as long as they put it back where they found it within 48 hours.
Other permit holders, however, can take two Eastern Timber rattlesnakes from the wild annually, and these snakes often become reptile belts, cowboy hat bands, key chain decorations or end up in the clandestine exotic pet trade, where an illegally sold rattlesnake can fetch $200 and up.
State watchdogs don't check to see how many snakes a hunter actually takes, and it's against the law to sell rattlesnakes or their parts across state lines, so it's only a guess how many reptiles end up as curios or pets nationwide. Every year, agents from the state's Fish and Boat Commission arrest about a dozen snake hunters in the woods without permits.
Rattlesnakes, once common throughout Pennsylvania, now mostly cling to ridges, living in dens to preserve body heat throughout the winters. They feed nocturnally on birds, rats and other rodents, ridding the environment of farm pests. Habitat destruction and increased human hunting have decimated rattlesnake populations east of the Appalachians.
According to the Humane Society of the United States, which strongly opposes the roundups as destructive to animals and the environment, Pennsylvania remains the sole state east of the Mississippi that allows the hunts and sacking contests. This year, eight roundups took place, beginning in Landisburg, Perry County, on June 7. Lowber's Sunday send-off marks the end of the snake-snatching season.
The Timber snake's cousin, the Eastern Massasauga, is endangered in Pennsylvania and protected from human hunting. The Timber also is edging toward extinction across the eastern seaboard. It's considered endangered in 15 states east of the Mississippi and protected from hunting in Ohio, New Jersey and New York, which have asked Pennsylvania to follow suit and end the roundups.
"We would like to discontinue the roundups," said Thomas Kamerzel, law enforcement chief of the Fish and Boat Commission. "We were able to get regulations in place to end some of the haphazard hunting, especially the way people bring in the snakes, with gasoline in the dens and stuff like that.
"But the politicians could make all of this go away."
The Timber rattlesnake has languished as a "candidate" for threatened status for years. But conservationists say because roundups are mainstays of firehouse fund-raisers in Cross Forks in Potter County, Noxen in Wyoming County and other hamlets, it's tough to pass real safeguards for the oft-maligned snake in the Pennsylvania Legislature.
The best concession conservationists have won: keeping Pennsylvania rattlers out of the sacking contests. Snake handlers are forced to rely on the imported diamondbacks.
"They can't do anything to protect them because that would end the roundups," said Herb Ellerbrock, the Pittsburgh Zoo's chief herpetologist and a volunteer fireman for two decades. "The fire departments wouldn't get their income, they say. But what about bingos? What about raffles? Why do we have to kill a snake that should be on the endangered list for money?"
Another concern for Ellerbrock and area hospitals is the drain on expensive antivenin during roundup season. Ellerbrock, who stocks the serum to counteract bites by the zoo's endangered Aruba rattlesnakes, rushes vials to emergency rooms each year to save lives.
Allegheny General Hospital, a major regional center for treating poisoning, has 60 vials on hand for this weekend's roundup -- enough for two serious bite cases. The vials cost $800 each.
Rattlesnake venom kills by attacking platelets in the blood, digesting internal organs with every beat of the heart. A viper can attack quickly -- a strike can be more than 400 mph -- often biting a person three or four times in rapid succession.
According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, rattlesnakes bite more than 800 people every year; 15 people usually die. Most bite victims are adult men who were sacking snakes in roundups nationwide, according to the center. Alcoholic consumption -- banned at Lowber -- is considered a major contributing factor.
If Allegheny General runs out of antivenin, it will contact other hospitals and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention if necessary. Serious bites require weeks of intravenous serum drips, blood transfusions, reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation. A helicopter will be parked near the rattlesnake pit this year, ready to take victims to hospital's trauma ward.
"The good thing is, we can keep them alive," said Dr. Fred Harchelroad, the chief of emergency medicine and a toxicologist at Allegheny General. "The technology we have means the guys who are bitten will still live.
"But their quality of life depends on the seriousness of the injury. Is losing a finger serious? Not when you compare it to the systemic effects of a venomous bite."
Snake roundups draw mixed reactions