which gun should you use to kill a snake?

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It's been several years, but the last one I killed was a large copperhead in a neighbors water meter box. A .177 pellet among his thoughts from my Feinwerkbau air rifle did the job handily.

Poisionous snakes are quickly killed around here. I work in a hospital pharmacy and if you knew the current cost of treating even a minor snakebite you would not want them around. The current therapy of choice is a fairly new type of antivenom called CroFab, and is really more of an immunological agent than antivenom, which was made from horse serum and often causes severe allergic problems.

A package of two vials of CroFab costs us about $3600, and treatment depending on size of patient and size of evenomation runs from 2 to 6 packages . Add hospital markup and other treatment costs and you are looking at $12,000 and up.

No snakes around the house for me.
 
I used a 12ga for copperhead control when I was growing up on the farm. My old man just stomped them with his feet. I guess if all the Japs on Saipan and Okinawa couldn't kill him, what chance did a snake have?:what:
 
I got one with a skateboard recently. I swear it looked like a stick until I hit it.....
 
It would depend on the snake. A snake with less than two legs that doesn't stand upright should be given every chance to escape and failing that a club would suffice.

The other kind would fall into my late uncle's advice to use anything that lets in a lot of air and lets out a lot of blood.
 
I'm with Mr. Johnson on this one. The 18" guns from the MISSOURI are about right, not only for "smithereen" power, but also for ability to fire at a snake 'way the heck downrange. As in, "next county."

Only problem is that with the MISSOURI, some compromises must be made. Concealability and portability are big issues, but then again, I figure at sea the chance of seeing a poisonous snake are slim-to-none, with slim ahead by a whisker.

Seriously, people say "what's the harm in a garden-variety non-poisonous snake?" How about "heart attack?" Doesn't matter whether its garden snake or gaboon viper, they all give me the sweaty palms, rubber knees, accellerated heart rate, and upset stomach. Even watching the PBS/Discovery channel special on snakes gives me the sweats.

My snake-o-phobia is so bad, one was crossing the road last night, in lane 4 of a 5 lane highway. I was in lane 5, and it was heading into my lane. I swerved into the grass median when my mind recognized it, yelled a 4-letter word of scatalogical nature, and then cheered when I saw in my rearview mirror a big 4x4 run over it.

I hate snakes. Which gun is "the biggest, baddest, loudest one I can get to pronto."

Q
 
WOW!! how big are the snakes in your part of the country Q??????????????:what: neat pic of an 18 in broadside mr johnson... i've never seen one where a guy could see the shell before..........

i usually let snakes go because about all we have around here is garter snakes... if'n i had to take one out i suppose i'd use a .357 mag case loaded with a speer shot capsule full of #12 over about 4 grs. of bullseye...............
 
I've killed copperheads with a long-handle flat-blade shovel, but they're pretty tough. I wouldn't recommend "a stick". I've also killed them with the rear wheels of twelve-thousand-pound tractor, but it took a surprising amount of spinning over it on a gravel road to do the job. I chopped one up pretty bad with a 93" five-blade finish-mower once too. It was still flopping around after I had walked 200 yards and back from the house to get a a twelve-guage to blow him into three pieces with #4 high-brass bird.

I've seen one timber-rattler a few years back but didn't have anything handy to challenge him with, and I've let a few copperheads get away in the past because of the same shortcoming. I now carry one CCI 38 special shot round in each of the two speed strips that I carry for my 442, cause that's the kit that's now always on me.

Does anyone have an opinion if those CCI shotshells will do any permanent damage to the rifling in the bore of my 442?

I also have to say: know your snakes and don't kill the non-poisonous ones, they are your friend... but I'm all for killing copperheads and rattlers.

Les
 
I only kill the dangerous snakes like this fer-de-lance pit viper in Colombia. A little kobudo longhandleshovel did the trick.

fotosgramalotetrinidadAbril1209.jpg
 
The 18" guns from the MISSOURI
Click to expand...
16" or to be more precise 16"/50 Mark 7 (40.6cm). We (USA) never put anything larger than 16" into service.

You may be thinking of the Japanese Yamato class which had 18.1" guns or to be more precise 18.1"/45 Type 94 (46cm). The UK also put the 18"/40 Mark 1 (45.7cm) on the Furious.

Oh, and the Iowa class Missouri was BB-63, thus the BB comment.
 
After the head leaves the body there still seems to be plenty of wiggle left in them serpents. Of all the snakes I've killed the shovel really does the best job, edge then flat, works every time.
 
Here in Tennessee it is illegal to kill or disturb ANY snake. Most wardens will look the other way if you kill a poisonous snake that poses a danger to you or livestock, however, they can write you a citation for it.

The biggest cottonmouth that I ever saw was killed with a 30 inch Biltmore stick(forester's instrument for measuring diameter of timber and number of logs high. The wielder of the stick was wading in water up above his waist when he encountered the snake in the water. The poor snake never had a chance. The cruiser with the stick hit the snake about 40 times in 2/10s of a second and then proceeded to walk(run) on water until he got to dry land.

Once on a timber cruising job in the Phillipines, I saw an aborigine kill a 2 meter king cobra with a stick about half a meter long with a nail in the end. The same 'instrument' that you used to see crews using to pick up trash on road right of ways.
 
i'm sorry everyone the mods will prob delete this but oh well.. i am a snake lover... the only ones that freak me out are the snakes that can eat me and the ones that can drop me dead in 10 minutes... and the black mamba which i'm pretty sure could outslither me... other than that i've caught a few timber rattlers with nothing but a stick and the non poisonous ones i just grab.... snakes really arent that bad just watch out for for the corals and the big diamondbacks in the U.S. coral venom is extremly toxic and the diamondbacks are huge and can pump alot of their venom in a short amount of time... if they are on youre property thats obviously your choice... but if they're in the wild its detrimental to kill snakes as they kill most of our nuisciances...
 
chute2thrill said:
the non poisonous ones i just grab....
Click to expand...

Why?

I mean... what with you being a snake-lover-"don't-molest-them" ..uh, dare I say: self-proclaimed snake advocate...

Don't mean to harass you... but "grab" them? ***??

Regards,
Les
 
Does anyody know what kind of snake we have here in the US that LOOKS like a coral snake, but isn't? I swear that I saw one in my back yard here in Colorado one day, a few years ago. We had a crappy wooden planter in the back yard, and this thing darted under it when I got close. I only got a glimpse, but it was damn sure ringed with bright multi-colored rings. Freaked me right out!
 
Many snakes look like the Coral Snake. The Scarlet King would be the most commonly mistaken for it in the US.

A rhyme about the order of the colored stripes helps you tell them apart:

Red and yellow kills a fellow... Red and black is safe for Jack.

Coral snakes (venomous) have red and yellow touching; Scarlet King snakes (non-venomous) have red and black touching.

Les
 
They're just snakes venomous or not... why not grab a non venomous snake? whats it gonna do bite you? thats why we have hydrogen peroxide. everyone knows that nursery rhyme just most cant remember it... but killing a coral and killing a king has different effects... kings eat all other snakes equal or smaller...
 
chute2thrill said:
They're just snakes venomous or not... why not grab a non venomous snake? whats it gonna do bite you? thats why we have hydrogen peroxide.
Click to expand...

I'll take that as some version of flippant humor... I get it... sorta.

Best to you,
Les
 
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