How about a pic of the deer (and tell us the story)? ;^)
I don't worry too much about snakes.... but would worry about the dogs and snakes. Especially when mine are snake stupid having never seen one and live for hunting lizards when it's not bird season.
Growing up in timber rattler area, I don't recall having too much trouble with the dogs WRT snakes? That was a long time ago when there wasn't much I DID pay attention to. Maybe something in their DNA tells em it's danger? Or maybe not.....
Like mine do when I have to drive my wife's mini-van?
I've live and hunt in snake country and I've had three dogs (down to one now) and they've all been snake trained. This involves a very powerful E-collar, live rattlesnakes and professional dog handlers. The handler takes the dog by its lead, moves toward the first snake for a visual correction. As soon as the dog acknowledges, via body language, that it sees the snake the handler observing the dogs behavior shocks the dog. Remember it's a super strong e-collar that I'm not sure you or I can buy. Next up is the sound association and they use a Timber Rattler for this; I was told they use this species because they're aggressive. Again, as soon as the dog's body language indicates they hear the snake, boom they're shocked. Last up is the scent association and they use a Great Basin Rattler for this because that's our local venomous snake. I had each of my three dogs snaked trained twice each in consecutive years and it's been very effective.
My middle dog was a small 50# female German Wirehair and she was a sensitive dog. During her second go around, she encountered the first snake, turned tail and ran up the hill back to me pulling the 250# handler up the hill. All this without being shocked. They didn't run her through the rest of the course and she never had an issue with a snake even though she had to have had several encounters while we were on hikes close to my house or chukar hunting during the early season.
My last and current dog, Harley, is a much larger 75# German Wirehair. He's built like a tank and is not a sensitive dog. During his first or second session (can't remember which) he made it through the first two encounters without even a yelp, even though they're laying the voltage to him. They took him around a large boulder for the last encounter, which was for scent and involved a snake in a cage, but the wind had changed and was blowing the snake's scent away from him so he did what felt right to him, came around the rock, raised his leg and peed on the cage and the snake. About mid-pee the wind swirled, he caught the scent, acknowledged this and the handler laid the electric shock to him. Needless to say we were all laughing and fairly certain he wouldn't be peeing on anymore rattle snakes.
Fast forward 5 to 6 years. It's August 2017 and for some reason I'm thinking daily about how many rattle snakes have likely made their way through the dog's large outdoor kennel when I'm not home or we're asleep. After a few days of thinking about this during waking and sleeping hours, my wife and I are watching TV one night and we hear Harley barking in the kennel. He's got the "wild horse bark", the "coyote bark" (he hates coyotes and they and wildhorses come through our property almost daily) and the "people are here bark" and this bark is different. I run outside and look in the kennel to see him low to the ground (almost in a point position) focused on something in front of him. I assume it's a coyote that's really close to the kennel but as I get closer I see and hear a large and very agitated rattlesnake that Harley is staying about 10 feet away from. The snake is in the kennel so I have little choice but to kill it. (I see rattle snakes several times each year in the hills around our house and I always leave them alone.) Fast forward to 2018 and the same exact thing happens. Both of these events and the reaction of my dogs during the second round of snake training have convinced me of its effectiveness and I highly recommend it for those of you with dogs. Both my wire hairs are/were lizard hunting maniacs but they stay away from rattlesnakes and I've seen them stay away from other snakes.
This is a picture of the first snake that came into the kennel a couple of years ago.
Copperheads, rattlers, and the most common, moccasins. They’ve all been fine after a week or two.
I’m sure other large animals survive all the time in my neck of the woods. Just a natural occurrence.
He flat hunted them down and would bite them and snap them like a whip till they were dead.
After the 2nd or 3rd time of getting bit, we figured it was a waste of money to take him to the vet.
That dog got bit at least three or four times a year by rattlers and cottonmouths for his whole life. And he actually lived to about 12.
Usually on the nose and a few times on a foot. Would swell up like a basketball and he would be kind of slow for about a week until the swelling went down.
Dogs seem to be pretty resistant.
Wasn’t expecting to open this thread and see Louis as the OP. Pleasant surprise!
I was expecting to find that another Bowsiter had been struck. Glad that wasn’t the case.
Glad to see you City.
-Mitch
Chances are real good that I never got much past planting my right foot, because I grew up spending a lot of time barefoot outside of Denver, where we had prickly pear, barrel cactus, goat-heads, great big thistles, etc. Very uncommon for me to put a foot down outside without knowing what’s there.
But nope, no rattle, no buzz, no hiss, no nothin’. Just a LARGE, fully-coiled snake less than 3 feet away. Can’t honestly tell you how much closer I ever got than that, but if I did, I didn’t stay long enough to ponder it.
One thing that might (??) have saved me is that I was jogging - kind of high-stepping it - through there, so the foot-falls were irregular, more like a deer. For all I know, that snake has had a thousand deer pass by without incident and had no intention of reacting to a near miss. Or maybe it had just recently shed its skin? And you can see how clean and shiny the snake looked.
Also, after it left the area, I noticed that the leaves were formed around the shape of the snake, as if it had been there for some considerable length of time. So maybe it was a post-shedding thing, or maybe it had just chosen that spot to digest a hefty meal?
Whatever the reason, it was happy to leave me alone, and I was happy that it did! My 16-year-old observed at the time that a bite from that sucker probably would have qualified me for a helicopter ride out of there... I’m not sure I disagree, because we were 2 hard miles in, and after the way Nut’s story worked out...
Great to see you back on here again!
They have their place like everything else. Like the one that was living under my brother’s propane tank on the way to the outhouse. That one found a nice place on a board out in my dad’s workshop!
APauls- you have Rattlers in Manitoba?
