Ever fall on a Rattlesnake?

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jaydee2trad
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Ever fall on a Rattlesnake?

#1 Post by jaydee2trad »

Last fall was a major struggle for me in many ways health wise and especially walking. I had to have a walking stick for every step and had already fallen so many times it wasn't worth trying to count. I wanted to bowhunt really bad but it wasn't in the cards for me but I did go muzzleloading one time. I was up on a ridge (could drive up to the stand, deer lease open country in the mountains) and had managed to get 15' up a ladderstand. I heart shot a huge doe to the left of me and the smoke hid where it went but it was headed back behind me. I hear something on the other side of the riidge from where it had come from and I just thought that it was another deer taking off. Wrong, after searching hard for blood on the wrong side of the ridge, every step was just trying not to fall, I realized that it had to have been my deer going back the way that it had come. Now this was grown up pine plantaion type ground and it was a mess so I was already worn out. I finally found the first drop of blood and very slowly began trailing it. This deer changed directions twice but it was all down hill. When I finally found her, I began regretting shooting her for her size. I got down and field dressed her, a real pain and finally got back to my feet. And now the drag was to begin and it was from the bottom all the way back up to where I could bring the truck. I was actually in a road like stretch that the timber company had made in thinning the timber a few years back, It was not an actually road but was more walkable than what I had come thru. So, it was six inches at a time drag for this old cripple and suddenly I went down hard. I could see a huge fire ant mound coming up fast and brother I flattened it and could not get off of it for nothing. I had the sling from the muzzleloader plus my walking stick plus the drag strap all tangled up. Now, fire ants don't seem to bother me like they do others but still there had to be a lot coming out. Nope, I rolled over finally and not one ant had come out. It had been a chilly morning but it was after 10am now but they still weren't stiring. I texed my wife and told her that I was struggling with the deer and so she was going to leave work and come help. She was 35 miles away so it would be a while. I made it another 20 yards and I had this huge old melted down chip pile that I had to get across. This stuff was like quicksand for me but I had no other way to go. Suddenly I went down hard again and my feet seemed to sink deeper in this soft mess. I managed to get free of the muzzleloader and the walking stick but I had the drag strap wrapped around my waist. I had fallen nearly face first into a little stand of small hickories about the size of my thumb. I was busy trying to use them to help me pull myself up but the soft melted wood chips were making it extremely hard. I was still flat on the ground trying to get my feet under me when I suddenly noticed a huge head sticking out from under my right armpit. I knew what this was instantly and it was the biggest one that I had ever seen in my life and I have seen a lot of them. it was a huge Timber Rattler and I mean huge. It never looked back at me but I knew that I had to get lifted up and now. So I raised my chest up as high as I could and watched as it ever so slowly moved out. It was still chilled and moved exceedingly slow. I got to see that it was easily bigger than my forearm and I have a big one. It just kept slowly growing longer and longer until I finally could see the blueish black starting of the tail. We call these velvet tails and coon tails. When the buttons finally cleared, they popped upright and the snake moved another foot and then stopped. The whole time that it was slowly inching out from under me, all I could think of was Daniel in the lions' den with the angels holding their mouths shut. I tried at one point to take a picture of it as it crawled out from under me with one hand but that was a total fisaco. The snake just lay there stretched out about a foot or so from me and now I continued to try to get up. I finally made it up and so picked up everything and looked back at the snake still right where it had stopped. I could have easily killed it but no, it could have easily bitten in the face, neck, chest, arm pit, anywhere and it didn't. So my life was spared and now so was it's. I have two large rattlesnake skins on old weathered barn boards but they were no where as big as this thing, it was over 6' long and it's head as wide as my fist. I managed to drag the deer another three of feet farther before going down again. This tiime when I got up, I just stood there and waited for my wife. And she got there really fast, maybe because I texted her and told her about the snake. She stopped and I owled so that she could find me and here she came. She was babbling (like Don Knotts) about me falling on a rattlesnake. Then she wanted to know if I had killed it but as she made her way down to me, she shreiked that it was right there and looked very alive! Of course she wanted me to kill it but I wouldn't. It had lain right there for about 45 minutes total and was still there when we left. I tried to go around the hickories and take a couple of pictures but she refused to. Now one thing that I will never forget, was seeing how huge the head was and that left eye just past the huge poison sac. Didn't have time to get scared, I was too busy trying to get lifted up high enough for it get out from under my chest and stay up. I have never been afraid of snakes but have a deep respect for what they can do. I have caught countless rattlesnakes of all sizes and kinds as well as copperheads to either move somewhere else to open their mouths to show kids and adults their fangs. Yeah, I am a very blessed man, JD

Carpdaddy
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Re: Ever fall on a Rattlesnake?

#2 Post by Carpdaddy »

:shock: WOW, now that would have been an experience not to repeat! I’m thinking I would have ruined some undies right then and there.

Captainkirk
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Re: Ever fall on a Rattlesnake?

#3 Post by Captainkirk »

I'm speechless.
Aim small, miss small!

jaydee2trad
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Re: Ever fall on a Rattlesnake?

#4 Post by jaydee2trad »

snakes never scared me in that sense. After years of constantly searching the ground for arrowheads and such, I got very good at spotting snakes and everything else. I actually got to where I could smell snakes like copperheads and cottonmouths and knew to be looking for them. I have been sitting on the ground turkey hunting and have a copperhead go by within feet of my foot and just sit there and watch them go by. Most snakes have no desire to be around us and do their best to avoid us but when we suddenly get too close, they naturally get defensive... except maybe a ground rattler, they can be very strike happy. although as a kid, I got everybody outside one night in a trailer park in San Antonio Tx around 1961. I had just watched Gunsmoke where some guy died a slow very painful death from a rattlesnake bite. We were going somewhere, it was dark and as I walked around the back of the car, I stepped on the tail of a big snake. I had shorts on and it both wrapped around my leg and bit my leg. it was a bull snake and it got away before my dad could do anything with it. in high school and back in San Antonio, a friend and I hunted and caught big rattlesnakes that we kept live in buckets to take to a reserch center. But now, I am too crippled up and my eyesight in my left eye sucks plus I just move way too slow. getting old especially when health vains as well just plain ole sucks LOL. JD

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Elkman
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Re: Ever fall on a Rattlesnake?

#5 Post by Elkman »

Wow, that could have went very bad.
Calling Elk - Awesome! !€

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Grizzly
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Re: Ever fall on a Rattlesnake?

#6 Post by Grizzly »

Great story. So very, very glad it wasn't me. There is so much in this world that so many of us have not learned to relate to or even experience. Back in my younger days when I worked around Woodstock NY where they had that music festival that I had no desire to attend - which my Grandson can't understand. It happened the summer after I got out of the service and didn't appeal to me at all. But later, when I worked up there and went to a Community College, I signed up for Yoga classes. The fellow giving them and his wife were really, really into that stuff and so was the New Age community that had congregated around the beautiful town of Woodstock. That festival actually took place on a farm outside another town nearby - Saugerties, NY. But those classes started me on awareness meditation exercises that were different then what the Beatles and most others were doing with their mantras and such. Later, they continued when I listened to Roy Masters and used his meditation techniques for years back in the 70's. I wasn't part of the drug culture and these meditations simply made you more aware of what was around and within you.

By the late 70's my wife and I took a trip from Illinois back to visit the folks in NJ. We came home via the Smokies and then into Shawnee Forest in the southern most part of Illinois. There are many rock formations there and I would sit on them in meditation during the sunrise and sunsets. After one such sit we were walking a ridge and I was picking up on all sorts of things I could not explain, when suddenly I stopped and would not put my foot down. I simply sensed there was something under it and seemed to know not to step on it. It was a pretty forceful knowing. So I moved my foot and looked under it and there was a large bumble bee in the clover or whatever was growing there. It was pretty amazing. There was another time as a meditation was ending and I stretched out with my arms held horizontally that I felt this cool like breeze hitting them. I was curious as to where it was coming from, looked around and realized there were no fans running and all the windows were closed. So I looked in the direction that I sensed it was coming from a saw some plants on the window sill. Could it be? I can't say for sure what it was, but I do know that we are oblivious to much of life that is all around us. I can only wonder at what Adam and Eve were doing in the Bible story before they were tempted by the serpent and lost what they had with God who created them.
Jesus replaces the old covenant and speaks to the believer the moral code of God by His Spirit directly to the heart. He is the eternal, everlasting revelation of God to mankind. In Him is both the knowledge of righteousness and the power to live right.

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