Ran into a similar situation as a teen with some buddies when we went target shooting in Colorado. A bend in the creek had cut a ten foot high dirt wall to shoot into. Some cans were already set up on it when we got there. Once those were shot off I jumped across the stream. When my first foot hit the ground a four foot rattler jumped into my face. I can still see his fangs coming at me, but he fell short of striking me thank God.
With the forward momentum I had going I just kept going up that bank as fast as I could. It was out of the pan and into the fire. When I topped out crawling and kicking to get over the edge I came upon the most horrific sight of my life. Thirty square feet easily of solid rattle snakes.
The buzz of rattles went insane, I turned to the right and ran along the bank edge as fast as I could. Almost went down several times as the edge of the bank was breaking away underneath my feet. How I never got bit I’ll never understand.
My buddies are all laughing their ass off of course as I made it back to the truck. About that time Game & Fish shows up about the gunfire. Once I told them about the snakes they didn’t care about the shooting. We walked around up to where the snake fest was to have a look. The stink and the rattle noise was insane. Upon closer look it was not just a nest of rattle snakes, but bull snakes too! It was a Battle Royal of Snake Land! Big and small writhing about in twists, turns and slithering. Craziest goddamned thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Yikes! Were you wearing tall boots? That's about the limit of my snake skill, wear tall boots and avoid them. Up here in the sticks they say we used to have until they were eradicated about 1900.
Edit - fixed snake picture link
Just Red Wing Irish Setters. Not that tall. In the summer here when I was able to, I’d wear tall snake proof boots when metal detecting for nuggets since you’re kinda preoccupied with the search coil.
That Timber Rattler looks like it can hide way too well. Ugh. Are they eradicated just in your area? Could swear we had them in Virginia though I never saw one.
Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus)
Maine is currently one of the only states in the lower 48 that is not home to rattlesnakes, though it wasn’t always this way. The impressive Timber Rattlesnake used to be found in the rugged mountains of Western Maine, though likely always in very low numbers. Timber Rattlesnakes are venomous predators of small mammals such as shrews, mice, rats, squirrels, and rabbits, though their powerful bites can kill humans. Rattlesnakes were extirpated from Maine probably before the turn of the 20th century.
https://maineaudubon.org/news/5-creatures-you-may-not-know-used-to-live-in-maine/
They must have them further south. In fact there may be a few left here but no one has encountered them in over a century. They exist somewhere to get the color picture. I grabbed the picture from the Maine Audubon website.
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