My First Rattlesnake

Tuesday, I killed my first rattlesnake at the bottom of our back steps. I had been inside on the computer and Jack started to bark. I went outside to see what he was barking at, figuring that it was just some other dogs. When I walked around the back of the house, I saw a snake at the bottom of the steps. Just by looking at it, I could tell it was a timber rattlesnake even though I had never seen one.

The first thing I did was take Jack to the front porch and tie him up. Luckily he hadn't been bitten. I went back inside and put on jeans and my steel-toed boots. They probably wouldn't protect me much, but it was more than the shorts and flip-flops that I had been wearing. I grabbed the .22 and loaded it, then headed to the back of the house again. When I got there, the snake had crawled to the top of the old concrete steps under the deck and there wasn't a good shot.

When I finally got ahold of Leonard, he told me to use the shotgun and not to shoot at the concrete because I'd probably get hit by flying pieces. When I returned from getting the shotgun, the snake was gone.

As I carefully looked around, I found him on the other side of the house where our air conditioner condenser is. This is about 6 inches away from the house, so there was no way I could take a shot.

After half an hour of waiting, he finally decided to return to the back of the house. Once his head was off the bricks, I took a shot, using the house to help hold me steady. I hit him in the head with the first shot and it killed him... or so I thought. I watched him for about 20 minutes to make sure he didn't move, then I went back inside.

About an hour later, I went back outside so I could put him in an ice cream bucket and put it in the freezer so the ants wouldn't get to it before Leonard got home. As soon as I stepped outside I noticed that he wasn't in the same position as before. I grabbed the nearest stick and poked him. To my amazement he started to crawl away and tried to rattle. I ran inside and grabbed the .22. I hit him twice with that and it had no effect. Since it was nearly dark, I pulled my work truck around so that the headlights were shining on him. Then I switched to the shotgun and shot him once more. He then stopped moving and I decided to just leave him alone until the morning.

The next morning when Leonard got home, I took some pictures with my snake. He measured out at 44 inches, but he would have been closer to 47 or 48 if he'd had his head and part of his neck. He had eight rattles, which does not seem like very much for how long he was. Leonard skinned him out for me and he would have been almost perfect if it hadn't been for the second shotgun shot - it went straight to his abdomen. I didn't know where the best place to shoot him was since he no longer had a head. Hopefully this is the last rattlesnake that I see around the house for a long time.