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What was your close call with........................ Snakes..

E

Elton

New member
wild animals, etc. etc. Hazards while detecting. Anything you didn't expect to happen that did.


My worst experience so far has been with a very aggressive Dog.. Detecting in some woods and the dog tried to attack me. Came out of nowhere too.
Saw her approaching from the corner of my eye..Teeth bared back.and she wasn't playing !! Thank God for long detector rods. I managed to hold her off till the owner arrived. Female owner said she was only being protective... "YEA RIGHT".... Imagine what would have happened had I moved toward the owner that in all honesty I did not see. She was out walking her dog. I suggested she better keep it on a leash if it was that aggressive.
A few more minutes and my Lesch would have been buried in the dogs chest.
 
I have only seen a couple of snakes from several yards distance while detecting. Two other encounters, however come quickly to mind. A number of years ago a fishing buddy and I were bass fishing on a rice canal in Arkansas. We were in a 10' jon boat sculling along one side that had some brush and tall grass and casting forward and across to the other side. I was about to make a cast and noticed something drop off a branch into the center of the boat. Yep, a 2' copperhead. It actually looked about 10' long at the time. I was in the back of the boat and my buddy was in the front. Fortunately, those rice canals aren't very deep as we were both over the side of the boat in a flash. Last year I was cleaning out the filter on our pool and when I lifted the lid off there was a snake kind of like swimming around. As it turned out it was just a small garden snake, but I did have to change my shorts. :yikes: HH jim tn
 
I had permission to detect an old house and got a good hit inside a wall that had pieces of cardboard on it. Already been told I could tear it off so I did just that and there laid an old silver fork so I reached down to pick it up and a copperhead that was 27 inchs long struck at my hand and missed. Sent him or her to snake heaven that's how I know how long it was. Needless to say I will go back when it gets COLD. Yellow Jackets are another story. This should be a good thread. HH :minelab:
 
n/t
 
I don't like snakes !!!
 
I once had a Copperhead crawl past me and right up against my leg as I was kneeling on the ground digging a signal, but the wierdest situation I ever had happen was when digging in an old school yard. I was kneeled fown digging a signal when I felt a severe sting on my right wrist. I suspected it was a yellow jacket so stood up real quick and started looking all around at the ground for their nest hole. Didn't take long and there it was with 2 yellow jackets bunched so tight in the opening they had the hole pluged and couldn't get out. Good for me and I had time to put my left foot over the hole What next ? Well, I needed something to put over the hole real quick so to have time to grab my detector and shovel and haul butt. It had rained a couple of days before and there was a plie of dirt next to my right foot so I reached to scrape some of the dirt over by my left foot to pile over the hole right quick when I moved my foot. Bad move , because the rain had smoothed the top of the little dirt pile and I had unknowingly raked the top off of a fire ant bed with my right foot. Get the picture now ,,,left foot on a yellow jacket's hole and right foot in the middle of a fire ant bed.What you have to call some serious deep doo I had myself in. I remembered the signal I had almost retrieved was bowl shaped, heavy and packed with dirt, so I squatted as best I could , making sure not to let my left foot get off the yellowjacket hole, while practically in the ant bed now but was barely able to take my shovel and pry the target/ whatever from the ground and quickly place it at my left foot , then over the yellowjacket hole soon as I moved my foot.I grabbed my detector and shovel,and did the 'fireant dance/.stomp /swat/jiggle and shake the few feet to my truck,,,, and I had no sooner got myself in and proceeded to roll the windows up when I could see a huge swarm appear like a dark cloud over that yellowjacket hole. I quickly cranked up, drove a safe distance , stopped, got out and finished my fire ant dance while shedding my boot and sock to get rid of the ants. No way could I ever dream up a lie like that to tell. That is the way it happened! Y'all be careful out there now, ya hear?! HH, Charlie
 
Thank you.That is exactly the stories I was looking for.
 
Just about the same thing happened to my brother Joel and I. 20 years ago.

On Clear Fork of the Brazos River here Texas. The Clear Fork is a creek that is in most places less than 10ft wide and 3 ft deep and one the best Cat fishing creeks I know. What we would do is fish with drop lines left baited over night. These line would be anywhere a foot to 6 foot depending where we tied them and the hung down 6 inch into the water. Our best holes was a Willow tree the outside bank of a bend. The water was less then 2 foot deep with a gravel bottom and the water moved real fast thur here because of the bend. The Willow about 12 to 14 foot long and laying on it's side just high enough to be a few inches above the boat hull.

This tree was good for 10 to 20lbs. of fish ever morning, It take two people to ran our lines. One to bait the 10 to 12 lines tried to the tree and one to hold the boat.still. We in the Evening we would bait these hooks first then bait the rest the lines down the creek. On way back to the boat landing we would check the tree lines at almost sundown. Sure enough we had a few fish.Joel was removing the fish and re baiting. I was holding the boat against the tree. The boat kept trying to pull away from the tree about the fourth time this happened Joel got a hook in his hand and scream at me hold THE D--med boat still. I jerked real hard the tree and boat hit tree hard. A 6 foot water snake was up in tree bedded down. To say the less est when he landed in bottom of the boat HE WAS PISSED. There is nothing meaner then Mad Water Snake. It was just Dark enough to see we had problem. We just give the boat to the snake.


The next morning take us 4 hours to find the boat 5 mile down the Creek.
 
n/t
 
Shoot,,That was just a couple of events of many I have had in 41 years of digging. There has been a mean young bull,a shovel full of baby Copperheads, several Camo (can't find em) Copperheads,a huge black snake,a huge Chicken snake, wild hogs, (sow put me up a tree once) a souped up,freaked out hauling butt Armadillo,several grown over old wells,a couple of real scary "ghost/.haints", and one very much alive mean SOB with a 12 ga. loaded with buckshot.Nahaa,,, giving it up ain't never crossed my mind, but making like a Boy Scout, and "Being Prepared "(for anything) sure did.
 
Sure would like to hear a couple more of the stories in full...
 
After 20 years of hunting I know 1 in 10 good finds be in the middle fire ant bed or a under a cow, dog or cat patty.

I am just glad warps make nest in trees around here.
 
Elton,in the mid 1970's I was metal detecting in the old 1920s baseball field at the Ghost Town of Madrid New Mexico. I didn't pay much attention to the weeds in the outfield during my search.Later I notice a couple of guys with fork sticks looking for snakes.These gentlemen were snake hunters from the University of New Mexico looking for rattle snakes for anti venom serum.I was concerned when they told me they caught quite a few big rattlers around the bushes where I just searched.
 
Now I'm not saying their not around , but so very few it has never been an issue. If I am wrong about your area please correct me.
 
Well , he wasn't all that little, but young , and full of himself!. I hunted a huge old pasture sometimes that had a couple of huge Live Oaks close together and a smaller oak to one side of them that marked the spot of a long ago homesite. A couple of old flower bushes marked the corner of where the house had been. I could see the cows were in the field when I climbed through the fence.. I had been at the corner of where the house had been near the old flower bushes for several minutes detecting away, remembering that Merc Dime I found the first time I hunted there.. I was deep in concentration when something big and black suddenly obscured my vision, and as I looked up to see what was happening, the dust surrounded me like a cloud and I was looking eyeball to eyeball with a young bull and realized that he had actually bounced and slid /skidded to a stop to within only a few inches from where I was still standing. He no sooner stopped that he began pawing the ground, slinging dirt, snorting and snotting his nose at me, giving me that eyeball to eyeball dare, leting me know that was his pasture and his cows and he wanted my butt outa there. I didn't have a lot of choice so I stepped to the side to try and put some of the bush between us, yelled at the bull as I reached into the bush and ripped (hopefully it would rip) the biggest limb I could rip. Lucky for me I got a big enough limb and fast as I could I stepped out again to face the bull and brrought that limb down on his nose hard as I could. That backed him off far enough and long enough that it gave me time to find a bigger limb to bluff him back to his lady friends. I finished that hunt and made many more there and had to contend with him several more times in order to get my hunt in. Sometimes detecting involves a little cattle wrangling, or whatever you would call that.
 
In fact, so many that i don't fear them anymore. Of course, like most people, i'm startled when i do see one. "Good" snakes are let alone, but the poisonous ones [especially near houses] have got to go. I know full well that once i enter the woods and fields or old homesites, i'm on their turf. A cottonmouth will chase you very aggressively, so you often don't have much choice but to kill it if you can. They're very fast, too. Copperheads are usually aggressive only when they're stepped on or startled, but normally don't chase you. Both have venom that can sicken or kill you - especially small children and animals.

Years ago, i sprained my ankle out in the field [in another digger's uncovered hole, no less] trying to get ahold of a huge cottonmouth that had previously chased me. It was a long and painful walk back to the car! But that's ok, i caught up with him the next month!
 
n/t
 
n/t
 
but we have rattle snakes and Michigan rattlers.We have a lot of garter snakes,but last year I got a small rattle snake out of the saw dust shed.My farrier's wife is a Vet and she had to put a horse down because of a rattle snake bite a couple of months ago.Don't let your guard down.
 
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