when that snake starts to strike , it has a little twitch just before it launches
when Unca sees that twitch , and the snake lunges , Unca swipes that knife in one swift smooth swipe and decapitates the snake in one motion
if I am not mistaken , this snakes fangs about penetrated Walts jeans and just about bit him before the head was off
or something like that….
I can’t think of a word to describe why a human would challenge a rattlesnake with a pocket knife , unless that word is Unca Walt
We doan seem to be gettin' through to dogster. Lemme try again... although I attached the explanation to the video still about whut it wuz I be doin'.
@bigsur51 , you got another snaky encounter mixed in. The guys in the club nicknamed me "Snakebait" (more stories later).
But this is the buzzer (Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake) strike you were thinking of:
He was shedding (they get nasty then) and I walked by in the swamp with a 50-lb corn sack on my shoulder, so I din' see him. He struck, and got hung on my pantleg. I hadda grab him quick and sling him against a tree. The boys weighed him: 22 pounds.
Awshit. Long as we are at it. I have a video of a coral snake biting my boot (red touches yellow) up at that club. The day after I took the video, I got in my hunting tent blind in the pitch dark and sat in my folding recliner. Sat nice and still until it got light.
By that time, I was a tad stiff, so I swung my feet over onto the ground to stand up. And there was a huge cottonmouth moccasin right between my feeties. He was all wide-open and ready to shoot, so I just quick grabbed him.
Brought him back to camp still alive, and sumbody tooken a pic of me holding the squirming bastage.
Right at four feet long.
Strangely, no one in the club would ever go in the woods with me...
I've got another one, but no photos to prove it. So you can believe it or don't. It was crazier than batshit pancakes:
There was a tiny 12" berm at the edge of a pine forest along an open field that wild oinks frequented. It was a really warm day, so I was in shorts, laying there flat behind that berm on nice, dry pine needle ground.
A few minutes later, in the sooper quiet, I heard a light, continuous crackling right behind me. I held real still, thinking maybe it was a turkey (in season!) and that if it went out into the field I could get a head shot with my Weatherby.
The the crackle got not louder, but much closer. I slowly turned my head, and damn' near catted on the spot! It was a huge rattler, and he was within a foot of me! I could not roll away because of that little berm, so I did the only thing I could do: I jumped up, tore my hunting hat off and smacked him with it before he got organized. Of course, the hat didn't hurt him, and he struck -- deflected by my hat again. He bit the hat.
That gave me the chance to grab him. Brought him back to the camp alive, also. Someday, I will tell you the Starkey Story of the ugly little green Two-Steps (Bamboo vipers), dogster.