Can you spot the Copperhead (poisonous snake) on this tree trunk?

[LCHIEN]

Can you find the copperhead snake in this tree picture?

[Bill in Buena Park]

Very cool Loring, great camo,, wasn't easy to spot. More importantly, what type of tree is that snake climbing??

[Black walnut]

Easy.

Live oak?

[capncarl]

He is in a good spot to whack with a machete, but a bad spot to shoot. (Don't want to hurt a tree)
His camo is great, that's the reason you don't see many of them. I saw one climbing a 2" pipe pole for my Martin bird house! I eleminated him before he got 6' but he scared the Martins and the left and never came back.

[Pappy]

He is in a good spot to whack with a machete, but a bad spot to shoot. (Don't want to hurt a tree)
His camo is great, that's the reason you don't see many of them. I saw one climbing a 2" pipe pole for my Martin bird house! I eleminated him before he got 6' but he scared the Martins and the left and never came back.

Single shot wouldn't hurt a tree that size, assuming you can hit it with the first shot....

[capncarl]

Single shot? True, but angle must be correct or you will shoot yourself....... and the neighbors complain about shooting.

[JimD]

Pellet in the head. Not too much noise, not too much penetration. Dead snake.

[capncarl]

Snake populations are curious to me. I have rarely seen copperheads. Yes I know they have good camouflage, but it's little better than the monstrous Eastern Diamondbacks we have here. Some people around here report that they have copperheads all over the place. On my lot we have only seen a couple of snakes in the past 10 years, while my neighbor across the street kills a dozen cotton mouths a year. Our property was once a cotton field and the neighbors across the streets lot was in the woods adjoining the cotton field. His lot also has a spring fed stream running through it. Down the road 2 miles my neighbors son lives in a subdivision that was an old pecan grove, adjoins a hunting plantation, and they see eastern diamondbacks and cane break rattlers all the time. At old house, the subdivision was build in the creek swamp (literally in the creek swamp, my house flooded yearly) we saw snakes all the time, every variety known and some that hadn't been named yet.
I am constantly vigilant watching for them, never open the door from the house or shop and just walk out without first looking to see what is waiting outside to bite me. I also keep a straight bladed hoe in the corner behind the door just for snakes, and there is always my .410 snake charmer nearby waiting on the next armadillo. Maybe snakes sense my preparedness, or maybe it's the ghosts from the hundreds of snakes I have killed, warning them, or maybe they can smell the odor of gunpowder from my house or shop? Whatever it is, I'm glad it's working because I can definately live without the drama caused by snakes!

[capncarl]

Lchien, our copperheads her is sw Georgia are a different color that yours. They generally have more copper and brown in their body and their heads are usually more copper color. I guess because or environment they adapt to the color of the brown leaves on the ground here. Still just as invisible and scare the bejesus out of you! As few as I've seen though, I've never seen one over 12" long.

[cwsmith]

You guys certainly make NY State seem a lot more attractive, we mostly only have rattlesnakes here, except for in the southeastern 'down state' area. I don't care for snakes at all, any kind of snakes. In my early years (teens and early 20's) I used to practically live outside, backpacking, hiking every month of the year. While I used to run into a variety of non-venomous snakes, I've only encountered rattlers on a few occasions... once in the Catskills and twice in the Village of Painted Post. It was the village where we mostly have the problem. They actually found one in the I-R foundry that we used to have here in the village! Where I lived, you just kept your lawn mowed at least once a week... even then finding one or two garter snakes in the lawn was not uncommon.

Down on "the farm" that my grandparents had in Wellsboro, Pa rattlesnakes were supposedly quite common, though I never saw one. When we were just kids, climbing around the old barn and running around the place like little indians not much thought was ever given to snakes. Funny, was one of the last times I visited there before my Grandpa passed away. He took me out to one of the remaining 'chicken coops' to show me some walnut that he had recently harvested and while we were talking I noticed a rattlesnake skin that had obviously been shed recently...it was laying in the corner on the floor and I asked Grandpa where he picked that up from. He answered that he hadn't seen it before!

"You have rattlers around here?" "You bet, why do you think I was always telling your guys not to be crawling around the barn"

Guess there really is a God, otherwise one of us boys would have surely been bitten a long time ago! Makes me wonder in all the times we played around or for all the trekking I did in my younger years.... How many times I encountered a Rattler and never noticed. Guess I wasn't worth their bother.

I really don't think I would like to live in an area like capncarl.... just don't need to have to be that concerned.

CWS

[capncarl]

CW, I'm not that fond of snakes either. I was lookimg at someone's wood storage in an old corn cribb, really tight quarters where you had to squeeze sideways through, I didn't see a rat snake laying on the boards that I squeezed by with my back to him. He was sooooo close... and he touched my ear with his toung. I turned my head and he was inches from my nose. I screamed like a girl and ran through the area I had just barely been able to squeeze through! It's funny now, but I probably lost a few years because of that. Some work friends that moved here from somewhere that didn't have snakes, and they were tree huggers and wouldn't harm a fly found a snake or two in their flower beds, they got over that not harm a fly mentality quickly and beat them to a pulp with a broom.

My wife and I have decided that snakes are not very high on our list of things I don't like about this area, and we are looking for somewhere that we think we would like to live and enjoy retirement, we both decided that anywhere with more than an occasional snow is definately off the list! Snakes... ok... snow.. no.
Snakes will definately scare you out of your skin, you just have to beware of them when you are in their territory.
I cant imagine how bad a 16 foot 200 lb snake would scare you!

[cwsmith]

Let me tell you the story of the only time I was really scared by a snake... This was in my Civil Air Patrol days, I was 16 or so and was with my SAR (Search and Rescue) team down in the Catskills where we were searching for a lost airplane. When we arrived in the area, local Command filled us in on the search criteria and we were warned that the back area was heavily populated with rattle snakes, "so be careful".

We had pulled up on a back country road and the team spread out to walk across a small field in skirmish line fashion, looking for any debris. The field declined from the road and at the bottom was a very old stone wall on the other side of which was heavily wooded area rising up a pretty steep hill... the sunny side, which is where snakes are mostly found.. In that part of the Catskills are a lot of steep hills, quick valleys and rocks galore.

So here I had reached the wall and there were lots of rocks laying several feet on both sides of it. Perfect for rattlers, I thought. So I made a bit of noise, and approached a small tree that had grown out next to the wall...looked careful, grabbed a branch and climbed on top of the wall. But then I had the thought...if I jump off the wall, what if there's a snake there, with my luck I'll get bitten in the a$$. So I'm up there and kick off a couple of rocks...nothing... so I jump off. And when I hit the scattered rocks on the ground, I hear this quick rattle... or actually a flutter!!!

I scared up a Grouse... I wasn't expecting that and the quick noise of it's flight just about scared the crap out of me. I quickly recovered, but thought to myself how silly I had been, to the point that I had let my fear of snakes get the best of me. I later learned that rattlers are pretty docile, and like copperheads they'll go out of their way to avoid humans if they can. Still you gotta be cautious.

CWS

[LCHIEN]

Yeah that poisonous snake in the tree picture is sobering - how you can run right up on one and not notice it.

[capncarl]

I took these photos today, 3/11/17, 40 degrees this morning. These suckers are suppose to still be in hibernation!

[capncarl]

Some gators baby