Got 2.

A few years ago during teal season I was in a layout blind in some salt cedars and my lab went NUTS. It was nearly shooting time so of course I laid into her like nobodies business....when I noticed something moving under my blind. Thinking it was probably a mouse I paid it no attention until it emerged about 6 inches from my head heading off into the bush...a western diamondback about 6 feet long! Needless to say the hubbub my lab was making was nothing compared to me bolting out of that damned blind...nothing flares ducks like a pudgy fellow leaping 6 feet into the air from a prone position screaming like a girl....even teal will think twice about setting in that spread.

The second time a buddy and I were floating the Flint River in SW Georgia and had been shooting water moccassins all day...loads of them...we were kids and thought it was the right thing to do as did everyone we knew back in the 70's. We decided we would float the last 3 hours after dark to the take out and not spend the night on the river a third night. About an hour after good dark we were floating along when a damned water snake climbed over the transom of the boat, and in typical snake like fashion wasn't satisfied with his sitting position in the boat but set about immediately exploring his new found home looking for a better place to be. This experience is why I question the need for a welded jon boat...this was a 1236 riveted boat, loaded with everything 2 14 year olds would need to survive in the wilderness for 4 days...in other words more shite than most 2000 square foot homes hold. We had at best 2 inches of free board when we were paying attention to such mundane facts...most of the time one gunwale or the other had a negative freeboard LOL. The activity created in that small patch of floating aluminum in the dark, combined with the beating of the floors with paddles and fishing poles and shotguns and the stomping and running from one end of the thing to the other was more abuse in 10 seconds than a crew boat takes in its lifetime....and that boat is still watertight! How we didn't turn turtle in that boat is beyond imagination....something about the lord looking out for drunks and kids I guess. We never knew for certain when the snake left but he did at some point, no doubt suffering from years of abuse by his buddies when he retold his side of this encounter only to find that all of the snakes in the area called him a liar!