re: Got Charged by Water Moccasins a Few Weeks Ago

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The most you'll get out of them charging, is maybe coming forward a few inches,

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ok

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I was walking through my garage a couple weeks back and noticed one sitting in plain site out in the open. Tried getting it in a Rubbermaid storage container using a couple of paddles, but he wasn't having any of that. Not once did he move in my direction, or any direction for that matter.

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After that, I would have had to just burn down the whole damn garage.

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LINK

Not aggressive at all, right?

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that snake is just trying to get away, troy, that's all.

I guess Teague didn’t want that one video after all, did he?

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This is a friend of mine's YouTube channel. He and his boys know a thing or two about local serpents

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May be the norm that they generally don’t seek confrontation....but I’ve had two on separate occasions approach me deliberately, when hunting.

I’ve seen moccs extra aggressive in the time right after they’ve shed their skin.

And I’ve killed hundreds with a Benjamin 177.

And I’m lucky to be alive with all the dumb shite snake hunting I did as a kid.

What I was thinking

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That snake is in the middle of a large bay, which is out of its comfort zone, and is swimming to the boat or whatever the photographer is in because it’s the only resting place (i.e. “log”) in the area. And it’s being defensive, not aggressive - when it got close to the photographer, he likely tried to shoo it away or something to that effect, eliciting a defensive response from the snake.

Like every other case, this is a misinterpreted action.

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Yeah, no. Defensive doesn’t mean swimming toward something, being shooed away, going mouth open, only to head straight back and doing it all again, and again. There were 360 directions that snake could have swam. It chose the only one where there could possibly have been a threat. That’s not defensive. Sorry.

Just wanted to let all of y’all know, I’ve counted 22 different first hand accounts in this thread. All of us must be the most frightened little girls to be willing to tell a big fat whopper of a lie against these gentle, docile little creatures of God. Either y’all have stumbled upon the biggest bunch of frightened liars ever assembled, or maybe, just maybe, y’all simply don’t know what all snakes will and won’t do, all of the time. Now which do you think it is?

Like a few others around here, I've spent most of my life catching snakes. As a kid, I spent most days trekking through the woods or walking the banks of the canal behind my house looking for snakes - it was my primary pastime. I used to catch snakes and sell them to kids around the neighborhood. In my 50s now, I still stroll through the woods along the Honey Island Swamp behind my neighborhood catching snakes. I've got 5 in my snake room right now (what should be my formal dining room), though they are more exotic than what you'd find in the U.S. I've caught cottonmouths, copperheads, and kept a pygmy rattler as a pet for a while. I know my snakes.

Various snake breeds have very different personalities. Racers are mean as hell and will bite you repeatedly if you grab them, king snakes tend to be hit or miss, Eastern hognose won't bite no matter how much you provoke them, etc. Cottonmouths stand their ground and are defensive, not aggressive. Also, 95% of "cottonmouths" people claim to see are just harmless water snakes because most people (even most avid outdoorsmen) can't identify snakes for shite.

The most cottonmouth-filled place I've ever snake-hunted (and I mean catching, not shooting) was around Golden Meadow. We'd walk through Cypress swamp for about an hour to get to a bald eagle's nest and catch snakes along the way. On one trip we saw 26 cottonmouths - the most I've seen in a single day. Here are some pics from that trip:

Area that we walk through looking for snakes to catch...


Eagle's nest at the top of a Cypress tree...


2 basking in this pic that are decent length - not short and stout like most...


Juvenile cottonmouth in this pic, which most people would mistake for a copperhead...


3 cottonmouths in this pic - one on the right and two snuggled together on the left...


So obviously on this trip we were walking right up to the snakes - literally just a few feet away. Not a single cottonmouth even acknowledged our existence. In one respect that is notable because every other species of snake we saw that day got the hell out of there the second it knew of our presence, usually before we got within 10 feet or more. People who actively seek and catch snakes know it's not easy because they flee like a motherfricker once they know you're there. However, it's also notable because none of the cottonmouths fled - they all held their ground BUT not a single one made any aggressive move (nor defensive, for that matter).

The second most cottonmouth-filled place I've snake-hunted was off Chef Hwy. in New Orleans East in an area that used to be Bizet's Fish Camp (sp) back around the 1950/60s. It was here that I've had the two most defensive encounters (what others would mistakenly call "aggressive"). On my first visit there with my uncle when I was around 10 years old, we ran across a piece of plywood laying on the ground that we wanted to check under for snakes to catch, and there was cottonmouth sitting right on top. We were trying to agitate it to get it to move, and it wouldn't budge. We started nudging it with our snake hooks and it still wouldn't move, it would just sit there with its mouth open. Finally we had to pick it up with the hook and move it away. Typical defensive stance by a cottonmouth when confronted and bothered, but nothing aggressive at all.

The only thing one could possibly mistake for a "charge" or "chase" was at the same place back in the early '90s. There was a narrow ditch that had a pipeline half protruding out the water, and it was just wide enough to walk on. We'd walk along the pipe and mostly catch ribbon snakes. On one occasion we came across a large cottonmouth - probably the largest length I've ever seen - and he took note of our presence while he was perched on a brand in the water. He then moved down off the branch while eyeballing us, and actually moved a few feet toward us and stopped. We then slowly backed away and went back in the other direction. That is the most "aggressive" move I've ever seen by a cottonmouth, but I would still call it a defensive move on the snake's part, just seeing what was up with the large objects moving into his territory. If he had any intent on "chasing" or "charging" us, we were basically defenseless because there were 4 of us standing on a pipe in the water that was less than 2 feet wide. There's no way we could have made a rapid retreat. But that was not the snake's intention because cottonmouths DON'T charge or chase people.

Here's a pic of him after he dismounted the branch and started eyeballing us...


Also, here's a pic of another one that I caught that same day and moved out into the open for photos - looks big but he's actually only around 2 feet long.





Bonus pics of a couple of my babies...

So wait, are you guys suggesting that these water moccasins are charging yall in order to strike you? Because that is not the case. Yes, the video shows the snake swimming towards the boat because that's the closest place out of water. But the snake was not charging the boat to try and aggressively bite the occupant.

So yes, cottonmouths can come towards you, but they aren't doing that to try and attack you