re: This Everglades cottonmouth is the biggest I've ever seen.

Sr. year of highschool. Shooting some hoops with my bro-in-law at their house at about 9:30pm. He shoots a brick and the ball rolls in a gap between the lattice work, under their house. He tells me to go get the ball. For some reason I did. I crawl up under the house feeling around in the dark for the ball. My hand finds a mud puddle. I feel a big thump on my elbow. I thought a frog or something had jumped into my arm. I crawl a little further, find the ball then back out. We went back to shooting ball. After a minute or two my elbow is feeling weird, I look down and see 2 holes with blood trickling out and it swelling like a mofo. He throws me in his trucks and takes me to the ER. By the time I get there my elbow is the size of a football. The ER really wanted to know what kind of snake it was before they did anything. So bro-in-law calls a local "snake catcher" who goes out there, crawls under the house and kills a ~3' cotton mouth. It was laying where their A/C dripped down (the water puddle I felt). He said I had crawled right on top of it. The hospital pumps me full of antibiotics but no anti-venom. Apparently the worst part of a cotton mouth bite is the bacteria the nasty bastards got living in there mouth. I got sick as hell and had one fatass arm for about a week. Good times.

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back where Buccaneer Villa North was built

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Very few cottonmouths in that area. I grew up in that neighborhood, literally on the canal, and spent most of my youth snake-hunting along the banks of the 40 arpent, in a pirogue looking for snakes and turtles, or on the other side of the canal along the floodwall and in the swamp. This was back in the early’70s to mid-80s. In over 12 years of snake-hunting there, I saw a total of 3 Cottonmouths. Caught literally hundreds of snakes back there, mostly watersnakes, including some HUGE diamondback water snakes. But cottonmouths were rare back there, even when you’re intentionally looking for them.

The other end of the Parish was a different story. When I lived down at the far end of Violet, I saw more cottonmouths than I saw watersnakes. It was kind of mind-boggling how few cottonmouths Chalmette had compared to lower St. Bernard. There were no real natural barriers to create the discrepancy in numbers.

In regards to the video, that’s one fat frick. Don’t like his “largest” or “biggest” terminology because that snake is not very long. Fattest would be more appropriate. I’ve seen quite a few that were much longer than that one. Longest I’ve seen was in New Orleans East along Chef Hwy., and it was close to 5 ft. Most I’ve seen in a day was 26 on a snake- hunting trip through a cypress swamp around Cutoff. Got some great photos that day.

ETA: By “snake-hunting” I mean catching, not shooting. Sorry to disappoint the OB.

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By “snake-hunting” I mean catching, not shooting. Sorry to disappoint the OB

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so what were you doing ?

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At 7:10 you can see the venom spray out of its mouth.

Nope

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Sweet fancy, Moses.

That’s crazy! I have a similar story.

I was bass fishing working towards a bank next to some brush. I got within four feet of a down tree covered with vines and HUGE Water Moccasin came hauling arse out of the tree/brush towards me. Knowing damn well what it was I droppeded like a ton of bricks from shock. I learned that day I can bear crawl almost as fast as I can run.

And to top it off Cottonmouth snakes are mean as hell too!

Buddy of mine had a pool service in H.S. We go to one of the local Motels to clean their pool and run across a huge mfer on the road. We stop and I get out to inspect. It strikes at me and I tell my friend to run it over. He does and its bowels come puffing out where he ran over it. I walk up to it and he strikes at me again. Bad mfers for sure.

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How can it be forced perspective when he has the camera inches away?

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Because that's how forced perspective works. Camera is close to object. Person or other thing of size reference is farther behind the object than it appears.

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He also stated he thinks its 3.5 feet long.

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Well, alright then. I didn't watch the video because I was at work. I was just responding to the reactions in the thread. People seemed to think it was huge. I don't consider a 3.5 ft cottonmouth to be huge.

Dude...