I hunted a ranch on the Scurry/Fisher line for many years. Lots of rattlesnakes and we had several dogs get bit. Usually labs during dove season. Don't recall a dog ever getting bit while chasing quail.

I have never seen a snake while hunting quail.

mothballs

Some people have all the luck!

Fisher county has tons of rattlers. They might be more concentrated in some areas vs others but odds are you are going to run into them. Pretty much all of West Texas is that way. I worked on a 10k acre ranch once and the first week there we killed 9 rattlers. Stayed there two more months and never saw another one. I know we didn’t kill them all it is just sometimes you see them some times you don’t.

Are the vaccines for your dogs not an option? I think they have came a long way and are pretty effective. We obviously do hunt the dog but we take our chihuahua to the ranch and let her run around. She has had the rattlesnake vaccine. I have seen bigger dogs get in the face and they all lived.

If you find a good snake den it will blow your mind how many can be in there. I grew up some in Sweetwater and we used to hunt and catch the snakes to sell at the roundup. A lot of times we would go up into Fisher county hunting them.

simple: quail hunt when it's cold.
Hard to walk eight miles in hot weather anyway.

When I was a kid, my family had 1,000 acres 6 miles west of Rotan. That place was covered in rattlesnakes.

I try to hunt the weather in South Texas, problem is the rattle bugs don’t really den up for the winter here.

I've seen them in January.

I’ve seen them every month of the year down south.