No Rattlers

We don’t have em at our place in Lavaca county. Never seen one or heard of anybody else that has and have been going up there my entire life -35 years. Now do you think they could move in at anytime and establish a population or is the habitat not conducive to them thriving? Would be interested in seeing a map that shows how far outside their coverage area we are.

You've got them in Lavaca county, you just have not seen any yet.

They are there we have seen a few. All were timber rattlers

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56021/56021-h/56021-h.htm

Scroll down to Western Diamondback. You definitely have them in Lavaca County. Lots of copperheads, too.

Yep, my great aunt had a place just east of Point Comfort on the bay. She had lots of them. All you had to do to find one was leave the downstairs bathroom door open on a cold night.

Well not on my place then. I spend a lot of time out there and never run across one




Agree on the Copperheads. Have killed dozens over the years

I think your confusing Port Lavaca with Lavaca County....Not the same

Hunted my in-laws ranch in West Texas for over 15 years and can only remember seeing two snakes in that span. Saw more than that the first year on our new place.

I do believe some areas are void of them for the most part

If you have hogs they tend to eat a lot of snakes.

Indeed. Hogs will go mental on some snakes.

We have a place that is loaded with copperheads and the only rattlesnakes that I have seen on that place are timber rattlers on rare occasions. This area is predominantly river bottom sandy type soil. Have another place that we regularly encounter diamondback rattlesnakes and I have never seen a copperhead in that area and this area is black gumbo type soil. This is from the county just south of Lavaca county.

I managed/lived on a large ranch in La Salle county that had tons of hogs and rattlesnakes. The place I own and live on now in Western Goliad county, I have not seen a rattlesnake or any drags for any in the 7 yrs I have owned it. I do not have many hogs on my place. My neighbor to the north of me has owned his place for 23 yrs now and had not seen one rattlesnake in 22 yrs until right after the snow in early Dec of 2017, when he saw his first one. His neighbor on his north fenceline has only seen 2 rattlesnakes in 12 yrs now. The thing I have seen with rattlesnakes are that if you a lot of cactus and rat dens, you have rattlesnakes. On my place I do not have hardly any cactus so I do not have a lot of rat dens. Are they on or around my place? Yes but in low enough numbers that they are never or very rarely seen. I do have a lot of bullsnakes and blue indigos also.

I have a place in Inez, just west of the Jackson county line and south of Lavaca county and in my 22 years there, the first ten of which I used to actively look for and capture snakes, I have probably killed or removed 150 copperheads and about 6 coral snakes but have never found a rattlesnake or water moccasin. We had a pond that had multiple kinds of water snakes, however. But strangely, this December, my brother in law who lives about 150 feet from my property line found a curled up three foot rattlesnake next to his porch in relatively cool weather. So I guess they are around but just not numerous around my property.

Yep. Loaded

I will give you some of ours. Went 7 years and not seen one and now up to over 20 sightings in 2 years. Killed 2 in camp just hanging out! Luckily its dirt so see them easy.

A couple stories what I've seen south of Lavaca county -
Once driving down FM444 about 30 years ago near Inez I saw a log crossing the road behind me. Had to stop, get out, and take a big gasp as it crossed the road. It was big whatever it was and they didn't have pythons back then.
In Port Lavaca area, we saw many small rattlers while fishing 6 mile and the creeks in the area. Matagorda Island has many.
A girl in my high school died in Port O'connor near a place called boggy when she was bit.
I almost stepped on a 4 foot timber coiled up while hiking Coleta Creek area on a sunny fall day. Killed it with a stick.

Don't know if this is true or not but a park ranger told me Garner didn't have rattlers because the deer stomped em, and another told me the blue indigos ate the rattler's young.
Just googled it and found this, a blue indigo eating a rattler - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktk-n_Re31o

My place South of Bowie used to be loaded with snakes. rattlers, copperheads, cotton mouth and king snakes. Then the hogs moved in and seeing a snake of any kind is a rarity. As long as they aren't around the house, I don't mess with them.

Port Lavaca/POC area is covered in them. Ranch I worked on in Olivia we would kill one almost every day on the roads during breeding season. I'm curious about that timber though! Did not think they were down that way. Our family place is just a few miles up 59 and nobody that granny can recall has ever seen a buzz worm. She grew up out there and we've had the place since late 1800's. Lot's of moccasins and copperheads though.

OP: there's a few timbers over close to Provident City area.

I remember the girl who was bit and died near POC. I had met her at a dance shortly before that and couldn't believe that she had died from a snakebite. Her name was Rhonda, I believe. Terrible thing to happen to such a nice girl

I have killed at least 2-4 a year at my place in dickens county since 2011. 2 were in excess of 5 ft with 12 rattles. So fortunate my dogs haven't gotten in to them. While building my deck one decided to crawl within a foot of me before I saw it. Looked down and almost Shxt my pants.

Absolutely. You hit it on the head. If there is a good 'food source' they will be there.

A friend of mine's Dad had a small place down in Encinal (600 acres). He had some parts of the property 'chained off' (this was back in the 70's before all the neat brush mulching equipment they have now). All of the Cactus and Mesquite, etc... would get pushed up into piles (rows really) about 6' high. There were big rats (Norway rats I think) living all throughout those brush piles.

I never saw so many Rattlesnakes on a South Texas ranch and I've been on quite a few. We would go down there in late March or Early April (depending upon the weather) and drive the ranch roads the first couple of hours after sundown. We had a big wooden box with a locking lid in the back of a Jeep and we would catch the snakes we found crossing the sandy roads.

It was not unusual to catch upwards of 20 snakes (no joke) in just a couple of hours. Sometimes we would make a round and come back only to see where several snakes had crawled over our tire tracks, so were missing some as well.

Another place we could find Rattlers in the daytime was in the big Pear Flat on the place. Of course, that took a lot of walking and looking and we had to put those snakes in a pillow case and tote them back, so we did more driving at night. Much more fun to drink beer and cruise for snakes than get right out there amongst them.

We would sell the snakes we caught (live) to a guy who owed a Western Store in Austin (where we lived). He would make all sorts of things from their skins and was paying pretty good money for them (at least for a couple of 20 yr. olds).

I have run across snakes while hunting on other ranches between Cotula and Laredo but 'habitat' makes all the difference.

I had never seen a rattlesnake on a 200 acre place in Mason that we hunted for 12 years, but we were told that the area had one rattler per acre.
We decided to clear the a 9 acre field of yuccas to make a food plot and we killed 10 rattlers. We also flushed rats and mice from the yuccas.
We learned where to look for them.

Great vid

Wow, nice video