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Joined: 24 Jul 2016 Posts: 548 Location: Ohio

I dearly love to hunt and eat rabbits. My favorite wild game for tablefare.

While it might not be statistically significant, I have two friends whose sporting dogs were killed by rattlesnakes. The English Cocker was killed by a canebrake on his patio and the Boykin, an Eastern Diamondback. The Boykin was killed on a sunny February day while hunting. Another friend's deer tracking bloodhound, a 100 lb. dog, was seriously injured by a rattlesnake bite that caused significant, permanent muscle loss in one shoulder. The bite happened at night while tracking a wounded deer and the buzzing was heard before the bite. He couldn't find a vet at night. It survived, but Dale never used Cooter again to track deer. I live in a snake infested area. My dogs are snake broken with refresher courses. While controversial, they have annual Red Rocks vaccination. Regardless if effective or not, I would hate for my dogs to be bitten and not have tried everything. It may only be like whistling in the cemetery with the vaccine which I acknowledge . To minimize snake encounters here in the lowcountry of Georgia, I hunt early mornings when the overnight temperatures are in the 40s (F) and don't hunt after temps get above 55. I stay away from sandhill areas where there are gopher tortoises. EDBacks will stay in the burrows in low temps but will surface on a sunny day regardless of temps to bask near the holes where their ambient temps are raised by the sun regardless of ground or air temps. None of the venomous snakes here hibernate. They brumate and come out on warm days which I avoid hunting. We don't have porkies, but we do have feral hogs and gators, both of which can and have killed bird dogs. A buddy lost two Brittanys to gators, witnessing one disappear in the gator's jaws, and also lost a Jack Russell to a canebrake rattler having survived multiple copperhead bites earning him the nickname of Zipperhead. It is not uncommon to hear of snake killed dogs in this area. Gil