Why shotshells for snakes?

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I have had rattlers pursue me until I shot them.
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Rattlesnakes and Copperheads are ambush predators. I've never had one pursue me and I have seen a lot of them. With rattlesnakes, you can just sort of shoo them away in the woods. Copperheads seem to just want to lay there perhaps thinking they have not been discovered? The water moccasin may pursue and that's one deal I can't figure out. Curiosity? Possessed? Dinner? Doesn't seem to make any sense to me on the ground. In water, I could see them pursuing somewhat or seem to pursue.
 
If you hit the snake in the body with a regular bullet, all you do is **** it off, especially rattlers. Gotta hit in the head to kill 'em. If you can hit a moving 50 cet piece that is bobbing back and forth 2 feet off the ground with a bullet then you can get a coiled rattler. I can't so I use shot shells.
 
I'm in South Florida...SW Miami. I'm used to those little freaks. Any large stick, shovel, or my personal favorite..a machete would suffice. Ammo is too expensive nowadays to be shooting them into the ground.
 
We get lots of venomous snakes in my part of the world - rattlesnakes, water moccasins, copperheads. Even the occasional coral snake. I've got pet critters and human critters on my property, so you had better believe that if I run across any of the snakes above in my yard, I'm going to do whatever I can to eliminate them. And it's foolish to think that smaller examples of these snakes (particularly rattlers) are in any way "safe" - juvenile rattlers, unlike grown examples, don't have a regulatory mechanism that limits the amount of venom they inject - so they are likely to dump a much larger amount of venom into you (assuming their fangs can penetrate your clothing and pierce your skin) than an adult rattler.

I don't like to get close to any dangerous animal - if I can stay twenty feet away or more from it and dispatch it, that's what I'm going to do. Snakes are much faster than I am.
 
I have killed well over a hundred rattlers around my home place, 44 in one year. They bite my dogs & horses, so they have to go. My ex stepped on two of them. Bite only to boots, no damage except fright. :eek:

I use snake shot in a .22 that I always have in my pocket. As others stated, it is easier to hit them & no ricochets to worry about. I only remember one snake that I had to shoot twice with .22 shot to kill it.
 
Jeez, If I had realized these hot snakes were so deadly Iwouldn't have handled nearly as many as I have. Maybe I should carry a snake instead of a gun.
 
Snake shot is too expensive as far as I'm concerned plus I've shot snakes about 10 feet away with 38 snake shot and they just look at you and crawl on. My opinion is it ain't worth nothing. As a kid I had a blast with it with rats and shot birds flying with it but you still better be within ten yards. I've shot alot of snakes with all kind of calibers with bullets and never had ricochets bouncing around. Lol. And every snake I see gets killed. Poisioness, non or snakes that are protected. Yea, they may be protected elsewhere but not in my yard.
 
I bought some CCI .357 Mag shotshell cartridges but never tried them.

More recently, I have put together some shotshells using the .45 caliber Speer plastic "shot capsules" designed and sold for the purpose. I used #9 shot because that was the largest I could find.

I have not yet (knock wood) needed to test them on a live snake, but I tested them on a heavy 3-ring binder cover. Nice pattern and penetration at 10 and 15 feet, using a 4" S&W M25 revolver and .45LC shells. The .45 diameter shotshell capsules (25 to a box) cost just under $10/box (several years ago) and hold a much larger quantity of shot than do the .357 diameter capsules, which are also available from Speer.

I also tried a method spelled out in this thread on the castbullet.com site. This gentleman did not use the capsules--interesting approach, if you are a DIYer, might be worth a try. Mine were not as successful--perhaps my glueing practices were less than optimum. Still, a good read and an interesting project.
http://www.castbullet.com/reload/44shot.htm

The crazy thing about rattlesnakes here in South Jersey, they're a protected species!
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Most places we just elect them to public office. ;)
 
second sojourn said
The crazy thing about rattlesnakes here in South Jersey, they're a protected species!!
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Unfortunately, as the more fanatical elements take control of the environmtental movement, this type of tomfoolery is becoming commonplace.
 
I've dispatched a few with the .45 ACP shotshell. I recently picked some up in .40 but I've not used any of those. There's a youtube video or two showing their penetration, which isn't much, but it's enough to dispatch small critters maybe 15ft away. I think tnoutdoors9 did a video on it.

Some people actually think they're good for personal defense, which they're not at all, very shallow penetration and recoil is light and may not cycle in some heavier sprung semi-autos.

Fortunately the venomous snakes aren't real thick around here.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclie...80,d.eWU&fp=ff2967453563543e&biw=1252&bih=585
 
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I use a shotgun, but how are these rounds? It'd be nice to have a magazine if I'm out hunting and I hear a rattler or stumble across a snake and have time to load the pistol.
 
It'd be nice to have a magazine if I'm out hunting and I hear a rattler or stumble across a snake and have time to load the pistol.
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There are two hinderances with trying to use these in an autoloader:
1. Many autoloader's won't cycle them (not enough recoil).
2. It is hard to switch between a shot shell and a bullet on short notice.

That is why many people (including yours truely) use them in a revolver. I keep the first cylinder loaded with a shot shell and the rest with JHPs. If I needed a bullet for a hog or two-legged varmint, I can easily thumb the hammer back twice to put a bullet in position.
 
There are two hinderances with trying to use these in an autoloader:
1. Many autoloader's won't cycle them (not enough recoil).
2. It is hard to switch between a shot shell and a bullet on short notice.

That is why many people (including yours truely) use them in a revolver. I keep the first cylinder loaded with a shot shell and the rest with JHPs. If I needed a bullet for a hog or two-legged varmint, I can easily thumb the hammer back twice to put a bullet in position.
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I am looking at a .38 revolver, but am done buying weapons for awhile. So I'll stick with my old technique that has yet to fail me. Stop don't panic and find a easy and quick way to leave the area. :)
 
I'm in South Florida...SW Miami. I'm used to those little freaks. Any large stick, shovel, or my personal favorite..a machete would suffice. Ammo is too expensive nowadays to be shooting them into the ground.
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While I appreciate the sentiment, back when I took herpetology around 1990, the instructor liked to start class with a couple of fun news articles about people and herps, usually snakes. A lot of the stories were people getting hurt, usually by their own actions when trying to deal with snakes.

The tragically funny stories were of people hurting themselves or others while trying to kill snakes that were not even poisonous.

Suffice it to say that if you try to use tools shorter than their striking capability, then you put yourself in danger by getting in close enough to use the tool.

As brief reminder, if you are currently standing on a snake and do decide to shoot the snake, muzzle control and understanding of ballistics is critical when using a firearm. Several of the news accounts were of self inflicted or buddy inflicted gunshot wounds for folks standing on snakes.
 
Recently my puppy alerted me by his barking and i saw he was barking at a copperhead in my back yard and it was sitting there coiled about a few yards from my back porch. I used a ten ft long curtain rod to pick it up and toss it into the sticks. I saved the curtain rod for future use.
Did not feel the need to use my weapon
 
If I found a copperhead in my yard it would not be tossed into the brush to give it a second chance at either my dog or any of my family.

Your choice, mine would be quite different.
Denis
 
Recently my puppy alerted me by his barking and i saw he was barking at a copperhead in my back yard and it was sitting there coiled about a few yards from my back porch. I used a ten ft long curtain rod to pick it up and toss it into the sticks. I saved the curtain rod for future use.
Did not feel the need to use my weapon
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I will not give a poisonous snake a second chance to attack my wife or my two curious boys who are two yard to understand the effects of venom to a human being.

A lot of places have to know the exact snake to properly give antivenom. My boys just know a snake is a snake.
 
Here's a question - has anybody actually used one of those Bond .410/45 "snake slayer" derringers?

I've shot a couple of rounds from one but not .410 shot. It seems that would have the power and dispersal to do in a snake up to about 15 feet?

I've only actually seen one snake that needed killing. That was a cottonmouth in FL that was in a pile of pilings we were picking up with a crane. I was standing beside the end of the stack and suddenly I felt a "smack" on my boot, and looked down in time to see a black snake head retreating under the wood.

Luckily I had heavy work boots on and while you could see where it hit me it didn't penetrate or leave any venom. Had it been about 8-10 inches higher would have been a different story. We had the crane operator drop the piling on the stack and rolled them around a bit. Then very carefully we moved the stack one by one. At the bottom we found a squashed water moccasin about 4-5 feet long.

Oh, and when I was in basic training at FT. Benning, GA. We were doing a stream crossing, our prissy training company commander, a leg Captain with like two service ribbons and an EIB, was in the line wading the river. He was about 30 feet behind me when someone yelled, "snake!" There was a water moccasin swimming upstream toward us about 100 feet away. Well we all picked up our pace a bit, but suddenly that captain passed me in a blur, he was all but walking on water to get away from the snake! He beat everyone to the other side. LOL
 
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