Using Pepper Spray or Bear Spray on Rattlesnakes, good idea or bad idea? (Tucson: safety, to move)

[ChuteTheMall]

I'd either leave the snake alone, or encourage it to move along using a stick.

In the rare even where a snake needs to be killed, a skillful decapitation with a machete works on the smaller ones, but a long handled shovel makes me feel safer.

I haven't felt the need to kill a snake in over 40 years.
I haven't seen a snake in the wild since yesterday.
We just stared at each other for awhile, then I left. He won.

[beenhereandthere]

Originally Posted by Kimballette

Agree with both posters. Why do you think you need to use pepper spray (in lieu of guns) on a snake? Live and let live.

Heard of people using guns on them so that's why I asked

[43north87west]

Unless it's in your house or garage or something, just leave them alone. They're pretty docile when not defending themselves.

[Kimballette]

Originally Posted by beenhereandthere

Heard of people using guns on them so that's why I asked

Well, just because some people shoot them, doesn't mean they need to or should. Ditto for pepper spray. You've gotten good advice here - live and let live.

[johnp292]

I'm no expert but I would think pepper spray would just result in a pissed off snake that's now sure it's being attacked. Not a good combination.

[Steve Pickering]

Originally Posted by phetaroi

I would still like to know the answer to the OP.

The answer was no it doesn't work. They will just react with a strike as they don't need to see to nail you.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

When I was a young man living in Tucson in the sixties, I did a lot of quail and dove hunting in the remote (back then) desert around Tucson.
We ran into rattlesnakes all the time.

In fact, we used to kill them with a 22 pistol, skin them and make hatbands (with rattles) and belt buckles that we would sell to the tourists at swap meets.
We would also make those round domed polyester resin paperweight things with their heads.
They were hot selling items, but that was a different era, and I won't make any excuses or apologies for it...

When we hunted them, we would use a pole with a loop on it, poke it into their dens, snare them and drop them into a burlap sack, then drown them and skin them later.
We saved and ate the meat at parties and special occasions.
I still can't stand and hate the smell of snake blood.

In later years when pepper spray became widely available, my brother told me that he tried it once to see what would happen, and it had absolutely no affect on the snake.

DON"T DO IT EXPECTING TO INCAPACITATE THE SNAKE! . IT DOES NOT WORK!

Our best defenses against rattlesnakes were to wear snake leggings, which were made of hard plastic that wrapped around your lower leg, wear a good pair of heavy leather boots, carry a small 22 handgun, and if in the early morning, to carefully watch where you stepped.
They have this nasty habit of warming themselves on the bare sand mounds of anthills, which retain daytime heat for some reason, I believe because of the little ant tunnel networks retaining air underground, which in turned retained the heat.

And we never messed with a rattlesnake unless we were prepared for the consequences. (We wore approriate gear and carried at least two medical snakebite kits each)
There is nothing scarier than hearing a rattlesnake "go off" within feet of you, you have no idea where they are, and then realizing there is nothing you can do once you find out.
The sound is very hard to pinpoint. It sounds like it is coming from everywhere all at once.

I worked part-time at Old Tucson (in the old pre-fire days - one hell of a great experience) for a few years back then, and we got asked about rattlesnakes all the time.
We just told people not to mess with them (or else bad things would happen), and go back the way they came, and tell an employee where they saw it.
The few people that saw them, observed them quickly slithering away to hide, by the way.

But because of all the human activity, actual rattlesnake sightings there were very rare, unless people wandered into the sets on the outskirts of town.
Cholla cactus and Black Widow spider bites were actually a much bigger problem!

[jimj]

Just as an aside, a CO2 fire extinguisher works well on snakes. Snakecicle anyone?

[jamies]

Grenades, we use grenades in our part of the state. Just grab the snake force it's mouth open, watching out for the fangs, then stuff the grenade down it's throat, fling it as far as you can and run like he..ck.

Yep, that or a 44 mag.

Seriously, a snake in the wild, leave it alone, one in your house, call animal control

[jlawrence01]

Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx

I worked part-time at Old Tucson (in the old pre-fire days - one hell of a great experience) for a few years back then, and we got asked about rattlesnakes all the time.
We just told people not to mess with them (or else bad things would happen), and go back the way they came, and tell an employee where they saw it.
The few people that saw them, observed them quickly slithering away to hide, by the way.!

On my first trip to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, I was at one of the exhibits looking for the animal in an exhibit. I looked down and there was a six foot black snake running over my sneakers. I froze and fortunately, he kept a going.

If you are hiking a trail say at Madera or Sabino canyon, how likely are you to encounter a rattlesnake? Do you really need to wear those legginds just for hiking?