What is your Rattler story?

[slough foot]

I fished the Deschutes and during the 36 hours we were there, between the 4 of us we had 7 rattler encounters. I remember working the river's edge while in the water and climbing out to go around a deep spot to hear a rattler that I couldn't see due to the thick high grass. The next morning I go for a nature call to see one coiled in the path. I had a lot of fun there but probably won't go back due to the rattle snakes.

[Saltamontes]

This is too crepy for me. I have a HUGE fear of snakes, heck seeing a garter snake does it for me. I'm happy there are no such critters where I fish (some garters), otherwise you would not catch me outdoors. I know I have no real reason to be so terrified of these things, but just the thought of seeing one of them makes my skin crawl.

[Grubb]

My Wife Susan and I camped out up on Skyline drive, when leaving the next morning we ran across a what I thought was a pretty good size black snake when pulling out of the camping area on to the main road. It was a bit chilly so I figured it was laying halfway out in the road to get some of the heat. But when pulling up closer in our Jeep to it I noticed its head and body looked a bit interesting, so I slowed down to a stop to get a real good look, sure enough, it was the coolest snake I have ever seen, it was a rare ( for around here but not unseen b-4) solid black Rattler, with a long rattler sticking up out of the grass. that snake looked like he was saying, I'm bad and I know it. In todays lingo, he was just chillin...lol

[Grunt]

Got a snake story but not rattler and not fishing. Along time ago in a place far far away I was assigned to a LP "listening post". We had a hard day losing three members of my squad and our platoon comander while assulting North Vietnamese machine guns. The LP was in a tree line between our positions and the dug in NVA. Me and another Marine crawled out and were back to back in our position in that tree line. Every fifteen minutes I would key the radio handset two clicks to let our lines know we were ok. We were about one hundred yards in front of our lines. We saw a NVA patrol probing out lines twenty feet from our position and hoped that we would,'t get caught in the crossfire. I looked up into the treeline and saw movement. A big snake! A triangle shaped head and a slim body about ten feet long.Not a constrictor or an bamboo viper. Our Corpsmen had a class on this snake, a two step a Fer De Lance. The NVA shot down one med-evac helocopter that day and our wounded were not getting out and a bite from this snake meant death. I had a .45 in one hand and the radio handset in my other and me and that snake were face to face two feet apart fot ten minutes. Every now and then it would flick it's tounge. The Marine that I was back to back with didn't know the snake was there and I couldn't move and let him know. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and pointed my 45. at the snake and fired a round. I was blinded by the muzzle flash and by the time the ejected casing hit the ground we were up and running back to out lines yelling " coming in coming in" I was so intent on getting to getting back to our lines that I ran head long into a dug in tank and knocked myself out. They tried to get us to go back on LP but I refused to go back out.
I still like snakes.

[Gnu Bee Flyer]

Grunt it sounds like someone should make a movie out of your tour. Knocked out running into a tank ha ha too funny. It would make a huge comedy. Either Jim Cary or Paulie Shore could play the part of Grunt. hahahahaha

Thanks for your service to your country I am in awe of you guys.