Last Saturday Mississippi deer hunter Mack Ginn climbed into his tiny box blind around 6 a.m. About 2 hours later he heard a funny rattling sound.
Mack had never head a rattlesnake rattle before, but he started thinking, “That’s probably what a rattler would sound like.”
He looked down and spotted the thick snake on the blind’s floor inches from his foot!
In one giant leap he jumped up and stood on his chair. “My first thought was to get away,” he said. “When I was in that chair, I realized I had nowhere to go.”
Mack had no room to escape the small blind. The snake became agitated and started striking at the chair!
Only one thing to do. Mack aimed his .270 straight down and fired at the angry rattler. He missed, but killed the viper with the second bullet. The shots in the tiny metal blind were deafening, and Mack’s ears rang for days.
The snake measured 4 ½ feet, was thick as a beer can and had 8 rattles.
I am fixing to hunt in Texas and Alabama late this month, and the thought of this is on my mind.
“(In the South snakes) don’t truly hibernate. They’re semi-active. They move around. They’re not in a trance or anything,” said Mississippi herpetologist Terry Vandeventer when he heard about Mack’s snake encounter. “In the South, snakes are active on some level 12 months of the year.”
Remember that if you’re still hunting down South, especially in a ground blind in the dark!
(Photo special to Clarion Ledger)
