Have you shot yore governor on paper yet.

Not yet.o

I have used the crimped 22 shotshells on squirrels before. I imagine it would tear up a snake good.

Well, I whacked my first rattler with my S&W Governor .

Roughly a 4 footer. No comparison to rat shot.

I'd be afraid that I would just piss off a rattlesnake shooting it with .22 rat shot. If you make them mad they will come after you. I have 44 cal shot cartridges loaded with 7 1/2 shot.

Well how did it work Larry?

George

It was very effective

Who'd a thought shooting a rattler would burn up 3 pages?? I use a 22 rifle, as I might see a coyote, skunk, Badger, Bobcat, or eveb a Lion, but a shot gun would be best of all as a strictly snake gun....A cheap single shot sawec off sounds about perfect snake medicine.

I'm late to the party, but I've found the Speer capsules loaded with #9 in a .38 Special to be very effective (at a reasonable distance -- say 8 feet or less). Always shoot for the head. I've also killed possums and similar-sized critters with this load.

My go-to rattlesnake gun is, fittingly, a Colt Diamondback.

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
Who'd a thought shooting a rattler would burn up 3 pages?? I use a 22 rifle, as I might see a coyote, skunk, Badger, Bobcat, or eveb a Lion, but a shot gun would be best of all as a strictly snake gun....A cheap single shot sawec off sounds about perfect snake medicine.

Sure all of those things are better. That was not the point. I needed something that I could carry around with me easily. It is hard to fill feeders, for example, while carrying a 22 rifle or a sawed off shotgun.

Finally, I will add that the next day, within 30 yards of where we whacked the rattler, we caught a moccasin crossing the road. A cold front is coming, they are crawling.

An old cowboy trick to killing snakes with the colt single action, or for that matter any rifle or pistol...keep about 3 ft from the snake depending on size, get the snake coiled to strike, move your pistio in a small circle and squeeze the trigger and it will blow his head off..the snake aims at the moving pistol, it works if done right. Ive seen the same done by Mexican cowboys with the knot of a lariat rope pulled tight, get it spinning and crack the snake in the head..use up to 10 ft. of rope..Surprised this has never been mentioned before! !!

Three feet is a bit closer than I want to get to one of our huge diamondbacks in Georgia. They can strike that far.

My guess is Larry has some that size in his area too.

Yup. No way I hell I would have gotten within 3 feet of the big one I originally wrote about. Definitely in the danger zone.

The biggest I ever shot was a Diamondback in south Texas many moons ago that was 64 inches long with 13 rattles. This year my buddy and I were making a stalk on a buck antelope out in Wyoming and when we sat down for him to make the shot we damn near sat down on the biggest prairie rattler that I've ever seen. My hearing sucks and John initially thought the rattling was the wind blowing the grass that was about a foot high until he saw the snake move. We moved back about 10 feet, John sat back down and shot the buck, and we went out around the rattler to go get the buck and left the snake to do his thing!

quote:

move your pistio in a small circle and squeeze the trigger and it will blow his head off..the snake aims at the moving pistol

Unless the gun is hot from firing it is your hand, not the gun, that the snake is following. Being pit vipers, they sense infrared (heat waves) and have negligible vision in the "visible light" range. Like others, I don't want my hand close enough to attract a snake's attention, so I think I'll use the visible light spectrum that god gave me the ability to see to take careful aim at the snake's head from just a little further back.