I took my two older boys out on Saturday to scout for antelope and elk. We took a four wheeler ride up the mountain to meet with the landowners. There is a lot of water and grass this year, the most I have seen in 7 years of hunting the ranch. There was plenty of elk sign down by the creek, in a few weeks I hope to lay one over with my longbow. Anyways we headed back down the mountain to shoot our rifles by some old cotton wood trees. My boys headed over to look at some old cow bones. I told them to watch out for snakes and if they saw one to yell SNAKE and come back running. Well it wasn't 5 minutes and I looked over and here they came running yelling SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE. They made it up to me and I said what did it look like, my older son said it was green and had black stripes. Drew grabbed his 44 mag and we headed over to the tree. I said where is it Kaleb? Dad it's in the tree! By God there was a rattlesnake coiled up and ready to strike, I believe he had just shed his skin, he was ready to strike but wasn't rattling. One bullet from the 44 mag and it was lights out for him. We counted 12 buttons on him. We picked up a set of elk drops earlier that day so we layed the snake on the antlers and took this picture. I was proud of my older son for doing exactly what I said if he saw a snake and his actions prevented one of them from getting bit.
stephen , keep doing what you are doing and you will have pards until they hit puberty then all bets are off , les you can keep them out in the fresh air............
Dean Becker
only one gun and they are 74 s
3rd asst. flunky,high desert chapter F.E.S.
MYWEIGH scale merchant
reclining member of O-G-A-N-T
That's great Stephen! I hope your boys continue to follow in your foot steps. My boys grew up doing that but lost interest eventually the same way I guess as my brothers did. I'm an aging dinosaur in my family on the way to extinction. T-Rex I suppose.
I had gotten possession of a big "50" gun early in the fight, and was making considerable noise with it.
