Rattlers and Snappers

I think the highlight of my snake days happened during deer season a long time ago. I wrote about it in The Mountain Journal; it was part of a story called "If Only . . . A Look Back At What Used To Be."

Speaking of snakes, I recall how we used to set up road checks during trout season and later in deer season. Late one afternoon in buck season in the early 1950s, we were conducting a check along Route 120 just above Truman. It was very warm, no snow, and for some unknown reason I always kept fifteen or twenty large rattlers alive in an old building on the State Game Lands. I felt it was time to get rid of them.

The morning of the road check, I killed seven or eight large snakes, cut their heads off, and put them in the back of my car. In those days, we had to use our own personal vehicles.

Later that day at the road check, we encountered some pretty nasty individuals, a group of five men in the same vehicle who obviously had plenty of refreshments under their belt. We had encountered that same group in the past. Mont Close and the deputies had the group stopped, but they were so argumentative that a long line of cars was forming. I didn’t want to inconvenience other sportsmen, so I told the deputies to have them pull their car off to the side of the road and check their licenses. I would check their trunk.

Five minutes later, I advised the deputies that everything was all right in the trunk and instructed the unruly individuals to take off. The deputies were a little reluctant to set them free because they hadn’t finished the license inspection, but they let the group go. As they pulled away, they shouted some pretty nasty comments at us.

Four or five years later, several of the deputies on another road check began wondering about that group and why we hadn’t seen them for a long time. I didn’t say much, but I knew. To this day, I think Mont Close and Bill Kephart are the only officers still around who helped on that road check. I explained to them the rumors I heard about how, years ago, a group of hunters had returned after a big hunting trip up north. They were under the weather from the long, hard hunt. It was late when they arrived home near Pittsburgh and they started to unload the trunk of the car in the dark.