Buy beef? This is a cattle farm. In poorer times I had to eat lots of venison and even rattlesnake, but now, being better off, I can afford to have a steer slaughtered every year instead of having to sell every single one I raise.
You Alabama boys surely know how to impress Tennessee girls. 
(I hope you nicknamed him Finebaum.)
Its should be noted at this point that anyone doing a Crocodile Hunter impersonation in Australia is likely to shot at, rather than the snake.
Yep, I’ve been interested in reptiles since I was a kid, worked in a venom lab when I was in my 20’s, bred king snakes and dart frogs for fun and profit for a while, and have been particularly fascinated by rattlesnakes for a long time. When I needed to pick a user name here, Crotalus just popped into my head. I didn’t pick it to use it as a persona, but after reading your OP I had to. And lest you think that this snake-lover might disapprove of your treatment of rattlers, I’ve caught so many big canebrake rattlers in residential areas in south Georgia that I can easily understand the instinct to exterminate. They are very dangerous animals.
Indeed! Once in the past I had very good luck impressing a Tennessee girl. I brought 'er home, took ‘er fishin’ so she could catch 'er own supper, served 'er scrambled bream, hush-puppies, fried rattlesnake fritters and cheese grits, gave ‘er some white lightnin’ to wash it down with and I was impressive!
Sadly, keeping her impressed turned out to be more of a problem for me.
I wouldn’t do that to a rattlesnake! Unlike Finebaum, a rattlesnake deserves a certain level of respect.
Shouldn’t it have been named Elvis?
Regards,
Shodan
It is really hard to keep a grip on their nipples…
JCM, To avoid that richochet problem in the future, would these be helpful? .22 shotshell, a.k.a “snakeshot.”
-Tcat
Great. I used to have bad dreams of ear wigs. Now I’ll have bad dreams of ass snakes.
You’re correct, that would be the ideal choice. In fact, I have a box of those shells on hand.
However: Time was of the essence. Seconds drag into hours when your wife is confined in a 6x10 foot pen with an angry rattlesnake. I had three loaded weapons available to grab quickly: A Model 1911-A Colt .45 pistol, a 12 gage shotgun loaded with #4 shot, and the .22 loaded with long rifle hollow points. I judged the .22 to be the lesser of evils.
If time hadn’t been so pressing I’d have loaded another .22 with the “ratshot”, as we call it.
Since hind sight is 20-20, maybe l’l load another of the .22s with shot, and have it ready if something like this happens again.
I always get nervous when I see Crotalus and Cricetus in the same thread.
How did I miss this post?
Oh, Shodan, that was so good. So very, very good. I bow to you, sir. My children shall know of you. 
Cricetus should get nervous. And you too, I suppose. A goodly sized rattler would probably consider Rhynchocyon to be a tasty morsel.
Love to eat those hamsters and shrews!
Just try me, snake. I’ll open up a can of hamster-style rikki tikki tavvi on your scaley ass.
Maybe we could just all get along.
Is that the same rikki-tikki-tembo-nosarembo-charlie-barley-ruchi-pip-berry-pembo I remember reading in elementary school?
I cannot fucking believe I remembered that. :smack:
But good luck to me finding my car keys.
I had to behead a little 3’ rattler with a shovel while I was home in Northern California for my father’s memorial service a few years back. Our house is pretty much smack-dab in the middle of the wilderness, so I can’t say that I blamed it. Even so, I had never seen one anywhere on our property before (let alone 6 feet from the front steps) in all of my tomboyish, skinned knees, pitch in my hair, dirt in every pore adventures.
Under any other circumstances, I would’ve tried to scoop it into a bucket and carry it off into the woods somewhere, but we had a lot of people and children visiting the house, many of whom were friends and family from the city, with precious little awareness of their surroundings, or the fact that they weren’t in suburbia anymore. The cats were spending more time outside than usual, since the house was overrun with strangers. If I’d tried to just shoo it away, it might’ve headed toward the barn and our horses. So…I thought about all of this in the span of about 30 seconds, and grabbed the nearest shovel. After I’d done the deed, I took the maimed remains out into the woods, said a few words of apology, and left it in the hollow of a live oak, to be munched on and consumed by whatever happened by.