snakehandler
Very Well-Known Member
They all like to keep you on your toes!
Mate even the most experienced catchers will not waste the time trying to hook Browns, specially up here in Brisbane, Brown + 40 degree day = put ya hooks away LOL but I take my hat off too you for having a go..
A big thing we always teach, if you cannot do the job walk away and contact someone who can, some days you are just not up to it and your family must always come first...think of how they would react should you be bitten!!
You can only tail when you can find the tail, if it's backed itself into a corner there's little chance of finding it. Then weird things can happen even if you do find the tail, i was once trying to get a grip on a gwardar that was in shed, first the shed started coming off and it was slipping out of my hands, than all the oil from under the skin made things really difficult for me.
Garthy, I would take a punt that the snakes that take a dive at the hidy hole of your bag a predominately browns?
This is the outcome of a technique introduced by one of our more experienced members at our last course whereby browns are bagged without tailing, tongs or pinning.
I was amazed with this. Out of the ten browns we had only one wouldn't respond in the same manner and on later inspection it was noted it had a head injury.Your browns are much easier than mine lol!
The thing is, the people you have mentioned have many years of experience and are knowledgable enough to know when to ease the pressure on the backbreakers (tongs) as the snake tries to get away,so the snake can remain uninjured.These pieces of equipment are used by professional herpetologists such as Dr. Bryan Fry, Mark O'Shea, Donald Schultz, Dr. Wolfgang Wuster and Dr. Sean Bush, given that snakes are their livelihood they consider animal welfare in actions that they take.
tongs are barbaric if you have no idea how to use them, I don’t use tongs when I catch snakes nor do I use a hook either…I prefer the pinning down and grabbing behind the head method. Good on you trigger considering the snake you were up against.
P.S bugger using a hook with a nasty brown snake it would end up around your ears before you knew it...lol
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