My First Removal

[waruikazi]

Its about when to take the snake as much as how. You can tail any snake as long as you have the upper hand, and the head is going away. Hook, hand , bag, done. Good hand to eye coordination is a must, and as said, picking the moment, is all important. Not for everybody, and one day, a slight misjudgement could cost anyone a hit. Black Snake, on a 26 degree day is like lightning.

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.

 

[andyscott]

why the hell would u need a pair of barbaric tongs learn to hook or hand back your permit

I take it you have zero experiance handling vens sacred-DUC.

Yes hooks are the prefured method for most captures.
When Im handling vens, I would use a hook 95% of the time but have you ever had a 6 foot angry Brown on a hook?
I have and they are one of only a few snakes that you never have 100% control over on a hook.

In a confined area, with their agility and speed sometimes tongs are needed.
Id prefure a trained snake handler with tongs over a scared home owner with a shovel.

After all it is the catchers safety that comes 1st
Well done Trigger, hope this is the 1st of many safe captures and relocations.

 

[waruikazi]

Righto, i'm not sure what the problem was earlier but here's another go.

There is nothing wrong with using tongs under the right circumstances and IF they have been modified correctly. The right circumstances are, amongst others, when it is either a spastic little critter or you can't find the tail. To modify tongs properly you need to put padding on them so that if you put your finger in them and squeeze as hard as you can you don't feel any pain. Best materials i found to do this is foam padding and heat shrink. This is the best picture i have that shows this

Courtesy NT news.

 

[m.punja]

Great pics and nice snakes. Hope all goes well for you and the snakes. How big were they roughly? Wonder if they were breeding or would it be too late in the season? I don't think a snakes attention spand is real long so if you stick around they might come back out of their own without you having to lift the concrete. There is a clip on youtube of a gold coast snake catcher who went to a location where are brown snake had been coming out to bask every fifteen minutes, he just waited paitently and it came out and he pined and baged it. All the best, let us know how it goes.

 

[ecosnake]

Those tonge are not so bad, alot of people that have an issue with tongues, it comes from way back when the first tongues started to arrive in Australia they could damage a snakes very easily, and offent associated with the rattlesnake round up in the state, but the ones you can get now a days are not that bad at all

 

[waruikazi]

Those tonge are not so bad, alot of people that have an issue with tongues, it comes from way back when the first tongues started to arrive in Australia they could damage a snakes very easily, and offent associated with the rattlesnake round up in the state, but the ones you can get now a days are not that bad at all

IMO even the ones you get now need to be modified for the snakes safety.

 

[ecosnake]

I cant recall, but theres a mob inTassie that do a very snake friendly tongue.......their name will come to me again, they costly but good....Raptor tongues or something like that.

 

[ecosnake]

I knew I would find them....if I was going to use tongs this is what I would use....

http://www.gondwanastudios.com/raptor

 

[m.punja]

i have a mate that uses that pinning stick and it works a treat

 

[elapid66]

personly i would perfer the leather strap on the tongs to be wider and the base and the strap on the pinner to be wider and made of leather not lylon otherwise there good but hey thats just me

 

[elapid68]

As for "snakehandler", my recall is that Simon Watharow got chomped by a Tiger at the Melbourne show a few years back and carted off to hopsital.
After that he sold the business name to "snakehandler' who posts here and that means neither of you two have perfect safety records.
quote]

I too am fairly certain it wasn't Simon who got tagged at the show. I know of one handler at the show a few years back who was tagged but I'm pretty sure it was by a Mulga not a Tiger.

 

[zulu]

re My

Best of luck trigger,just a bugger your catching snakes where theres plenty of browns,and you will find out there is browns and theres browns.Theres your standard 4 to five ft type and then theres the dirty filthy big giant type around 6 to 7 ft and they stand up chomping and going forward at you,Ha Ha any one silly enough to catch them needs a hero award :lol:
Make sure you put them in bags with no holes,a catcher gave me two average size browns to let go,they escaped in the car and i was on the side of the road trying to flush them from under the seats,that was fun.

 

[m.punja]

Best of luck trigger,just a bugger your catching snakes where theres plenty of browns,and you will find out there is browns and theres browns.Theres your standard 4 to five ft type and then theres the dirty filthy big giant type around 6 to 7 ft and they stand up chomping and going forward at you,Ha Ha any one silly enough to catch them needs a hero award :lol:
Make sure you put them in bags with no holes,a catcher gave me two average size browns to let go,they escaped in the car and i was on the side of the road trying to flush them from under the seats,that was fun.

well that story will have me laughing for the rest of the day. Nice one. I had to get a brown out of my gf's parents place the other day, it did something new for me. It reared up in the typical s position, opened it's mought, then instead of striking it just slithered toward me like it suddenly new it was too far away, it kept its position and still had it's mouth open it was just use it's lower body to slither toward me.

 

[timpye1]

yeah ive had that too m.punja.. it looks quite impressive.. all we get here is browns really.

 

[zulu]

My

well that story will have me laughing for the rest of the day. Nice one. I had to get a brown out of my gf's parents place the other day, it did something new for me. It reared up in the typical s position, opened it's mought, then instead of striking it just slithered toward me like it suddenly new it was too far away, it kept its position and still had it's mouth open it was just use it's lower body to slither toward me.

Yeh punj,i grabbed a humongous brown near penrith that was laying in kikuya grass in an isolated area near the nepean river,when my arm was in the air high it came right up close with its head i didnt realize how big it was,which would be over 6ft.I dropped the thing and it stood its ground with the head high off the ground in an S and clamping its jaws,then would come forward like you described,eventually it went under a big slab of concrete that was towards the back of where i was standing.You couldnt teach the size and aggro of these big browns you just have to experience it,catching them is an occupational health and safety thing these days and one would err to the safest possible method for the catcher first.Never used tongs but if they was padded may be alright,mainly a jigger was used if i had one available at the time.

 

[Nodrog]

Ain't it sad that we go from trigger bieng very happy / sad about the first catch he has to do (i say sad cause i bet you were expecting pythons) to people trying to discredit snakecatchers when they obviously don't have the proof to back it up. A post that made people think and laugh at the photos (of the so called pythons) talks about how wrong people are or ain't. Trigger i feel for you i wish that was me out there i am still trying to see my first wild snake in over 5 years. You bieng out there means that tomorrow or the next day some snake won"t become victim to a shovel> anyway you can catch and release without to much stress is fine to proberly 90% of the people here.... Thank you for taking the time to do this....

 

[Pandora Pythons]

Well said Nodrog

 

[moosenoose]

Good for you for doing what you can to save such amazing animals! If only THEY knew what we as human beings were trying to do in an attempt to save them, we'd have the perfect scenario!

I'm a firm believer in this: If you don't read the snake in the way you have to handle/or approach it, you're going to get bitten (or severely risk a bite)! They are faster than us (guaranteed!), and in regards to a human approaching a snake, they are certainly more scared than us! 100% of the time, no argument!

Our best defence on actually tailing a snake (in my mind) is that you can bank on the fact that "most times" they are too scared to turn around and have a go. Eastern browns and taipans seem to rank up there on the top shelf of snakes who'll "bite rather than wonder"- both spook the hell outta me! Fast, alert, intelligent! You've done well! Play it safe!

 

[rockman]

Jonno Lucs, didn't you get pinned by an adder when doing a course recently and then stopped the course to go to hospital?

HA HA HA , GOLD .

I think it was called " RISK MINIMISATION " .

Cheers

 

[waruikazi]

Eastern browns and taipans seem to rank up there on the top shelf of snakes who'll "bite rather than wonder"- both spook the hell outta me! Fast, alert, intelligent! You've done well! Play it safe!

And Mulgas!