Best snake dispatching knife

MolokaiRider said:
While we don't have any poisonous snakes, we do have a ton of these.

*Not my pic*View attachment 2140944

They are pretty fast and the bite painful. I don't use a knife, but have been known to smash 'em with a rubber slipper!
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okay think ya got something there I might hate more than snakes and pit vipers....damn that is awful lookin....id be tempted to boot heel smash it, just cause.......
 
Steely_Gunz said:
I've never met a snake I've needed to kill. Venom is precious and costly for a snake to waste. They don't just bite to be a jerk. Yes there are some that are aggressive. I've had a couple of pants-pooping run ins with cottonmouths, but none of them seemed to want to really bite me. Don't screw with a snake, give it a path to get away, and most likely you and the snake will part on good terms with you being unbitten and the snake alive.

We don't have big strikers around here like rattlers, so I put snake knives right up there with bear guns in terms of "cool to talk about online but utterly impractical in real life" when it comes to my neck of the woods.
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Absolutely! Had any of these rattler's wanted to have bitten me, 2 of them could've easily done so. On both those occasions as I walked by easily within striking distance, instead of striking, they coiled up into a defensive position, and started rattling, warning me of their presence.
 
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When it comes to killing snakes, I generally will leave them alone when seeing one outside. When they get inside the house though they have got to go. I am not really afraid of them, but as a general rule anything with less than two or more than four legs, I do not like :confused:
 
Most snakes are not a threat to humans. I leave garden variety snakes alone because they eat rodents. Aside from being pests, rodent populations feed tick populations and in turn work to spread Lyme disease. Natural predators for rodents are a good thing.

Venomous snakes are another story. While snake shot is a thing, they can be dispatched with regular handgun ammo. Aside from personal experience, Paul Harrell does a nice presentation on this if you can find it. It might be in his series on the Taurus Judge.

Beyond that, a walking stick or spear is much better than a knife because distance is your friend. I haven't spent much time traipsing arround the woods with a spear but walking sticks are common enough. When I was young and didn't carry a firearm, I used to hike in a place with lots of rattlers. My friends and I would just pitch them with our sticks. Essentially, you hold your stick at maximum extension, try to plant the other end beneath the center of their mass, and then quickly fling them off the trail. We'd pride ourselves on distance. šŸ˜œ
 
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Not recommended at all is the folllowing: My brother in law and I dispatched a 6' diamondback over spring break. I'd slowed him down a bit with a hole made of #4 .410 buckshot but there was still a lot of snake and fight to go. My brother in law stepped behind its head then realized he had no knife on him. I had a combat troodon (dagger blade) which I passed over. He stuck it behind the head. I dont think I realized fully that daggers don't slice quite as well as other blade grinds. It stabbed nicely with some force applied to pommel, but actually removing the head was too much work for how sharp that knife is. Point being, daggers aren't the best slicers, dont think outdoor activities lend themselves to dagger grinds. So no daggers for snakes. I'd prefer to have shot him some more, but he'd moved to where it wasn't safe to shoot. And I've preferred bird shot, we wouldn't have had any further trouble with more spread. Next preference would have been a garden hoe applied with extreme prejudice. But needs must and all that.
 
The only snakes that I have euthanized were ones that were previously mangled by heavy equipment.

Tools of the trade.
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MolokaiRider said:
While we don't have any poisonous snakes, we do have a ton of these.

*Not my pic*View attachment 2140944

They are pretty fast and the bite painful. I don't use a knife, but have been known to smash 'em with a rubber slipper!
šŸ¤£
Click to expand...
I think any of the Marines posted out your way who woke up with these on them while out on exercise are likely still in therapy.

I'm pretty sure that in a fair fight, you're not going to outdraw a snake, unless it obliges you by giving you fair warning. You're probably going to want an Emerson style, pants destroying opener and not an old timey nail nick. You probably don't want an auto either though, especially if it's in your pant's pocket, because the adrenalin of the moment will likely have you set it off while it's in your pocket. Then you're going to need a snake bite kit, because the snake is faster and probably has better aim than you do, unless you pin it first with something reachy before dispatching it.

I've spent a lot of rattlesnake country and never had any problems. You just need to keep alert to your surroundings and don't make a habit of flipping over every stray pile of rocks or piece of wood you come across for the sheer joy of it. It's the same way I get stung less by bees and wasps than other people. I keep an eye out for unusual clumps of grass in the bush. I don't have any experience though where they have just so many more poisonous snakes that live among them. Some people wear bite proof or bite resistant gaitors and others just sweep the grass ahead with a stick. It's what people are used to dealing with, but I'm not certain I'd ever get used to cobras wandering around my home the way they do in NE India.
 
The Grendels said:
I think any of the Marines posted out your way who woke up with these on them while out on exercise are likely still in therapy.

I'm pretty sure that in a fair fight, you're not going to outdraw a snake, unless it obliges you by giving you fair warning. You're probably going to want an Emerson style, pants destroying opener and not an old timey nail nick. You probably don't want an auto either though, especially if it's in your pant's pocket, because the adrenalin of the moment will likely have you set it off while it's in your pocket. Then you're going to need a snake bite kit, because the snake is faster and probably has better aim than you do, unless you pin it first with something reachy before dispatching it.

I've spent a lot of rattlesnake country and never had any problems. You just need to keep alert to your surroundings and don't make a habit of flipping over every stray pile of rocks or piece of wood you come across for the sheer joy of it. It's the same way I get stung less by bees and wasps than other people. I keep an eye out for unusual clumps of grass in the bush. I don't have any experience though where they have just so many more poisonous snakes that live among them. Some people wear bite proof or bite resistant gaitors and others just sweep the grass ahead with a stick. It's what people are used to dealing with, but I'm not certain I'd ever get used to cobras wandering around my home the way they do in NE India.
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I hear ya.

Those darn critters like to crawl into bed with you for body heat at night. Not a great way to wake up.
 
The Grendels said:
I think any of the Marines posted out your way who woke up with these on them while out on exercise are likely still in therapy.

I'm pretty sure that in a fair fight, you're not going to outdraw a snake, unless it obliges you by giving you fair warning. You're probably going to want an Emerson style, pants destroying opener and not an old timey nail nick. You probably don't want an auto either though, especially if it's in your pant's pocket, because the adrenalin of the moment will likely have you set it off while it's in your pocket. Then you're going to need a snake bite kit, because the snake is faster and probably has better aim than you do, unless you pin it first with something reachy before dispatching it.

I've spent a lot of rattlesnake country and never had any problems. You just need to keep alert to your surroundings and don't make a habit of flipping over every stray pile of rocks or piece of wood you come across for the sheer joy of it. It's the same way I get stung less by bees and wasps than other people. I keep an eye out for unusual clumps of grass in the bush. I don't have any experience though where they have just so many more poisonous snakes that live among them. Some people wear bite proof or bite resistant gaitors and others just sweep the grass ahead with a stick. It's what people are used to dealing with, but I'm not certain I'd ever get used to cobras wandering around my home the way they do in NE India.
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My timetested method for wasps that bother is cut off their heads with my kershaw emerson folder.
 
Chronovore said:
Most snakes are not a threat to humans. I leave garden variety snakes alone because they eat rodents. Aside from being pests, rodent populations feed tick populations and in turn work to spread Lyme disease. Natural predators for rodents are a good thing.
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Totally agree, also with some guys on this page. The problem is, when the snake doesn't know that you don't see her and when you get too close to it, it's too late, she protects her ground...
It happened to me many times and we don't always have only rattlers, we got nasty, aggressive moccasins/cottonmouths that I was lucky to avoid through the years on few occasions.
Small ones, as some guys also mentioned, are dumb and more aggressive and you will less notice those because of the smaller size.
Another unfortunate is when you can't really move too fast in case like this... Knife won't do it IMO. Steely_Gunz Steely_Gunz formulated very well all this talk...
You will need a fast dispatching solution before it attack you and sort of protection from the actual bite. To me shake shots checks my requirements.
Central Florida, any way you've looking at it, if I'll have to work for more than 30min in my property, I'd have my blue jeans and my Adidas Unity mids on, sometimes kneepads too,
this is regardless if it's blasting August sun and 120 degrees outside, on 100% humidity... Prevention helps me avoid unnecessary headache.
Also from personal experience - the head will still retain movement and will bite, even removed from the body, depending how aggressive the snake was when you got her...
Yo killed her, leave her alone for few minutes, it won't go anywhere. In the rare cases I kill a poisonous snake, I usually find an ant mound somewhere far from the house and leave the body there.
The ants will have a dinner, they are also God's creatures, and it's cool to check the skeleton in a few days. šŸ˜‚
We also have bunch of predatory birds that I actually have on tape hunting all sorts of snakes around...
 
Mannlicher said:
unless they are close and aggressive, I give all snakes a bye. If I have to dispatch one though, I do it with extreme prejudice :eek:
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How Palio-Lithic of you!

If only Adam and Eve had figured out the Forked-Stick-And-Rock thing . . . .
 
VorpelSword said:
I recommend everyone read "Riki-Tiki-Tsvi" by Kipling. I think it is in The Jungle Books.
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Or you could watch the nearly emotionally scarring animated version that was on TV when I was a kid :D I was pretty freaked out by cobras for a good bit after they ran that on Saturday morning.

The last up close run in I had with a "dangerous" snake was about 4 or 5 years ago as I walked in the early spring woods on my Uncle's property. It was a warm day around this time of year, and we stumbled upon a copperhead sitting in the sun on a pile of leaves. Sleepy boi woke up, reared up, and started doing the away/stay away dances then started to dart diagonally kinda towards us and kinda away like it couldn't decide if it should try to flee and potentially get caught since it was sluggish or stand it's ground and drive us off.

I had a 3' long stick. I could have teed off on that snake if I had had more time or the notion to do so. Instead I just got out an "aye!" and gave it a light boot to the snout mid posturing strike and kinda just ambled off half reared up and under a log.

Snakes can be dangerous, but around here a pair of thick jeans and shin high boots under them make you nearly impervious to a bite. Venomous ones don't get that big in this area, really. I will concede that they get much more dangerous when they warm up and the hiker wears shorts. My counterpoint to that is that the only time I have found myself really toe to toe with a snake is when it's trying to wake up from the winter and can't move much. My summer time surprises are generally the snake getting startled before I even see it and shooting across my path and way from me as fast as it can.

I could kill a snake if I had to, but I would be much more likely to mash the hell out of one of those creepy foot long centipedes MolokaiRider MolokaiRider posted pics of. Not many critters bother me, but the way a centipede moves, how fast it is, how aggressive they can be with their venomous claws...even the little ones make me squirm. Balloon it up in size to where it catches and eats something as big as mice...no thanks. Kill it with fire. Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
 
A long, long spade and a sharp edgeā€¦the further away the better. It was a black snake, I should have let it go but I was scared for my dog.
 
Steely_Gunz said:
Or you could watch the nearly emotionally scarring animated version that was on TV when I was a kid :D I was pretty freaked out by cobras for a good bit after they ran that on Saturday morning.

The last up close run in I had with a "dangerous" snake was about 4 or 5 years ago as I walked in the early spring woods on my Uncle's property. It was a warm day around this time of year, and we stumbled upon a copperhead sitting in the sun on a pile of leaves. Sleepy boi woke up, reared up, and started doing the away/stay away dances then started to dart diagonally kinda towards us and kinda away like it couldn't decide if it should try to flee and potentially get caught since it was sluggish or stand it's ground and drive us off.

I had a 3' long stick. I could have teed off on that snake if I had had more time or the notion to do so. Instead I just got out an "aye!" and gave it a light boot to the snout mid posturing strike and kinda just ambled off half reared up and under a log.

Snakes can be dangerous, but around here a pair of thick jeans and shin high boots under them make you nearly impervious to a bite. Venomous ones don't get that big in this area, really. I will concede that they get much more dangerous when they warm up and the hiker wears shorts. My counterpoint to that is that the only time I have found myself really toe to toe with a snake is when it's trying to wake up from the winter and can't move much. My summer time surprises are generally the snake getting startled before I even see it and shooting across my path and way from me as fast as it can.

I could kill a snake if I had to, but I would be much more likely to mash the hell out of one of those creepy foot long centipedes MolokaiRider MolokaiRider posted pics of. Not many critters bother me, but the way a centipede moves, how fast it is, how aggressive they can be with their venomous claws...even the little ones make me squirm. Balloon it up in size to where it catches and eats something as big as mice...no thanks. Kill it with fire. Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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I loved Riki tiki tavi!!
 
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