Rattlesnakes 2021

[barrybarry]

Milk snakes are really beautiful snakes. When I first saw your picture I immediately thought it might have been a baby black rat snake. We have a lot of them around here. They look very similar. The purple color cast is the giveaway.
I've only seen one copperhead in PA. They are locally abundant. One small area might have a lot and most others none. My friend has had both of his dogs bitten in Perry county. He just happens to have a house in the wrong place.
The York County Copperhead hunt back in the day always netted 30 or 40. Although it always seemed like the same guys won every year. I think they might have been pets.

 

[Prospector]

I was in Potter/Clinton Co this week. On Thursday, we saw a rattlesnake along Young Woman's Creek in the tall clumps of grass. We had been walking in the forest edge just above the high water mark moving to the next hole. The forest edge has zero vegetation and everything is visible. We then went over the bank and we had 20 ft of grass to get to the waters edge. The snake was about 2/3 of the way to the creek. It was stretched out (not coiled). it never rattled but it only had 3 rattle bumps. We could see about 20-25 inches from the rattle forward.

Heard this story on Sunday when we arrived in Potter. There is a gas pipeline project underway that is very visible in the YWC drainage. I’m told it extends from Hyner Run to Dry Run to Young Woman’s Creek. Somewhere up there in the last 4-6 weeks they came across a rattlesnake. Apparently protocol is to bring in a snake expert to capture and relocate snakes in danger. They supposedly relocated 150 rattlers. Must be loaded with dens up there.

 

[riverwhy]

I wonder how many dens are destroyed by building pipelines. Can't be good for snake populations. I remember reading about a den being exposed during building one in winter. I think it was somewhere near the turnpike tunnels. I believe they held them for a while then re-denned them somewhere else. I can't find the article now. Thought it was on Pennlive.

 

[larkmark]

I have seen Copperheads on a few occasions in Lancaster and vYork County. In York the fly section on Muddy Creek has some. The coloration of the ones I have seen is unmistakable as a water snake. They are bright copper color like a penny. The first one I saw in Muddy was swimming across and I thought it was a water snake but noticed the unusual color so I went and checked it out. Since then I have seen them in that section several times. I saw a very large one right in the park at Pinnacle Point in Lancaster County. Also several at Suquehannock Park. I've seen a few right when aheavy storm is moving in so I think maybe that gets them active.

 

[Lkyboots]

Farmer, the PGC was looking for Copperheads to see how many were in the area. It was In Venago County. I hunted in the area and never saw a Copperhead. They said there were more on the sunny side of the big A.

My son works for Kinder Morgan that used to be Tennessee Gas. Before they do any work in snake areas they put 4 by 8 feet tin sheets down and check them later to see if there are any snakes..

 

[FarmerDave]

barrybarry wrote:
Milk snakes are really beautiful snakes. When I first saw your picture I immediately thought it might have been a baby black rat snake. We have a lot of them around here. They look very similar.

I agree 100%. I spotted a baby snake up by Erie bluffs once, my first thought was that it was a baby milk snake. After a little research, I figured out it was a baby rat snake. I have both here, but the milk snakes seem to be more common.

 

[FarmerDave]

Lkyboots wrote:
Farmer, the PGC was looking for Copperheads to see how many were in the area. It was In Venago County. I hunted in the area and never saw a Copperhead. They said there were more on the sunny side of the big A.

My son works for Kinder Morgan that used to be Tennessee Gas. Before they do any work in snake areas they put 4 by 8 feet tin sheets down and check them later to see if there are any snakes..

That surprises me. 40 years ago, the accepted northern boundary for copperheads was about the Clarion River. Must be global warming. ;-)

 

[RLeep2]

I've always found it interesting how random this snake encounter stuff often is. I've never seen a PA rattler, although given the amount of time I spent in snake country, I certainly should have.

Conversely, I actually saw one sunning itself on a hardpan road in the river bluff country of SW Wisconsin where they are probably less than 10% as abundant as they are in the PA snake patch. I had a WI-DNR biologist tell me he had never seen one and he was pretty close to retirement. He also said he wasn't the only one in this agency who had never seen a WI rattler in the wild.

One thing that seems certain to me is that if rattlers were as aggressive as our common water snake, we'd have all been bitten multiple times by now. More than once, I've had water snakes drive me right out of the creek when I was a kid wade fishing. Pretty belligerent..

 

[tztrout]

https://paherpsurvey.org/maps/pars_northern_copperhead.png

Looks like the northern copperhead has been documented in most Pa counties with the exception of the northern tier