One Step From Trouble
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
A black-masked racer makes a meal out of a copperhead.
All of my longtime readers know I can’t make it through a spring without at least one report from the woods, and I’m talking about the turkey woods.
DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
Last week I shared a picture in the Herald of a turkey jeering at me on my trail camera. I caught up with him Friday morning — or, admittedly, one that looked like him — and bagged turkey number two for the season.
It’s been a great season, not just because I’ve had success, but also because of the time spent in the woods. I’ve called up several turkeys that didn’t get shot, missed one that would have made a double with my stepson (he didn’t miss), and called up one for my wife’s cousin that was in range, but another miss followed. At least I wasn’t behind the gun that time.
I fooled with one turkey from daylight until almost noon before admitting defeat, and wasn’t the least bit discouraged. A turkey that will dance and gobble out of gun range for hours is a treat and a smart one. We have decided that this turkey has little interest in girls, and will die of old age.
But I think any turkey hunter will tell you this season will probably be remembered most for the obstacle course in the woods. The limbs are bad enough, ducking and dipping through the downed trees, and I have heard more than one hunter say that they could hear a turkey gobbling but it was too much trouble to go through the woods to get too close to him.
The limbs and trees are bad, but the smaller sticks that came down during Winter Storm Fern are probably the most aggravating. You can’t walk through the woods without hearing crunch, crunch, crunch — the loud sound of sticks breaking underfoot.
I’m always looking down, trying to avoid those sticks so I don’t sound like a herd of elephants walking an obstacle course. And I just happened to be looking down last week when I spotted a long, dark stick that wiggled.
Yikes.
I jumped back, because coming within inches of a snake is not my favorite kind of encounter. If I see one from a distance, no problem. Face to face is another matter altogether.
I bounced back and quickly discovered this snake, a black-masked racer, was occupied. He had just started swallowing a copperhead.
Admittedly, I didn’t know at first it was a racer. I thought snake-eating duties were mostly left to the kingsnake. I only learned otherwise after posting the picture on the Mississippi Snake Forums and Identification Page on Facebook. That’s where I was told the snake enjoying his meal was a black-masked racer, which apparently shares some of the same traits as a kingsnake.
These snake eaters, I learned, are apparently immune to the venom, which makes a copperhead a pretty nice snack.
As I watched the racer, I realized he could hardly slither off with nearly 18 inches of copperhead sticking out of his mouth. So I got close and took a neat picture. The racer was agitated, but all he could do was shake his tail, which I took as his attempt to mimic a rattlesnake.
I held the phone a few feet away and snapped several pictures before going on through the woods. I came back through the woods a couple of hours later, and the snake was gone, presumably with a large bulge.
That little encounter will make you look twice where you step. I think I high-stepped a few times after I went on through the woods if a stick even threatened to move.
The snakes and turkeys must be on the move, and I have seen plenty of rabbits. It must their mating season too.
Snakes and sticks aside, I still enjoy every minute of it, though. The walking may be tougher this year, but it beats being anywhere else. There’s just something about spring mornings in the woods that keeps calling you back.
The next morning I was in the woods, I put on my snake boots for the first time this year.
You never know…
A stick with a few curves always bears a second look, and this stick turned out to be a racer eating a copperhead.
