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KBIA's Harvest Desk covers food and agriculture issues in Missouri and beyond. The desk is a collaboration between KBIA and Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration focused on issues of food, fuel and field. The desk is headed by reporter Kristofor Husted.

Rattlesnake Roundups Corner Venomous Prey

Brian Hardzinski for Harvest Public Media

    

If there are any rattlesnakes in the rocky hills of northwestern Oklahoma, Ty Judd knows where to find them.

Judd and his friends have been rattlesnake hunting these gypsum hills for years, armed with long metal tongs, a plastic bucket and a few simple rules.

“Watch where you step,” Judd said. “Never put your hand on the side of a hill unless you’ve looked it over because little snakes will curl up there and bite you on the hand.”

We rumbled down dirt paths in pickup trucks, stopping at dens in the craggy rocks. Judd carefully peered into each hole and looked for signs of recent snake activity. After plucking a western diamondback from a hole, he held the snake to the ground with his tong.

“He’s sucking in air so he can get as much power as he can, so he can get as much power to get you,” Judd said.

Rattlesnakes are common in deserts and dry scrubland, but you can also find them in plains and forests. In western Oklahoma, their dens are in holes in the rocky outcrops; that’s the most common place to find them.

Judd’s dad, David Wilson, said when the first homesteaders arrived in prairie towns like Okeene, Oklahoma, they had “a mountain of rattlesnakes in the hills.” Ranchers and farmers wanted to get rid of them, so they started a friendly competition.

“They was killing them, and seeing who could bring in the most. Well then it went from that to seeing who could bring in the biggest,” Wilson said. “Then it went from that to, ‘Oh well, let’s just see who can bring in the most and the biggest live rattlesnakes.’ And then it went from there.”

That competition culminates in Okeene’s rattlesnake roundup, one of five such festivals each year in Oklahoma.

Pit master Todd Felder stood barefoot among nearly 600 rattlesnakes in the so-called “Den of Death.” Felder milked the snakes’ venom and licked it off his hand. Rattlesnake handling is a family tradition. Felder learned it from watching his father and uncle before he stepped into the den the first time.

“I got trained, watched them, how they do it, what they do,” Felder said. “Then I add my own little tricks to the show. Licking that rattlesnake venom off your hand, since it is a hemotoxin, you can get away with that. But if it’s a neurotoxin, you sure don’t want to be taking that on.”

Over 2,000 rattlesnakes went through the roundup this year, but none left alive. A buyer purchases the reptiles for their hides and meat.

Credit Brian Hardzinski for Harvest Public Media
Rattlesnake hunter Ty Judd flashes a rattlesnake's fangs during a hunt on April 16, 2016 near Okeene, Oklahoma.

Ty Judd cracked open a box full of rattlers at the fair’s butcher shop in front of some curious onlookers, grabbed one by the head, and put it on a chopping block, where it met the business end of a hatchet.

The snake is then hung and skinned. The meat goes across the fair to Mike Hippard.

Hippard has a few standby recipes, like deep fried or smoked rattlesnake. This year he’s trying a new one.

“We’re going to make rattlepeños,” Hippard said. “Rattlepeños will be ground up snake meat mixed with cream cheese, we’ll stuff a jalapeño and wrap it with bacon and put it on the smoker for an hour or so.”

Rattlesnake roundups are not as common as they used to be, and a study found they hurt populations of the eastern diamondback rattlesnake. Some roundups in Georgia have stopped killing the animals.

But wildlife diversity biologist Mark Howery with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation doesn’t think the western diamondback here is on the decline.

“We’re not seeing a contraction of their range, we’re not seeing a strange or differing size distribution brought into rattlesnake roundups,” Howery said. “But we don’t really know what the density of rattlesnakes is.”

To some, rattlesnake roundups are inhumane because the snakes are killed as part of show. The Center for Biological Diversity and the American Society of Herpetologists and Ichthyologists have called for an end to roundups.

Cameron Siler, the assistant curator of herpetology at the Sam Noble Museum in Norman and a biology professor at the University of Oklahoma, said it is not appropriate for the festivals to treat animals the way that they do.

Credit Brian Hardzinski for Harvest Public Media
Mike Hippard prepares rattlesnake meat at the Snack Shackat the Okeene Rattlesnake Roundup.

“We would never see this behavior done on any other group of organism on the planet, definitely not in a public forum and celebrating a mass killing of larger or vertebrate animals in general,” Siler said.

Siler said scientists follow the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee protocols to kill animals in research facilities to minimize pain and suffering, and that doesn’t happen at roundups. And he doesn’t buy the argument that roundups protect farmers and livestock.

“I feel like the roundups actually impose a greater risk to humans than just leaving them alone because you’re bringing hundreds of individuals and venomous snakes into close proximity to a large number of humans, which increases the risk of being bitten,” Siler said.

Credit Brian Hardzinski for Harvest Public Media
Rattlesnakes hiss, shake and slither inside the "den of death" at the Okeene, Oklahoma, Rattlesnake Roundup.

And bites are nowhere close to being a leading cause of death in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on average, about five people die each year from snakebites. More die annually from lightning strikes and fireworks accidents.

Jacob spearheads KRCU’s local news effort. His reporting has been heard on NPR’ Morning Edition and All Things Considered, PRI’s The World, and Harvest Public Media. In addition to reporting, Jacob directs KRCU’s team of student reporters and producers.