The skin peels off pretty easily, but there is quite a but of connective tissue and what not still adhearing. I find that having a couple of paper towels handy helps. The skin, and the snake can be pretty slippery, and gripping them with a paper towel helps to hold on to them.
I scrape the skin with my knife held at a 90 degree angle to the skin. To avoid cutting it, just make sure you scrape the knife blade side ways and dont pull the knife in a cutting motion as you scrape (if that makes sence). It isn't that hard to avoid cutting the skin. If you do, and it isnt that nasty of a cut, you can just make sure the cut is closed up as you are gluing the skin to the limb.
If you haven't handled hot snakes before, be sure to read up on handling them before you go out hunting them. You will NOT gain any useful experience from reading about them on the internet. That only comes with actual experience. But you will come across lots of warnings about how fast and unpredictable a seemingly docile snake can become. Take the warnings and information seriously and make sure you are properly equiped for what you are going to do. Rattle snakes aren't particularly tricky to handle, but any venomous bite can be very serious. Therefore handling them requires your absolute attention. Also, go to Walmart and buy yourself "The Extractor" snake bite kit and carry it with you. It's a yellow syringe looking thing in a bright yellow box.
And lastly, take any advice you get on the internet from people you have never met before as being worth what you paid for it. Edumacate yourself about snake handling because the best snake handling experts in the world wont be there when you are actually doing it, no matter how good their advice may look on a glowing computer screen.
-Fritz
PS none of that was meant to deter you from snake hunting. It is just to point out that safety should always come first.
Topic: Rattle snake....Now what?? (Read 1367 times)
