I kill a few rattlers every year and cook em up. But only the ones I find in my yard or by my tent. If its a baby I'll scoop up with the shovel and let em live. But I'm not even close to being comfortable handling a venemous snake. I love having snakes around to eat all the mice around I just dont like them around my wife and pets. So does that make me not welcome here? I use the meat and skin, waste not want not.
I do agree that abusing a resource because its a snake is very ignorant. Why take several hundred to a few thousand snakes out of a couple square mile habitat? Your begging for pest problems not to mention the possibility of lasting results to the damage of the rattlesnake population. Then when the mice and other vermin destory crops or spread plague who are they going to blame? Reptiles are a resource and like it or not are fair game in my book if used right. Wheter it be photography, collecting for pets(still taking them out of that ecosystem), or eating a few. The resource just needs to be used correctly or it will go away and that micro/ecosystem will be severly unballanced.
Face it most of us on the reptile side like to watch our pets feed. As the old saying goes: "A person who eats the meat is on the same moral level as the Butcher"-RAH.
But no roundup for me. I cant see me fitting in with that crowd. I hate Pabst Blue Ribbon, not to mention the famous Redneck last words of "Hey watch this" with a rattlesnake, or a bin of em. Well I take that back maybe I should go for one and bring a video camera.
