Tgiles
New member
Handling non-venomous snakes WILL NOT prepare you to deal with a venomous snake! That IS the point, and I don't even know why anyone would question that. For anyone to claim that keeping an "aggressive"(meaning: scared, stressed-out and defensive)Colubrid will prepare you to deal with a highly-venomous viper or Elapid is analogous to claiming that peddling around the driveway on a Big Wheel is preparation enough for driving a Formula One race car. It's not even close to being in the same league! It's pretty much a moot issue, anyway, since the OP lives in a state where private ownership of venomous snakes of any kind is banned, so unless he moves to a state where it's allowed, he can't keep "hot" snakes. I've kept venomous snakes, and I've had my share of defensive Colubrids and Boids, and there is no way that a bitey Racer, or Rat Snake, or even a Boa is going to get you ready to deal with a snake that has the ability to change your life with one bite, if not kill you. Your mental state when dealing with "hot" snakes must never be anything like what it is when you're dealing with a non-venomous snake, even one that bites at every given opportunity, because even with the biters, you get complacent and even joke about the snake biting, an attitude that will cost you dearly if you get into that mindset around a "hot" snake.
So he needs to train with a venomous snake so when he makes a mistake it will be a life ending one? My mentor started me out on a 5 ft wild coach whip before he even put me in the room with a hot. Which goes back to my original point YOU MOST CERTAINLY NEED TO START WITH A NONVENOMOUS SNAKE BEFORE YOU GO TO A VENOMOUS SNAKE! Can you hold a colubrid with out life ending results? Yes. But how is he supposed to understand how to use our tools with out some sort of practice on something. Refusing to help people and talking down on them when we have different opinion on certain subjects is what is tearing this community apart and why nothing can work in our favor