Regional Wildlife Office<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut most hikers have nothing to worry about as populations have declined. A den once existed in the Chazy blueberry barrens in Clinton County, but was hunted out in the last century. Split Rock today remains as the northernmost den, with dens a little more common in the Lake George area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"timber](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/snake_don_pyle.jpg\")
Timber rattlesnake photo courtesy of Don Pyle<\/p>\n
Snakes venturing out<\/p>\n
Mountains named \u201cRattlesnake\u201d exist in Willsboro, Lewis and Jay, although Brown said he hasn\u2019t come across any direct proof that they once supported colonies.Still, snakes in existing dens do get around.<\/p>\n
\u201cMovement seems to happen every few years,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI haven\u2019t kept an exact record of it, but right here, where I live (in the Lake George region), I\u2019ve dealt with five different rattlesnakes on the road right near our property. Five rattlesnakes right here is pretty unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impressive they can range so far, and maybe more impressive that they can find their way back. \u201cThey\u2019re never lost,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey seem to know exactly where they\u2019re going and how to get back to the den.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown, who picks up \u201cnuisance rattlesnakes\u201d that show up where they\u2019re not wanted and drives them back to their homes, said the creatures seldom bite unless provoked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A history of fear<\/p>\n
Still, that was probably small comfort in the 19th century before the days of reliable medical treatment, when bites \u2014 provoked or not \u2014 could be fatal. \u201cI think it goes back from the very beginnings of white colonization,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHere we had a venomous snake that could kill people, yeah, and I think that caused a lot of unreasonable fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were four recorded fatalities from snake bites in the 1800s in Washington and Warren counties, but there has been only one in New York, in Rockland County, in the 20th century,<\/p>\n
Bounties were placed on snakes in the late 1800s, and were substantial enough in Warren and Washington counties (the equivalent of $70 per snake in 1950) that a few individual snake hunters were in some cases able to kill enough snakes to pay their taxes.<\/p>\n
These individuals were dedicated to secrecy over the location of the dens, so as not to inspire competition. Not that this was an issue. \u201cNo one else really had the stamina or gumption to go out and regularly hunt rattlesnakes,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
They would cut off the tails to prove the kill, and when they had enough to make it worth their while, visit town hall for remuneration. Aside from the snakes themselves, no one hated the bounty system more than town clerks, who had to break from their inoffensive work of filing documents and entering numbers in ledgers to count out a big sack of fetid snake tails without gagging.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the town clerks were women, and it was technically part of their job, but it was certainly not what they signed up for,\u201d Brown said. Nevertheless, they did the job well, and because of that there exists an amazingly accurate picture of 20th century rattlesnake activity.<\/p>\n
The best known hunter was perhaps Art Moore of Whitehall, who cut firewood and hunted snakes for a living \u2014 and continued even after the bounties ceased in 1971. In 1979, \u201cHe was still fooling around with snakes, and he would still have his annual rattlesnake meat parties over there, where dozens of other local people would show up and they would drink beer and eat rattlesnake,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHe was still doing that, still collecting enough to show them off, and he had other potential commercial outlets for some snakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today the location of the dens is kept under close wraps not to make life easier for the snake hunters, but to make it easier on the snakes \u2014 human contact seldom works out well for them.<\/p>\n
And despite a warming planet, Brown said it\u2019s doubtful that rattlesnakes will form new colonies in the North Country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI doubt that climate change will make a difference in their potential dispersal to new denning areas,\u201d he said. \u201cThese (dens) seem to have been taken thousands of years ago when the latest northward expansion happened in the wake of the glacial withdrawal. But we\u2019ll see \u2014 strange things can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This summer, rattlesnakes were on the move, a move that didn\u2019t always work out well for the rattlesnakes.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[114369,79,83555,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-198107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-essex","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-timber-rattlesnake","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}