This review took a while for me to put together because it made me work, and because snake shot doesn’t particularly interest me – but I did promise to review the two types of shot that Generous Reader Eric sent me not (that) long ago.
It should be an important issue in snake country because pistol bullets don’t actually work all that well on snakes. The problem is that snakes don’t mass very much, bullets just icepick through them, and even a broken spine only seems to moderately slow them down. I’m sure they die eventually, but I can testify that when you’re (literally!) being chased by an enraged Mojave Green rattler you just shot twice with a .45 auto, you do tend to re-think certain previously-held preconceptions about the efficacy of bullets against flesh.
Someone will ask, why not just shoot them in the head? To which I reply, try that. Get back to me with the results. It has been my observation that we don’t live in a Clint Eastwood movie.
The only firearm I ever saw quickly kill a rattlesnake is a 12-gauge at close range. Which brings us back to snake shot in pistols, two versions of which Eric sent me recently. (More below the fold)
Several years ago I had a bad experience with the kind of snake shot that uses the little blue cups: I fired one round and the recoil dumped all the other cups in the cylinder – tiny bits of shot everywhere – and since then I dismissed pistol-caliber snake shot as a bad idea. But it was just the one time, and I was intrigued by those long brass cases: repurposed .445 Super Mag brass capped with gas checks. That was an interesting idea. Unfortunately…
…I didn’t get a chance to test those.
The cases are straight-walled their entire length, and it seems the chambers in a pistol cylinder are not. This surprised me – I even dug out my old Taurus for a second opinion…
And it’s true. I gather these were handloaded by Eric’s father – I don’t know what he was shooting them from, but I don’t have one of those*.
Which brings us back to the blue cups. Those I could chamber and fire, and I was interested in two questions – how do they pattern, and would the cups in the unfired rounds stay seated under recoil?
As to the second question…
Yes, sort of.
I fired eight rounds in all, four shots out of two five-chamber cylinders, and the cups in the unfired rounds never backed out enough to bind the cylinder. But both unfired rounds did slightly lengthen.
A round out of the box…
The last unfired round in a five-shot cylinder
Maybe a slightly harder crimp is called for.
As for the pattern…
On the assumption that any shot at a snake will be close range, I fired from five paces. In every case the pattern was wider than a paper plate. This was the best pattern I got, and you can see there are holes in it you could fit a snake through. Also the tiny shot (#12? Smaller?) does not have very much authority – of the several that struck my little PVC target stand, all embedded in the plastic but none penetrated.
For this to be of any use against a snake would require a much smaller, denser pattern. Personally I think you’re better off with bullets – but my opinion remains unchanged, that the best weapon against a rattlesnake is a shovel or a hoe. Cut the head off and they cease to be a problem – but best practice, unless they’re right in your yard and a danger to children or pets, is to live and let live.
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*Since I mostly fire shorter .44 Special from my revolvers someone will ask if maybe powder fouling kept a full-length case from chambering. No – I learned my lesson about the bearkiller gap a long time ago. 🙂
Cases need a ‘step’ at the point on the case where the case length would equal the length of a regular .44 Mag case. In other words, at the 1.285~” mark the case needs to neck down a tad. The easiest way to do this would be to neck it down with, say, a .41 Mag sizing die to that point and then use .41 gas checks to contain the shot. ..similar to the CCI .45 ACP snake shot (https://www.midwayusa.com/product/100081051).
Interesting on the .445 cases as the .445 Super Mag is just a stretched .44 Mag. It does make me curious as I assumed he loaded those for use in his 629 which I didn’t hang onto after he died.
There is a possibility however that they may have been loaded specifically for an old RG .44 Mag that may still be around here somewhere, I’ll have to look. If that is the case I believe that he opened up the chambers on it back in the 1970’s when he first started developing a dedicated “snake gun”. I’ll let you know what/ if I find out.
Eric.
Is it worth trying your own handloads with a gas-check and different shot? At five paces I’d guess a four inch pattern would be useful. How much powder charge is necessary for efficient and effective de-snaking? Half a case leaves roughly 0.6″ x 0.429″ available volume for projectile(s). A stack of discs or a bundle of pins would have less wasted airspace, and it would be interesting experimenting how these would spread out to give a useful pattern. A rifled bore would make discs or pins scatter. A stack of gas checks piled in a spiral pattern to make them spin off in all directions, or a bundle of bearing rollers or snipped up wire, perhaps with a paper patch and a decent crimp?
I’m too lazy to do the math to work out the possible pellet count for various shotgun pellets, but if you could get a sample selection of gauges better than snake shot you could have more fun experimenting. You might run out of snakes before reaching your goal, which may mean buying snakes off the neighbours or starting a snake-breeding program, or substituting live snakes with bits of hose.
In my decades of being the reptile kid (that’s it for my bona fides). My opinion is 5 yards is out of effective range. I think you should put the plate on the ground. Shoot it from 1,2 and 3 yards. At those ranges it’s very effective. I once had to shoot an ass hole rooster, with CCI, 22 bird shot, from a 4 inch barrel. From 2 ish feet, the head shot was immediately incapacitating.
Most of our snakes on the east coast are just black snakes, and they tend to just slither away. So, no need for snake shot. I have used it on rats, to clear out an infestation in a garage. My impression is range matters so much that it becomes useless past about 10 feet. Oh, by the way, shot bounces back from hard objects in a garage. I was using a 22. Being a handloader, I think I could make effective loads with a 44, but they would probably be specific to the task.
Hoe. Just a hoe. Best against snakes. Low mass. High velocity. Yep.
Just out….
Might wabpntvto try these…
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/new-cci-hevi-bismuth-load-pests-beware-44815507
We get half a dozen or so a year here. Shovels all over the property with orange paint on handle to ease finding one when a snake makes itself known. Tried hoes, those straightened hoes, square nose shovels, etc. Plain old spade works best. Completely agree on firearms, although I will add that a 20 ga. works fine too.
I like my 410 lever shotgun for copper-headed-rattle-moccasins
A friend said that in the USMC desert follies, they were told of the Mojave green, and told to remove the blank firing device from their M16 and chamber a blank. Engagement range was 6-10 feet.
Some comments-
– Snake shot at 1-2 yards is effective on venomous snakes- have used it on local copperheads to good effect. One advantage of this method is that the venom, which is normally held in the glands in the head, and which will kill the snake, can get distributed into the snakes bloodstream by the penetration of the shot, and helps the snake realize that it is deceased, which can take up to 24 hours otherwise. It is also much easier to connect with snake shot than with a single projectile, especially if you have had a close encounter. My SOP when going outside during warm weather here in the mountains is to load with snake shot and carry multiple reloads with SD ammo, as past experience is that I am more likely to need snake shot than SD ammo in my AO.
-The other thing to keep in mind is that decapitated snake heads can still deliver a lethal bite for a long time after the head and body are no longer connected, if the head has not been smashed. The snake venom stays effective for decades, btw.
Copperheads I have shot with snake shot are hors de combat within a couple minutes; those who were terminated with a single projectile and/or other means of removing the head (bush ax, machete, hoe) continued to move for over an hour, and the head would bite for longer than that.
Timber rattlers are similar, but can get a lot bigger- I have seen timber rattler skins over 7 feet long while a 4 foot copperhead is a very large one. And yes, venomous snakes do look a lot bigger when they’re close.