I know this topic is pretty old. But I found it interesting. Where I am from we are OVERLOADED with timber Rattlers. AKA cane breaks. I'm 29 years old and have caught hundreds and hundreds of them. (Foolishly I'll admit) but when you grow up in the sticks sometimes boredom will make you do things that you wander about. Anyway, I particularly found the part about the snakes not rattling anymore very interesting. I have dealt with tons of them that didn't ever make a sound, even after coiling up and striking a few times. They all did eventually start rattling at me. But the whole thing about rattling before biting simply isn't true. Also I am in agreement with the person who spoke on the fact that the snakes that rattle get killed by man, and therefore that snake gets culled from the gene pool. Just like some people will fight and some people will sit there and remain quiet. Some snakes are more prone to rattle than others. And whether fortunate or unfortunate, more times than not that snake dies. Also I do not believe that here in Georgia the snakes have learned to hide from wild hogs by not rattling. Even though it is a fact that a wild hog absolutely loves to eat a snake, I just don't think that the snakes not rattling is there way of hiding from them. I think that falls back to the strong instinct to rattle has been culled out throughout the years. I have been wrong before though. Just like this.......my wife and I do feral hog removal, we use dogs (and other methods) to catch hogs. The old timers talk about how it used to be so easy to catch hogs, they'd stand still and "bay up" just about every time. It was the hogs natural instinct to stand his ground and fight. Now throughout the years the hogs that stood around to fight are dead and have not passed on those genes. Most of the hogs we deal with will run for miles and miles. And it is pretty hard to catch a lot of hogs in a trap. Because the ones that are "dumb" (I use that term loosely because hogs are rediculously smart) enough to enter a trap get killed. What I'm getting at is that over the years we are essentially creating a smarter animal, and unknowingly manipulating their genetics. These are just my opinions. And before anybody smacks me around for hog hunting I'd love to show you the damage these things do. I've seen Farmers in tears, crops absolutely destroyed, newborn livestock literally eaten alive, and the list goes on and on. In order to just "maintain" a healthy balance in nature that involves feral hogs, 70% of them need to be killed every year. That's a fact. So Trust me when I tell you that a wild hog isn't something you just want to leave alone because it's a "part of nature". Some things just don't work like that.
