Commentary: Time to reform rattlesnake roundups to reduce cruelty

Many Americans have this opinion about nature: if the whole is good, no part can be bad. The embrace of that value system is decreasing interest in rattlesnake roundups and driving many out of business. In Texas alone the number dropped from 40 in 1980 to five today. And all roundups in Kansas, New Mexico, Florida, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Georgia have gone belly-up or transitioned to no-kill, educational “festivals.”

But major holdouts persist in Oklahoma (Apache, Mangum, Waurika, Waynoka, Okeene) and Texas (Walnut Springs, Freer, Oglesby, Lometa, Sweetwater).

Texas roundup hunters legally use gasoline to flush rattlesnakes from dens, killing or damaging at least 350 species of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects and arachnids that share the dens.

Before killing all the rattlesnakes, roundup snake handlers torment the traumatized animals, courting snake bites. They provide such entertainment as: marching through pits packed with rattlesnakes festering in their own excrement, kicking them out of the way; “sixpacking” (holding aloft at least three snakes in each hand); “sacking” (competitions to see who can stuff the most snakes into a sack in the least time); “ballooning” (in which snakes stressed for weeks or months in crowded, filthy pits hide their heads under their coils, not wanting to bite anything but are prodded with metal rods until they finally pop a balloon); “stacking cow pies” (in which, prodded to the same defensive, non-strike position, snakes are stacked on the handler’s face, head, shoulders, knees, arms and crotch).

Rattlesnakes rattle when terrified. Melissa Amarello, executive director of Advocates for Snake Preservation, describes the constant buzz heard at roundups as “the sound of a thousand snakes screaming.” She routinely sees snakes kept in unsanitary conditions, snakes swollen and bloody from being prodded, kicked or thrown around by handlers, dying snakes, dead snakes and snakes too stressed and weak to defend themselves.

The mantra from roundup promoters is that the killing protects the public by preventing an “explosion” of rattlesnakes. But rattlesnakes self-regulate. And the vast majority of humans who get bitten have messed with rattlesnakes, roundup snake handlers being Exhibit A.

A handler was bitten this year at Waurika, Oklahoma. In 2022 a handler died from a bite at Freer, Texas. A video of a handler bitten at Waynoka, Oklahoma, in 2017 is still viral. When handler Cotton Dillard of Lake Brownwood, Texas, died in 2012 at 78 (not from snakebite), he’d been envenomed 45 times, including on his lips and nose.

I met Dillard in 1990 when I was researching the Opp, Alabama, Rattlesnake Rodeo (now no-kill). At that time, he’d only been envenomed 25 times. “God saves me each time I get bit,” he told me. “I do this as a way of witnessing for the Lord. God cursed the serpent, that’s for sure. But I don’t believe in being cruel to anything.” That’s why Dillard boycotted “stomping,” a then-popular competition to see how many snakes handlers could crush with their cowboy boots.

“Milking” venom from rattlesnakes is major entertainment at roundups. Another mantra from promoters is that milked venom is contributed for production of antivenom. Not so, according to Texas A&M University ecologist Jacquelyn Tleimat. “To create antivenom, snake venom must be collected in extremely sterile conditions, which are not present at roundups,” she reports. “CroFab, the only antivenom in the U.S., is created using the venom of snakes raised in captivity in two sterile laboratories.”

In addition to killing rattlesnakes, roundups have morphed into money-making operations, collecting entrance fees and providing business opportunities for vendors who hawk food, beverages, rattlesnake parts and countless other gewgaws.

But host communities can make even more money and simultaneously bootstrap their images. Eastern roundups that have gone to no-kill, educational festivals are hosted and promoted by the very outfits that lobbied against the killing. These include herpetologists, environmental groups, Southeastern Reptile Rescue, The Rattlesnake Conservancy, Gopher Tortoise Council and state wildlife managers.

As a result, these festivals get better attendance and are more profitable.

Ted Williams writes about fish and wildlife. For more information on rattlesnake roundups go to: https://e360.yale.edu/features/rattlesnake-roundups.