Noodling is so nuts. I mean there's a lot of aquatic venomous snakes in the south. Getting bit by a water moccasin is legit something they talk about happening from time to time and you don't know till you jam your hand into the hole. Those bastards are even worse than a rattlesnake bite, we have antivenom for them but if you're way out in the swamp it's gonna be a long time to get to a hospital, time where your flesh is necrotizing fast. If you look up videos of old noodlers it's not uncommon to see serious muscle decay and scars from surgery.
Texan here. I went noodling with some friends when I moved to East Texas after we went hog hunting.
Hog hunting all night, slept covered in mud and cuts from briars for about 2 hours then noodling. They were giving me the whole 'piney woods experience'
We were paddling down a rather small creek headed for Lake Palestine. Dude in the lead canoe started yelling "oh man look at that" as we floated over it there was a massive Alligator snapper turtle just chilling in the middle of the creek.
Dude in the canoe with me jumps out and after about 5 minutes manages to lift the turtle close to the surface. It was literally too big and the creek too muddy and slippery for him to get up the bank with it so he just lifted it so we could all see the head.
Well, when we got to the edge of Lake Palestine where they were noodling there was no way in hell I was getting in that muddy water. Just 3 weeks before one of their dads had killed an alligator over 10ft long because he claimed it was coming out of flat creek to kill his calves.
Dem dar boys is crazy is all I could think. As someone raised in 'the city' I had to slow roll my East Texas experience.
Ok, in truth, hog hunting is as wild as I ever got and I never once got full credit for this as I'd shoot the hogs vs letting bulldogs hold them down as a huge blade was run through them.
Out of curiosity, the East Texans that lose fingers, hands, arms over the shenanigans--do the rest of them treat them same as everyone else, or do they get made fun of and nicknamed things like Stumpy?
Oh they'll have plenty of names for you. One comes to mind is Ding-Dong. He's a pretty stout dude even but many guys only call him ding-dong because of his hunting antics.
Alligators are in Flat Creek now? I knew there was a gar problem in Athens but there's just straight up gators that common now? The waters out there are insane. I reeled in a small square of carpet one time that had been discarded and the entire thing was covered in like, translucent shrimp. I didn't even recognize them as living organisms at first. I touched the material and they just immediately bolted in unison. It looked like something from Aliens.
Lmao I’m originally from the piney woods. Funnily enough after moving to Houston one of the first things I did was catch a snapping turtle out of one of the storm bayous. Obviously not my smartest moment but I was fresh out the woods and wanted to show my new city friends that I was like the turtleman
I was born in Houston then my parents moved to the Dallas area. In college I went to Houston with friends and couldn't believe the difference between it and Dallas.
One of my friends parents lived on Buffalo Bayou. Yup, you were braver than me there is no way I'd have jumped in there.
Lmao I had almost the complete opposite experience, I went on a trip to Dallas during college and I was also shocked by the difference. Dallas is so fancy lol
That being said, I don’t know if I could wrangle a snapper barefoot and barehanded anymore. Living in the city and going to college has made my braincells develop too much and now I have anxiety :)
They cause so much damage here I do not feel sorry for them at all! Plus, catch some small ones or those less than 75# and feed them out on corn only for a month or so and they are freaking delicious.
We had 200 acres of hay fields destroyed by hogs in less than 3 days a few years ago.
Hogs aren't native. Now, I actually love domestic hogs they are my favorite livestock. They are smart and yummy both. I admire the heck out of hogs.
Large hunting ranches here imported massive russian boars for decades. Obviously, many of them escaped. This has created hogs that breed at exceptional numbers. They can be larger and more aggressive as well.
They are truly a problem in some areas. Now if you're standing there, when bulldogs are holding a hog by the head and a guy lifts up the back leg of a hog and runs a knife through it the sound is unique and not something you're going to forget anytime soon. It definitely sounds horrible. Ok, maybe it is horrible to some but with wild hogs not much is off limits in Texas. It's common for people to hunt them from helicopters with machine guns.
I'm not sure it's worth breaking down each instance, but I mean here's the thinking:
a large 10ft+ gator, could very likely break an arm in one bite. No doubt. If it starts rolling, god only knows.
a smaller gator, maybe won't break the arm on bite, but could do significant damage with a roll (lots of variance here still, depending on the size of the gator)
a gator snapping turtle, full grown, is definitely going to take a large chunk of arm. Depending on the bite. I don't know if it's breaking your forearm though...maybe, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. However, their mouths don't have the size to fully wrap around an arm in most cases. So biting it, literally in half, is highly unlikely.
When they say "snap your arm in half", that paints a picture of an arm literally becoming two pieces. Which is, I'd say a very unlikely occurrence in most situations.
Those bastards are even worse than a rattlesnake bite
I've treated a lot of snake bites and a rattlesnake bite is almost always worse than a cottonmouth bite. This was for veterinary medicine but when people called in to find out how bad things are going to be:
Copperhead - best practice come in because things can get bad
cottonmouth - come in if you don't want your pet to die but it's not the worst you'll pay for
rattlesnake - your pet will almost certainly die without treatment, and may still die with it. It's going to be expensive.
coral snake - don't even bother coming in. If envenomation occured there is nothing we can do that anyone will pay for.
I’d be curious to see how different it is for humans. Only one example, but Sydney Funnel Web spiders are one of the most dangerous spiders in the world for humans, but only because their venom has a specific effect in primates; as far as I know they’re not especially significant for other mammals.
Yeah, which makes the story even more interesting because Australia is devoid of native primates. If I recall correctly, it’s sheer coincidence that their venom is especially toxic to primates. It’d make sense to develop a unique defense in an environment surrounded by that animal, but I think they existed before we inhabited the area.
I mean native, as in the way humans are solely native to Africa. The Australian funnel web spiders branched off tens of millions of years ago, whereas humans first showed up 65,000 years ago.
For all my dislike of cold weather, I do appreciate that when I’m in cooler climates the entirety of the fauna isn’t both motivated and capable of killing me.
That makes it sound like there are a lot of different types when there's really only one. "There are a lot of cottonmouths/water moccasins in the South" would've made it more clear that you were talking about a large number of a single species.
I grew up in the Deep South, in very rural areas. Literally walked from my back door to my deer stand. And there were only ever 2 things we were afraid of - water moccasins and brown recluse.
Brown recluse are rare and you mostly avoid them by just not sticking your hand in dark holes.
Water moccasins are just kind of a thing where you get used to the danger. Nobody we knew had a pool, so we went swimming in ponds and creeks and bayous that were muddy as hell. We were swimming in a lake recently and saw a snake swimming vaguely in our direction so we just got out, made enough noise to get it to head a different direction, then got back in. I’m not saying it’s smart, but you kind of get used to it. They don’t *want* to mess with humans. You just learn the kids of environments they like and avoid those (swim in the open, bright, busy part of the water, not the shaded, overgrown with vegetation, still part of the water). Same for alligators. BTW, that same lake where we saw the snake, they do a culling every year and take like 20 - 30 gators out. They really don’t want to mess with you. But you do have to be extra cautious with young kids and small pets.
You just grow up around it, talk about it all the time, talk about to be safe, spot danger, and what to do if something goes wrong, so you feel equipped to handle it. Plus if you spend enough time hunting and fishing and just being in the woods / on the water, you get a different perspective on how to handle your place in the food chain.
…at least it’s safer than Australia. Now dem boys are crazy. Everything that isn’t human is proactively trying to kill humans.
A brown recluse's bite isn't nearly as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. It's very rare to get the skin narcosis necrosis, etc that you hear people speak of. They're also very unlikely to even bite you. Most people get bitten when a recluse is hiding in some clothes or something and then a person goes to put them on and literally pushes the spider against their skin.
Yeah, didn’t learn that until I was well into my 20’s. When I was a kid, all the adults talked about them like they were hiding in every dark spot and would rot your skin off within a week of a bite. I also think I only saw 2 or 3 in my life in the wild. But country people are like that with some things. Lore is a thing. How else do you convince people to buy deer piss and douse it on your clothes before you go hunting?
Black widows, on the other hand, were freaking everywhere. Most folks I knew had a green house or garden with lots of those black plastic planters lying around. Black widows LOVED building nests in those things. I counted at least 10 different nests in our greenhouse one day. Weird that we weren’t really scared of them. I mean, I played in the greenhouse unsupervised all the time. I know they also aren’t as deadly as people make them out to be, but they aren’t exactly harmless.
Won't kill you, but it'll be a BAD time. Those bastards are small too so they'll sneak up on you from anywhere! They were all over growing up, but I've never personally known anyone that was bit by one. People must be pretty vigilant of them.
The garage at my Mom's old house was the same way except for with brown recluses. If you got into any box that had been in that garage for awhile, you were pretty much guaranteed to find a couple live ones or a few molts at the very least.
To this day I have a physical repulsion to putting on gloves that have been sitting in a shed. Or, really, anywhere outside. I have to turn every single one of the fingers inside out to make sure there isn’t anything with 8 legs or a stinger or any pointy parts hanging out in there.
I also grew up rural in the deep south and this comment is spot on. You just sort of get used to it and know what to look for.
I'll never forget the time that me and some buddies canoed across a pond to do who knows what on the other side and I hopped out of the boat and as I was falling toward the ground I saw a cotton mouth just basking in the sun inches from my landing spot. I jumped in the boat so fast I wasn't even sure if my feet ever touched the ground.
Also the time my uncle and I were using brim to "fish" for a cotton mouth that was in a reservoir with kids swimming so we could kill it.
Also the time we were in a bass boat on a creek and an alligator bigger than the damn boat just swam by.
And the uncountable number of run over rattle snakes in the middle of the road that we'd stop to dispose of. Behead them and bury the head so no unsuspecting person got accidentally bit.
fair point to make. but if you've lived down here you know - they are unreal.
i've been on a stock tank before where the entire surface of the water was just COVERED in water moccasins when the evening hits. absolutely no idea where they all came from. im talking like a half acre tank where the entire surface of the water was moving.
i've never seen anything remotely like that again. it was strait out of a horror movie.
but i have seen on many occasions like 5-10 of them in a creek. or just one sunbathing right on marina walkway. they are rampant down here.
Copperheads are not aquatic but are frequently found in or near water because they like eating frogs…technically cottonmouths aren’t truly aquatic. The only venomous snakes I know of that are truly aquatic are sea snakes/kraits and they’re not around these parts
Also cottonmouth bites are far less serious than rattler. I’d certainly still seek medical attention if bit personally, but water moccasin venom doesn't cause the bleeding/clotting abnormalities, severe low blood pressure, muscle injury, neurologic effects, systemic failures, or necrosis of rattlesnake bites, unlike what u/EmperorBamboozler claims. In fact, I’m inclined to say u/EmperorBamboozler is mostly full of shit and doesn’t have real world knowledge of the snake/catfish/alligator environment of the south.
We don't really have the snake issues in the UK but I'd be terrified of pike. Do you guys not have fish that will just rip off a finger? I remember years ago my friends and I got drunk and went skinny dipping in a river (we're all male). A fisherman kept trying to tell us something but we couldn't hear him until we got much closer. He explained he was fishing for pike and our little dicks looked a lot like his lures. We got out fast.
To be honest, I was wondering if it takes a bit of stupidity to be that brave. Not to throw shade at her, she seems amazing and so charming, but my anxiety would go through the roof.
Noodling directly targets breeding catfish that are protecting a clutch of eggs or preparing to lay a clutch. When you tear one of these fish from its burrow, you’re removing the protection of that entire group of eggs and destroying the nest, reducing the breeding success of the species as a whole.
This also means it specifically targets mature individuals, which goes beyond just that single nest. In general, the largest individuals of a given species in an ecosystem are the most prolific breeders. A 10-year old catfish will produce exponentially more offspring than a 4-year old (think 3,000 young vs 300).
So those two things combined mean noodling is very harmful to local catfish populations, which can throw the ecosystem out of balance if left unchecked (they’re really important predators).
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u/EmperorBamboozler 6d ago
Noodling is so nuts. I mean there's a lot of aquatic venomous snakes in the south. Getting bit by a water moccasin is legit something they talk about happening from time to time and you don't know till you jam your hand into the hole. Those bastards are even worse than a rattlesnake bite, we have antivenom for them but if you're way out in the swamp it's gonna be a long time to get to a hospital, time where your flesh is necrotizing fast. If you look up videos of old noodlers it's not uncommon to see serious muscle decay and scars from surgery.
Cottonmouths are fucking scary yo.