The Septic Circuses Known As Rattlesnake "Roundups" Persist In OK, TX, But Are Fading Away Elsewhere

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Rattlesnake roundups, said to have started in Oklahoma in 1939, are wildlife-killing contests. For months in advance, hunters fan out through the countryside, extracting hundreds of thousands of snakes from dens, then hold them in crowded, filthy conditions until showtime. Organizers claim their roundups protect humans by removing rattlers from the wild. In addition to snake killing and public entertainment, roundups have recently become money-making operations, providing business opportunities for people hawking traditional medicine, curios, and rattlesnake meat.

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Roundups now target western diamondbacks almost exclusively. Handlers entertain the crowds by crawling into rattlesnake-filled sleeping bags; marching through pits packed with snakes festering in their own excrement; playing catch with live snakes; “sixpacking” (holding aloft at least three snakes in each hand); “sacking” (racing to stuff snakes into burlap bags); “ballooning” (using metal rods to prod snakes cowering in defensive, non-strike position until they pop a balloon); and “stacking cow pies” (placing snakes coiled in the same defensive position onto a handler’s face, head, shoulders, knees, arms, and crotch).

“Rattlesnakes rattle when frightened,” says Melissa Amarello, executive director of Advocates for Snake Preservation (ASP), based in Silver City, New Mexico. She describes the constant buzz heard at roundups as “the sound of a thousand snakes screaming.” And she routinely sees 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. But there’s good news, too. Roundups are fading from the American scene. In 1980, Texas had at least 40, today five. Five others persist in Oklahoma, and there’s a killing contest for all snakes, venomous or not, at Lake Providence, Louisiana.

According to Amarello, roundups are being forced out of business by lack of interest and public outrage. Others are transforming to no-kill educational “festivals,” where the public is taught that if the whole of nature is good, no part can be bad. Festival visitors learn that roundups may have contributed to reducing populations of timber rattlers and eastern diamondbacks, both of which are endangered in fact, if not by federal decree. Timber rattlers persist through most of the eastern U.S. but have been extirpated from Maine, Rhode Island, and Delaware; eastern diamondbacks are now limited to 3 percent of their historical range, in the southeastern States, and are under review for endangered species status.

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https://e360.yale.edu/features/rattlesnake-roundups