My favorite HC snake story is while fishing along the creek one day I stepped down into what I thought was a little mushy spot because it didn't feel like hard ground. Then I felt the ground move under my foot, when I looked down I could see cottonmouth snake coils and his tail protruding from under my foot. I had stepped directly on his head and had it pinned down. I launched myself well out of his range, and he was none too happy about my intrusion on his nap.
I really look carefully these days before I step down along most brushy creek areas. A year or two later a few of us hiked and fished from the cave entrance to the Guadalupe river and back. We found about a dozen decapitated cottonmouth snakes. They were easy to find since they were all about the same level of smelly ripeness. For the next several years when we did similar hikes we encountered almost no cottonmouths, but we did see more water snakes. For about 5-6 years we regularly fished the creek. The smaller fish would go in a minnow bucket, and the larger fish we would put on a stringer. Then we would transfer them to the ponds on the HC ranch. For a few years we had a very healthy fish population at the main pond near the road. Kurt
