- [Coyote] How far off are we from the coordinates?
- [Mario] Couple hours, at least.
Tim, did you get one?
- [Coyote] All right, we are in the rattlesnake spot now,
but what's a little more eerie
is that I think we are also in the den
of a bear or maybe fox.
(suspenseful music)
Look at that defensive pose.
That is strike mode at its finest.
(big cat growls) (dramatic music)
(lion roars)
(soft guitar music)
The hills of West Virginia hide
within their peaks and valleys a plethora of animal species.
In fact, this wild and wonderful state
is one of the most bio-diverse regions
in the Eastern US.
On this adventure, I will be teaming up
with my long-time friend and field herpetologist,
Tim Brust.
Tim is a backwoods bloodhound when it comes
to tracking down reptiles and amphibians.
The last time we worked together,
he helped us find the elusive hellbender,
one of the nation's most cherished salamander species.
We got him!
(people cheer)
There it is, it is an absolute giant!
- [Tim] That was the hardest hellbender catch I've ever had.
- [Coyote] Wow!
Today we are hot on the trail of the timber rattlesnake.
Hailing as one of the largest venomous snakes
in North America, these pit vipers
are masters of camouflage, so finding one
hidden amongst the rocky crevices and outcrops
will be an arduous challenge.
There's a tree down in the middle of the road
that I'm gonna help Tim move.
The task required us to travel deep
into West Virginia's wilderness, as we've pushed
our vehicle to its safest limits.
(laughing) Oh no.
All right, we may not be going any further than this.
Literally just got done talking about
how we got past the toughest area of rocky terrain,
and we have now turned the corner.
Are you kidding me?
(groans)
I think we're gonna be able to get past this,
but it's the next bend that looks even more difficult.
Look at that.
Total rock slide that came down off the mountain
and to this.
So the Jeep should be able to get over this no problem.
It's just a matter of what is up and around the corner.
How far off are we from the coordinates?
- [Mario] Couple hours, at least.
- Okay, so we have made a decision at this point.
We were thinking about going over the mountain
and up that rock slide right there.
Way too treacherous with cameras,
so what we're gonna do now is go on foot
down the roadway, and it is roughly two miles
as the crew flies to get to these spots
that Tim has GPS coordinated where snakes have been seen.
For us, it's gonna be more than two miles.
It's gonna be probably close to four or five hour hike
to get to this spot, so it is going on 11 o'clock now.
With any luck, what's gonna happen
is we are gonna reach the snake spot
when they're doing their second basking for the day,
which will be somewhere between four and six o'clock P.M.
It's gonna be a commitment, but this is what it takes
to find the timber rattlesnake.
- [Mario] All right, well, we've found potentially
the location based on Tim's phone,
and he thinks maybe 300 yards down this little
kind of valley is the spot.
We're gonna scout it.
With any luck, we're gonna actually see the location.
- We just need to really know an entry point.
The foliage is all so dense, whether it's trees
or these scrublands and grasses.
Unless you can see exactly where to go down it,
you could just be descending into a ravine,
so scouting with the drone is definitely giving us
a bird's eye perspective of the terrain
before we even embark upon heading down into it.
- [Mario] Think this is it.
This is all on that slope.
- [Coyote] What are you seeing?
Oh!
- [Mario] See that?
- [Coyote] That is all rock right there.
- [Mario] Open, rocky.
- [Coyote] Yes!
- Outcrop.
- Can you get lower to see the size of those rocks?
- [Mario] Yeah.
I'm just gonna try to...
- Oh, yeah, man.
That's gotta be it, look at that.
That's all rocky terrain.
I think we've found it.
- We found a spot, and I think Tim found a spot.
- Okay.
- He's been yelling at us, so I don't know what that means.
I can't really hear him. - Maybe he has a snake.
- Maybe he's got a snake.
- Okay, well let's pack up the drone.
This is great.
We have spent hours searching out rocky outcrops,
and now we possibly have two potentials.
One we saw on the drone, and one that Tim
is calling us to come towards.
- [Mario] Tim!
Did you get one?
- [Coyote] Wow, this is it, right here.
Perfect timber rattlesnake habitat.
Now it's just a matter of searching and finding.
What do you think, Mario?
- [Mario] Do you see how unique this habitat is?
It's overgrown with vegetation, but also still
allows for some exposed rocks
so they could come out and bask.
It's kind of the best of both worlds.
- [Coyote] Okay, so basically, we need to spend
some time searching these rocks for snakes.
It's nice down here.
Any one of these big rocks that has
almost a miniaturized cave underneath it
is exactly the kind of spot that we wanna be looking.
Now the best spots are gonna be rocks exposed to the sun.
Part sun, part shade, so that when the sun comes out,
the snake can come and warm itself up,
and then when it gets too hot,
he can go hunker back down in the shade.
Oh, nice!
What you got?
- Got a little fence lizard.
What's really cool about these guys is the nails.
Oh!
(laughs)
- [Coyote] Don't fall off the cliff.
- Don't lose the lizard, don't fall off the cliff.
What's cool about these fence lizards
is they look kinda drab in their dorsal,
but on their ventrals, look at that.
Isn't it beautiful?
It's a nice blue.
Awesome.
These guys are really fast-moving.
I'm surprised I actually caught him.
Beautiful little specimen.
I'm gonna put him down, watch him take off.
There he goes.
All right, let's try to catch a rattlesnake.
- All right, we are in the rattlesnake spot now,
but what's a little more eerie is that
I think we are also in the den of a bear or maybe fox.
There are bones, chunks of meat, and also some vomit,
like vomited flesh, and back within here
are a bunch of small pathways,
and it's an area like this over here
where you're usually the most nervous.
You don't wanna just stumble upon something
that is hiding in the underbrush.
Okay.
I'm gonna head back over where Tim and Mario were,
and we're going to keep looking for rattlesnakes,
but I don't think it gets much more dangerous than this.
Rattlesnakes, and a potential bear den.
(eerie music)
Nothing.
Okay, we are on the side of a mountain
in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia right now.
We have descended, I'd say close to 800,
maybe a thousand feet, and it's impossible
to tell on the GoPro, but if you look out through there,
you can see the open expanse of wilderness.
It is beautiful, but the terrain is extremely difficult.
When you look up back behind me,
you can see all this rocky terrain
that we have come down through.
We've gotten to the point now where
we've been out here for so many hours.
We're thinking we need to turn back,
because if we don't, we may not get to the vehicle,
which then has to drive all the way down the mountain
back to civilization before the sun sets.
There's always the chance of finding a snake
on the way back up, but at this point,
we may have reached the juncture of failure.
No rattlesnakes on our rattlesnake expedition,
which is discouraging, but it still has been
a really fun time out here exploring
the back country of West Virginia.
It's not often that a target species manages to elude us,
yet after many hours of searching,
we still hadn't seen a single rattlesnake.
Then on our way back to the Jeep,
we came upon a slithering surprise that we didn't expect.
Tim just called out 'cause he found a copperhead.
No rattlesnakes yet, but this is a great opportunity.
- [Mario] Did he go under?
- [Tim] I think I can lift this up.
- [Mario] Okay.
Watch your fingers.
There he is.
Grab him, quick!
All right, bag, bag, bag.
- All right!
We got a copperhead.
Definitely cannot work with or present the snake
on the side of this hill, though,
so let's take it up here and get a closer look.
Okay.
This is better.
Now we can actually stand.
Okay, let's find a good open flat spot.
Here, right behind you with this rock,
I'm gonna just gently fold the edges down
and let it slither out a bit on its own.
- [Mario] There we go.
- [Coyote] Ready, just be on high alert.
The snake is coming out.
(suspenseful music)
There he is.
Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Copperheads do have a tendency to be rather spastic,
very quick snake.
Just gotta balance it on the snake hook like this.
(bang of drums)
Ooh, he's trying to get your camera, there.
Look at that defensive pose.
That is strike mode at its finest, right there.
These are very fast striking snakes.
It's definitely a species you always
wanna be cognicent of when you're in the environment.
They're so perfectly camouflaged.
Now to really get a better look at this snake,
there's a method that we can use
to actually handle it called tubing,
where the front of the snake will go inside
of a plastic tube, and that will allow me
to handle the snake without the risk of being bitten.
Copperhead's being rather calm right now,
which is great.
It's exactly what we want.
Look at that.
Now it's really important that I keep one hand
on the snake and the tube at the exact same time.
What we don't want to happen is for the copperhead
to wiggle out backwards and inflict a bite.
That is so cool, what a beautiful reptile.
Now while the copperhead is a pit viper,
it is not a rattlesnake.
However like rattlesnakes, they will sometimes
wiggle just the tip of their tail against leaf litter,
alerting any potential predator, or even a human,
that hey, if I've been spotted, I'm here in the environment
and you don't wanna get any closer,
but people oftentimes confuse non-venomous snake species
with copperheads or water moccasins,
and you can see that very distinct banding
that runs down the length of the body.
It looks just like the banding on a younger
northern watersnake, and even the underside,
the underbelly, that slight checkered patterning
and the design on the dorsal scale pattern
almost looks like a fox snake,
another completely harmless species.
So this snake does have a rather negative reputation,
but as long you don't try to interact
with the snake in the environment,
all it wants to do is stay completely hidden from humans.
Now when it comes to venom toxicity,
this is a dangerous snake.
It is not a reptile you would ever want
to be bitten by, but when it comes
to the venomous snakes in the United States,
this is on the lower end of potency, right?
So a water moccasin, which is a much larger snake,
is gonna have a higher venom yield when it bites you,
especially when it comes to rattlesnakes.
An eastern diamondback, a timber rattlesnake,
a western diamondback, bigger snake means
a larger venom yield.
You can see the size of the snake's head
is rather small, which means they have
smaller venom glands, but keep in mind,
it's all about how your body reacts to venom.
Just recently somebody in Alabama
was bitten by a copperhead, and they died
from anaphylactic shock.
A bite from a snake like a copperhead
could mean the end of your life.
Well, we didn't manage to find our target,
the timber rattlesnake, but that's okay.
We still came across one of West Virginia's
most iconic pit vipers, the copperhead,
and getting it up close, testing out this method of tubing,
totally made the adventure worthwhile.
Now before we release it right back where we found it,
what I actually wanna do is place it in the leaf litter
to show you just how camouflaged this snake truly is.
Most people do their best to avoid interactions with snakes.
A smart state of mind, especially if the species
is venomous.
Suffice it to say, snakes think the exactly the same
and do their absolute best to avoid humans.
If you find yourself exploring in an area
that is known to inhabit venomous snakes,
your safest plan of action is to wear sturdy hiking books,
stick to well-worn trails, and most importantly,
pay attention to where you're walking,
and you should be completely safe.
Okay, we're gonna let the copperhead slither
right back out of the snake bag.
Perfect.
Look at that.
I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be brave, stay wild.
We'll see you on the next adventure.
Hey Coyote Pack, do you know the difference
between a venomous and a non-venomous snake?
If not, make sure to check out the episode
where I show you the distinction between
a water moccasin and a watersnake, and don't forget,
subscribe and click the notification bell
so you can join me and the crew
on our next big adventure.
Check it out!
That is a broad-banded watersnake.
Woo!
(animals roar)
(bird caws)