oldfatslow: Hmm, That Looks Odd

Our duck hunting was horrible Saturday.
Only one teal came across the spread in
a #4 station high house shot. I whiffed
badly. I even skybusted three blackbellies
that were breathing oxygen they were so
high. Nothing.

We decided to snipe hunt and scout.
The snipe are all gone too. At one point,
we were crunching through some heavy
broom grass and smart weed. I saw
Craig jump back and point his gun at
the ground. I figured it was a snake
and yelled, "Shoot it!" He said that
it was already gone. I told him to
go around it the other direction.

Later we went up to Teal Whackin'
and saw some birds jump up. We
decided to grab a handful of decoys
and hide in the reeds in case they
came piling back in the way they did
for Craig and I several years back. I
put Jim on a point, Craig to his left,
and me to his right. Of course, that
was the end of the ducks.

I did see movement off to the right and
watched an otter come bobbing along. I
yelled to Jim to alert him. At that
moment, I heard a muffled boom from
Craig. Jim thought he had taken a
shot at the otter; I thought maybe a
stray duck had come it.

Instead, it seems that Craig said
the most dangerous thing you can
say on the marsh. He was squatting
in the reeds and happened to look
down at his foot. He saw a weird
pattern in the weeds and mud and
thought, "Hmm, that looks odd."
His next thought was, "that's a snake.
It's head is sticking out and it's a
venomous snake." He quickly jumped
out, spun around, and shot the
snake. At first he thought it was
a pygmy rattlesnake (from having
stepped barefoot on one in the
back yard) but later we determined
it was a baby cottonmouth.