I live in Central Oregon surrounded by National Forest. There is no water near my house with the 135 yr old canals abandoned. No water, no snakes. No so a few miles away on the Deschutes. I was walking back to the car one evening on a gravel road and stepped on a "rubber hose" and thought it odd to be there until my brain overcame my senses and jumped away from the thing. My Mod 60 .38 with snake loads came out and made a good snake out of it. Not being usually too large around here, if I have boots on I usually just jump on top of them and gring them into the ground. However, a couple of years ago someone got an 8 1/2 footer in SE Washington. Must have slithered up from Alpine, Texas.
Cougar are another story. My horses made uncommon noises one night years ago. Nothing good ever comes out of uncommon horse noises. I grabbed a Daly/Sauer drilling which was my only loaded gun at the time and ran out in pajamas. I got into the coral with the horses who were VERY upset but saw nothing...until... one of the horses looked up just above me. I had a flashlight in my laft hand along with the drilling forearm and looked up to see a cougar who then made his last growl. I gave it both barrels from the 12 Ga and it dropped at my feet. I jumped back and realized I brought no extra ammo with me as it jumped up in the air falling back to the ground several times. I cocked the 30-30 barrel and waited until it was still for a moment and finished it off. That was 30 years ago when they were treated like prized pets by the Fish & Game. It was shoot/shovel/shut up time although I burned it instead. The F&G was anal about it. One couple shot two with one with their prized cat in its mouth. They wrote a note to the local paper not giving their names. F&G responded with a serious effort to find out who they were. They told the paper people could shoot one which had attacked their pet or livestock, but shooting the second cat was inexcusable. Some years later, Oregon passed a bill outlawing dogs and bait for cats and bear. They still allow dogs for bobcats (some of them get quite large in the remote areas
.The cat population has exploded and they are a real problem to people in neighborhoods near forests (and some not so near). Dogs & cats are easier game than deer. Every Winter day now with snow on the ground, There are cat tracks over the deer tracks on the well traveled deer trails on my property. Deer come down in the morning and back up in the evening. With deep snow, they stay around the horses and eat the alfalfa/orchard grass mix. A cat averages 2 deer a week.
I took one other cat recently after my older horse. Luckily I was home and grabbed my 1928 Mod 52 (back when they looked like a Springfield). It is in my upstairs bedroom above the fireplace and is my normal coyote gun. I popped the cat at about 75 yards from the upstairs deck (40 coyotes a year from that deck). I went out and finished it off with a 1911. Old cat. They do most of the horse killing. Horse wasn't harmed much. Now with the cats being so much of a problem, They just said go into town and get a tag. They are not so lenient about wolves (much more common than they admit). So no stories about them now.
