When I had a chance to do a fair bit of quail hunting in Texas, I used to condition the pointer during dove season.It was fun taking a few opportunistic doves, instead of just dog work. I really didn't care for the water snakes, in the heat, they would coil up beneath the surface of small stock tanks that we usd to swing by to water the dogs, with just their nose breaking the surface. The dogs couldn't tell they were there, like they could rattlers.
In the Rockies though, I have seen two very large rattler dens that probably had hundreds of snakes in them, both pretty high up in elevation.
