At Serpent Encounters, we are not just breeders, we also promote education and conservation of our local species of snakes and we often emphasize this on our page. While we do have several breeding projects, and we add to our personal collection often, we get our biggest thrills from our field herping and taking pictures of our finds to share with our viewers. Also, we are not adrenaline fueled people who just do this for the thrills, I like to believe we have a genuine passion for these animals and their importance in our ecosystem. Stories like this one hit us hard and fuel our passion to strive even more to preserve these animals and stop the senseless killing of them. We came across someone in our workplace that knows a landowner that uses the land for hunting. On this land, we have been told, that the timber rattlesnake ( Crotalus horridus ) is often seen and killed there. Well the photo with the story was sent to us after the fact, but the snake was killed shortly after the picture was taken. I think this picture was sent to prove that it really is rattlesnakes that are being seen on the property. Serpent Encounters is working diligently to obtain permission to search the area and save a few of them. We do have contacts locally that do important research on them and I would rather see them used in that way, rather than killed on site. We are making headway on obtaining the permission we need to do this soon, and we hope in the next few weeks we can post a success story on some rattlesnakes that were saved from this area. It is unfortunate that this happens often and this picture is embedded in our memory as a reminder that we need to do all we can to prevent this in the future, if possible. We can’t be everywhere all the time, but possibly we can make a dent in the unfortunate demise of these amazing creatures. Thanks for reading, Serpent Encounters. 
