OUTDOORS: THERE IS STILL SOME SLITHER LEFT FOR HUNTERS IN THE AUTUMN GRASS

The onset of fall hunting seasons puts more people afield and, consequently, opens wider a window of opportunity for serpentine encounters.

For at least a short while, hunters get a chance to meet more snakes up close and personal. It's usually a no-risk, or at most a low-risk situation, but there are a few moments of potential anxiety that often result, particularly for those who have a deep-seated aversion to such slithery forms of wildlife.

As an example, quite recently I was plodding along a grassy flat in a slough and, to exemplify my acute awareness, stepped on a cottonmouth. I don't mean I stepped by a cottonmouth; I stepped squarely on it curled form. Mashed it into the mud actually.

I realized what was happening only after putting my full weight on the snake, at which point I levitated smartly.

The encounter was much harder on the snake. It didn't bite, in part due, perhaps, to its head having been pushed into the muck under my No. 12, rubber-booted foot.

A few days later I was ambling across a brushy upland ridge when a juvenile copperhead slithered out of harm's way. I saw that one in time to avoid treading on him, which neither of us really wanted.

Subsequent to that one, I was tromping down a four-wheeler path when I stepped just inches short of a harmless, but hefty black rat snake in the grassy lane. Before my thought process had registered the information that the snake was, indeed, non-venomous, I again levitated. It's an inborn reflexive ability, you see.

Anyhow, snakes are out and about and available for impromptu meetings in our woods and fields and waterways. Their time, however, is short, much to the relief of those who equate serpents with innate evil -- or maybe those who just don't like 'em.

October is a transitional month for snakes and other reptiles. In this latitude, the temperature curve that's common for the month usually takes snakes from the awake mode to the sleep mode.

"October is generally the time when snakes go into the ground for hibernation," said Dr. Duke Wilder, an associate professor of biology at Murray State University and a herpetologist whose most frequent outdoor laboratory is Murphy's Pond, a dandy of a snake lair in Hickman County.

The wetland currently is the site of a telemetry study on cottonmouths, one in which moccasins are captured and have tiny radio transmitters implanted in them so their movements can be cataloged. The study remains in its early states, but some observations already can be made.

"Cottonmouths definitely go into holes in the ground when the temperature drops low enough," Wilder said. "They may go in and come back out to sun when you get a mild day, but I have a feeling when the temperature gets into the 50s, they get really inactive.

"The kind of cool nights we've been having lately might send some in the ground early," he said. "One cottonmouth already has gone into the ground, but I don't know why it went so early."

There are individual differences in snakes regarding when they retire for the season, and there may be some differences in snakes regarding when they retire for the season, and there may be some differences among various species, Wilder said. However, all snakes, because they are cold-blooded , tend to wind down and become less active as the air temperatures cool with the season, he said.

"They're more sluggish in colder temperatures," Wilder said. "I've got a captive rat snake that I keep in an enclosure at home, and he quits eating from October until March."

Those who suffer severe nerve recoil at the mere swish of anything serpentine in the vegetation can take assurance that the frequency of progressively cooler nights will put an end to such reptile activity in a short while. By the time there's frost on the pumpkin, there are few, if any, snakes left in the grass.

On any warm, Indian summer days in the meanwhile, however, you might want to watch where you're putting your feet.

Steve Vantreese is outdoors editor of The Paducah Sun.