You certainly don't need a gun to harvest rattlesnakes. My preferred implement was a shovel, either round or square nosed, mostly because that was what I had handy on archaeological digs. Rocks were also highly effective - quieter and with less pernicious ricochets.

Notice the above is in past tense. Through the years, I have tended to leave the snakes alone - when we meet, they go in one direction and I go in the other. They perform a very useful function in regulating rodent populations, although I guess after you have harvested the rattlers, the logical second course would be mice (Would you like them fried, or roasted, Sir?).

The last snake I killed was over forty years ago and it occurred in a National Park. My oldest daughter was eighteen months old and we had a large diamondback lurking around our isolated trailer site I was occupying during a project there. The shovel worked much better than the revolver in that situation.

In twenty-five years of SAR experience around Tucson, AZ, - some 400 operations, we never had a single snake bite victim. The closest was a gentleman scrambling up a rocky face, who upon coming face to face with a rattler, lost his grip and fell, sustaining multiple fractures. We responded to a myriad of fall victims. That is not to say, of course, that no one was bitten during that time. Undoubtedly, a good many victims walked themselves out.

I did attend a very informative presentation by a Tucson physician on his treatment of some fifty victims in the area. They fell into two broad classes. One was young children playing around their home, typically around steps, who were frequently bitten on or near the face. The second group were young males, deliberately seeking out snakes.

Be careful out there.