Anything that fits in his mouth. Friends of mine about 5 weeks ago saw this off their porch under a seldom used truck of theirs. It was there for a whole day after eating the rabbit......jk

That's a small rabbit.

They can unhinge their jaws, so they can swallow bigger prey . You will see them " yawn " after eating a big meal and they do that to put their jaw bones back into place.

They bottom jaw unhinges from the top one and then splits at the chin. As the teeth are angled backwards, they can then " walk " the bottom jaw halves along the pry and pull it in that way.

One got to eat a .40 caliber round this afternoon on my river property...

They're movement down here is increasing heading into fall...

I wonder how fast it could spit that wabbit out?

I've necropsied almost 200 dead rattlesnakes in the past few years, looking at, among other things, diet. Most were roadkills, although I do kill rattlers I find in the yard to protect the dogs, stock, chickens, and grand-daughter. 120 had empty GI tracts. Forty had voles in the stomach (1 or more), 11 had deer mice, 2 had cottontails, 2 had chipmunks, 1 had a pocket gopher, 2 had unidentifiable birds (I think one was a young chukar or gray partridge). These are all prairie rattlesnakes, Crotalus viridis. Interesting to me, deer mice have much higher populations than voles, but the rattlesnakes seem to prefer the voles. At this relatively high elevation (5000 feet plus), our rattlesnakes don't get very big (4' is a giant around here).

Jack Whitman

Do you notice any color variation at the higher elevations? Pretty interesting study Gulo!

Scout1 -

I've caught and examined 498 prairie rattlesnakes from this country (and 4118 total snakes of all species) over the past few years. These rattlesnakes have a chameleon-like ability to loosely match their background colors. That is, they take on the hue of the substrate or the vegetation (very loosely). There are various shades of brown, greenish, or straw-colored. I've never seen one that was "odd" colored. On the other hand, I have caught a single very malanistic terrestrial garter snake. All others, of all species, have been "normal".

Jack Whitman

I was told that Timber rattlers mostly ate squirrels around here.

River bottom has them and I have seen a few at the house (1 mile away from the river)

They are one of the most docile snakes I have ever dealt with (not that I have dealt with many)

Very cool. I love snakes. I stop and move them off the roads.

Same here, we have a lot of traffic with the gas wells and pipe line guys. Most of those fella will deliberately run over snakes of any kind. If they are around house, it is your choice, I have no hard feelings about them getting killed there, but away from people and pets we do them no harm. about color ours were mainly yellow 15 years ago and before that but for some reason I have only seen two yellow ones in the last
8 or 9 years???

Lead, lots of lead.

Sarge

X2

What did GOD say to do to the snake ????

Killed a copperhead at the end of driveway yesterday. He ate lots of lead. Poisonous snakes get the Wyatt Earp treatment.
Already had one dog bit. Vet bill was very unkind. So, i'm unkind to them.
Sarge

I take care of an apple orchard on 3,500 acres of land. The road through it carries stuff for the four gas pads and the windmills(i have never seen a dead bird yet on the windmill road). Up there(almost 2,000 feet) I say let um live they cause no problems there, but in town (800 feet) that is something different, to many people and pets......jk

I’ve never eaten a snake that was poisonous. Are some venomous snakes though. Snakes get a pass unless I’m being paid. If I kill, I’m getting paid for it or it gets a pass.

In my family's zoo we have a snake pit. It is about 24 feet in diameter. Snakes in it included rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, blacksnakes, watersnakes, copperheads and milksnakes. We would feed them white mice. If we put 1 brown mouse in with 25 white mice the brown mouse was always the first one eaten. When baling hay we would catch a bunch of meadow voles and dump them in with the snakes (all mice and voles were put in alive). When white mice were dumped in the snakes took their time going after them. When meadow voles were put in almost every snake immediately went after them.
By the way every time a rattlesnake or copperhead eats it sheds it's skin. Every time a rattlesnake sheds it's skin it gets a new rattle. So the rattles are not an indication of how old the snake is, but an indication of how often it has fed recently. Rattles often pull off between 2 rocks or in the crotch of a sticks. Rattlesnakes and copperheads do not feed often, here in NJ they may eat as few as 4 voles or chipmunk sized animals a summer.