My friends, I live in Florida, and they get bigggggg down here. We've killed several over the years that ran an easy 6', and were t h i c k! I tend to see snakes in general, and poisonous ones in particular, in a Biblical sense as emissaries of the devil, and I take action accordingly. There was a couple of years when I have troubles of the exact opposite nature. I couldn't go hunting without running across pygmies. Once I was sitting on a stool with my back up against a tree while deer hunting and after a while looked about 5' out in front of me to see a dang pygmy coming straight at me! Frankly, I took it kind of personally. I don't mind whacking a pygmy with a stick, but the full sized ones get shot forthwith. I just plumb don't like snakes.