I've never been close to a black mamba, but I have been within inches of rattlers, cottomouths, and copperheads. I had a BIG copperhead slither right between my feet as I took a step bowfishing off a bank a few years ago. Nothing like the feeling you get when you are crossing a beaver slash or high grass and you start to smell a cottonmouth and can't even begin to see where it's at; or tromping through a cutover and start smelling a rattler and the stuff is so thick you can't even see your feet. Sometimes that feeling is warm and runny, and located at your hindquaters!

Here is Mississippi snakes are just another part of the outdoors--along with mosquitoes, deerflies, horseflies, black widows, brown recluse (the actual spiders, not the bows)and the occasional hornet/yellowjacket/wasp/bumblebee nest. When bowseason opens October first, it's usually still in the 80's--plenty warm for all of God's little stinging/biting/bloodsucking creatures to be very active. Don't have to travel all the way to Africa for that kind of excitement--lol.

Chad