Yes rubber boots will protect you. My brother, when we were kids, used to go afound looking for snakes and found a lot of cotton mouths. Anyway, he stepped on a large cotton mouth lying in a patch of tall grass and it bit him about two inches below the top of his rubber boot. Didn' t even leave fang marks on it. A snake that size just doesn' t have the power to get it' s fangs into the boot. In about ten years of actually going out to find these snakes this is the only incident that we had where we were almost bitten.


The midland water snake and the water moccasin look very similar. You will see many more water snakes than moccasins. If you do encounter a moccasin just walk around it. They are territorial but almost never attack a human unless provoked. They will stand their ground and fight rather than run from you if you do mess with them though.