The only good snake is a dead snake, as Ricky Huey sees it.
One Tuesday morning, Huey noticed a water moccasin crossing the Clear Creek bridge five miles outside of town, so he pulled over and got out his pellet gun. “I thought I’d sit on that creek bank in the shade for a little while and doctor me some snakes,” he said.
Huey is 45 years old and lives in Gilmer. To doctor a snake, he explained, you shoot it dead.
Huey had been doctoring snakes for around 20 minutes when an off-duty police officer saw him with his gun and called for backup. “He said he thought that little old pellet rifle was an AK-47,” Huey recalled. “He got out with his hand on the gun yelling, ‘Put the gun down!’ ”
When state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and the off-duty officer searched his truck and couldn’t figure out what to charge him with, Huey said, they called in the game warden. The game warden cited him for shooting snakes without a hunting license.
This infuriated the snake doctor. He said he’d never pay the $25 to $500 ticket. “I ain’t got nothing but time,” he said. “I’ll sit there in that Upshur County Jail and let them feed me for as long as it takes.”
The game warden, Jeff Cox, said the incident put him an unusual situation, to say the least. He said he wouldn’t cite a person for shooting a snake while defending one’s backyard, but Huey was killing for sport and doing it in a public place. Cox said neighbors started calling 911 as soon as they heard shots, and they were terrified to see Huey walking up and down the highway with his rifle.
“It wasn’t like I’m out on patrol and see this guy on the side of the road and decide to pull over and hassle him. It kind of put me on the spot when I got a call to come and assist,” Cox said. “It seemed like, well, because of all the circumstances here something needs to be documented.”
By law, game wardens regulate the hunting of snakes, frogs, turtles and all other animals.
“Honestly, I had a lot of second thoughts about it,” Cox said. “I could have handled it with a warning and could still go that route.”
Cox spent the evening thinking it over. The next day, he and Huey went before the local justice of the peace. They had a pleasant discussion, and the judge gave Huey a deferred sentence. If he’s not cited for hunting without a license in the next 30 days, his record will be clean.
Through it all, the snake doctor managed to keep one secret about his actions on the creek bank.
“I didn’t tell them this,” he said: “I done shot two of them.”
