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I work for a boys camp over the summers in the CA Sierra's. I have discovered over the years there is absolutely no reason to kill snakes. I am definiatly guilty of such crimes, but as you get older you get wiser. 99% of the time the snake is going to want to head the other way from you. I have even come real close to stepping on them. They either just crawl away quietly or they start rattling and backing away, leaving me with a rather high heart rate. Only once did I have a snake come my way. I don't know how to explain it, but he crawled up right underneath the log I was sitting on. I jumped a good ten feet. I think he must have thought me or the fire I was standing by must have the biggest ground squirrel heat signature he has ever had on his scanner.
I never get to carry while I am hiking, but it is really easy to hold the snake down by the head with a stick and then your boot or shoe and simply cut off his head. Why waste your ammo. Snakes are by no means a formidable adversary to us. So why kill em? They just like to eat vermin and go their own way. If they are in your camp, just use a stick and haul out of there a couple hundred yards and let em be.
By the way, the only time I ever cooked one up, he wasn't worth the effort. Not enough meat on them bones.
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