DALLAS — After getting the same bizarre snake photo multiple times in the same week, I conjured up this motto: The Internet, Gossip at the Speed of Light.

If you’re among the sportsmen who use the Internet for its many excellent functions, you probably got some version of the e-mail. It’s a photo of a guy in blue shorts and snakeproof boots holding a very large dead rattlesnake, probably on a stick, out toward the camera. You can’t see the stick, which is obscured by the reptile’s considerable bulk.

According to the gossip that accompanied the photo, the snake was killed near Coleman, Texas. Never mind the deciduous forest in the background. Never mind that the snake is an eastern diamondback rattler.

There are no deciduous forests in West Texas. Luckily, Texas has no rattlesnakes as big as an eastern diamondback. This one is probably from Georgia or Florida. Along with the outrageously big snake comes some text about how rattlesnakes don’t rattle anymore because of hogs, which are now common in most rattlesnake country.

The theory is that snakes have stopped rattling to avoid detection by hogs, which eat snakes and everything else, and the rattlers’ stealth mode makes them more dangerous to people. Andy Gluesenkamp, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department herpetologist, said there’s no data to support an increase in nonrattling snakes or any specific impact by hogs.

Furthermore, if a snake could evolve to not do what it’s designed to do, it would have made that evolutionary jump as soon as pioneers settled Texas. Hungry hogs will never take the toll that people have taken on rattlesnakes.

I bring up the subject of snakes because spring turkey seasons are coming up, and turkey hunters are more susceptible to snake bite than just about anyone. During spring, when snakes are shaking off hibernation doldrums and becoming active, turkey hunters go into the woods before daylight and often sit on the ground.

Western diamondback rattlers are common in most areas where Rio Grande turkeys live. The rattlesnake is a dangerous species blamed for 95 percent of all U.S. snakebite fatalities. Of the 7,000 or so annual bites, fewer than 10 result in fatalities.

Any poisonous snake is worth avoiding, but too many people have the wrong idea about rattlers. They still rattle but only when you catch them in the open with no chance to escape, no place to hide. In all likelihood, that habit hasn’t changed since the first rattler.

“Snakes are very adept at hiding, and that’s what they do most of the time,” said Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Chip Ruthven, who once ran a rattlesnake study on the Chaparral Wildlife Management Area in Dimmit County. It’s a good place to study rattlers. In eight years, Ruthven’s crew caught 823 snakes, most of them as they crawled across the road. They equipped some with transmitters so they could be relocated. Others were given an electronic tag so they could be identified on recapture.

“I’ve tracked snakes with telemetry and knew that they were very close,” Ruthven said. “I’ve stepped on three or four and none tried to bite me. All they wanted to do was get away.”

In Ruthven’s experience snakes that feel safely hidden in their normal stealth mode are less likely to bite. Snakes that are confronted (intentionally or accidentally) will coil, rattle and strike because they feel vulnerable.

If you’re bitten by a snake, get to a hospital as quickly as possible. It’s also good if you can identify the snake that bit you. As long as you’re in Texas, it won’t be an eastern diamondback rattlesnake.

(c) 2011, The Dallas Morning News.

Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http://www.dallasnews.com/.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.