biggest cottonmouth I've ever seen....

and this is NOT photo shopped nor is it held out extended to the toward the camera.....my neighbor(Jack Thompson) killed this snake on his farm near Shellman (southwest Georgia) several years ago and he showed me the picture while it was still on his camera the afternoon he killed the snake...
he and his wife were driving around a pond on his farm when they saw what Jack thought was a small alligator's tail sticking out of the grass onto the bare dirt on the field road around the pond...Jack said he stopped the truck and reached in the back and picked up a small spade shovel...he parted the grass above what he thought was a small gator and this huge snake coiled up almost in his face...he swung the spade by reflex and fortunately the blade of the shovel almost severed the snakes head(look close at photo and you can see where he hit the snake)...
Jack said he knew it was a big snake and he got his wife to take a couple of pictures of the snake and he pitched the snake into the pond for the turtles to eat...
Jack was sales manager for local John Deere dealership here and after showing the picture to several people the next day all of whom had never seen a cottonmouth this big (Jack is 6ft 3 in tall so you can see how big this snake is)....Jack took the picture to the local DNR fisheries/game management office....they like all of us including Jack wished he had saved the snake and assured him this snake would have been a state record if they could have physically measured it....
Sadly Jack was killed the following year in a bulldozer
accident while clearing some brush on his farm...

Whew baby, that's a biggun.

Holy [censored]!

He sure jacked that one up

Jack told me afterwards that he leaned over to part the thick grass fully expecting to see a baby alligator and when that snake coiled and reared up,it could have easily struck him in the head or chest if his swing with the shovel hadn't hit the snake just right to keep him from striking...
I lived and fished many years in the Miss delta where cottonmouths were plentiful in the oxbow lakes and I've seen some big ones but nothing even close to this snake...and if I hadn't seen the pictures on the camera and known jack personally,I'd have ahard time believing this photo wasn't altered...

I'm sorry, but I have to ask. He was just clearing brush, how did the dozer get him? And I'm sorry for your friend. That's one scary snake!

Biggest cotton mouth Ihave have ever seem?,JERRY F/N JONES.

Looks like it bit him in a couple of places.

I have to ask how long the shovel is. you say it is not held out, it he is on a shovel pointed at the camera.
It is a giant snake

dayum

He's 2 million lighter today. Course he's worth 5 billion so pocket change for him. Not much of a GM but a shrewd business man.

Jack called it a "landscaping shovel" and I think those are about 3 ft long but I'm not sure....Jack was driving an older model bulldozer down a small embankment when the nose dropped and threw him off the dozer right in front of one of the treads that ran over him...apparently the kill switch didn't work...Jack was raised around a farm plus was sales manager for John Deere so he had been around and operated heavy equipment all his life...just one of those freak accidents....

That’s just too big

A big one, no doubt, eating really good.

I'd guess 48" assuming the little shovel was as you describe it, one of the short ones and they usually have a 6" wide blade. The snake looks to be eight shovel widths long from head to tail tip.

The shovel gives us something to compare it to.

Note the girth and blunt body. Most other water snakes that big around would be several feet longer.

Nasty!

Brad

That's just Nuts!

Definitely a HUGE cottonmouth, but not as large as it looks. The 3-4 foot extension makes it look 8 feet long. :-)

jack was 6ft3in tall and the DNR told him this snake was definitely bigger than the Georgia state record which I believe is 5ft 6in long....

It really is a whopper. When I mentioned 48" or 4 feet, I was sort of using the width of the shovel blade, 6", as a "compare." You can see the snake dangling from both ends of the blade for a good idea of where the blade width begins and ends.

If it is a short handled shovel, I think it is, too, then 6" for the width (common) and I repeated it to get an idea. Color coded. Looks like 6 segments of 6" to me plus another 6" or more for the head and tail not included in the color coding.

If it is a longer handled shovel, say a 5 or 6 footer, then it is held well out in front and its size is distorted a bit.

In either case, it is a really big water mocassin! I've never seen one in the wild this big.

Brad

Looks like a gaboon viper. What a monster.

I'm so sorry BearTrap. That's horrible. I've driven a dozer only a few times myself but never thought of that even being possible. I'll definitely be a lot more wary when I head across our creek bed from now on.

So sorry to hear about the accident, for those who have no experience in dozers................ALWAYS WEAR A SETBEALT before the transmission is engaged. AND ALWAYS HAVE A roll over protection system (ROPS) if you are doing ANY land clearing . Tree limbs (dead trees) falling from 20,30 or 40 feet do not have good effects on the head of human. I have been in this business for 20 years and have had some very close calls....................... If it wasn't for my experience and ROPS I would have been killed many times over. Dozers are NOT TOYS.