Any spider experts have some info on this big guy? Obviously he is a Tarantula, but any specifics would be cool. Poisonous? Jumping? Etc...
He was under my car port last night...

That thing would scare the [censored] out of me!

Here is a bigger pic for you

How do you make the pics bigger like that?
I just do [img]jpg[/img]

Just a native tarantula, probably a male out wandering around looking for a female. You need to see the pedipalpi (those appendages that look like a pair of short front legs) to see if it's a male...males have slender abdomens, too. You can often see the males on roads at night, because the asphalt holds the heat and is warm after the sun goes down.

They are harmless. Tarantulas have a very weak venom and rely on their strength to subdue prey.

Use to catch those things when i was kid. We would find holes in the ground with a web covering the top. Pour a little bit of water down the hole, then catch em when they crawl to the top. Very gentle as long as you dont piss em off. Then they get a little feisty .

My understanding is tarantula's in North America are basically harmless. Some victims may get a little stomach cramping at worst, but most have no side effects. I understand the bite can be pretty fierce though, unlike some of our more dangerous spiders, where victims sometimes don't even feel the bite.

I have only seen a couple in the wild. Very cool.

Near Medina Lake they use to cross the road in heards

I got killed by a tarantula once

Real nifty animals, I had one loose in the house many years ago when I was a biology major in college. It was in the house for over three months and for that time we had no palm cockroaches (the BIG ones). I could hear him crunching them up from across the room. He always stayed out of my way. One night however, I got up to go the the bathroom and there he was in the middle of the hallway floor. He had doubled in size. In respect, I collected him and found a good place to let him go.

Dear God, why did you have to say that? Here we go again!!

I actually caught quite a few of those over the years by pouring water into their web covered holes. Used many of em as target practice for my .22 cal pellet gun. Even kept a couple of em as pets in a fish tank. One i had for awhile got so big that i started feeding him smaller tarantulas. Then i caught another massive one about the same size and put em in the tank together, and watched em fight to the death.

The first pic was shrunk,the larger pic actual size.

that's a big ole male, but I thought their season started round aug-sep.
pretty animal, hardly see em anymore

I removed the "th_" from the url. That th_ is actually a thumbnail hence the th_

Yikes!