I've lived in both Georgia and Virginia and had a cc permit in both states. As a former LEO and Academy firearms instructor I never had to take any kind of "course" to get a permit. Here in Maine it's legal to carry concealed or open without a permit. This, of course, applies to those who can legally possess a firearm. But one can also get a concealed permit if one so chooses. I'll be doing that after the virus thing is conquered. But I very rarely carry concealed anymore. In the bush I open carry but never in public. Public open carry makes people nervous and invites some bozos to test you. Any civilian who carries concealed MUST be willing to walk away from a confrontation; the last thing one wants is police intervention OR the, unnecessary Heaven forbid, "mark of Cain". Still it is always better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6.
And snakes! I love reptiles, including snakes, as much as I love most other creatures. I've only ever killed two rattlers and a couple of copperheads; and one of the rattlers was by accident. Zoologists say the canebrake - in the upland they correctly call them "timber rattlers", which have a yellow background color unless they are black phase, etc - which is the lowland version of the timbers, have been growing increasingly toxic and are now clearly about as bad as such things get. Their venom is a mixture (many species have some slight mix of venom) of hemotoxin AND neurotoxin. It remains unclear if this is a natural evolution or something else and was noted quite a ways back. At any rate the timber family, along with the diamondbacks, are rather lethargic and not prone to strike unless injured or seriously threatened. And the larger they get the more "docile" they get. Back in Georgia they were everywhere around our house and the surrounding county. We've had them on the porch, in the barn, hanging about my backyard shooting range; they were ultra common. In our county one November a deer hunter came down off his stand and was bitten. His son & nephew were with him and called 911. But 15 minutes later when they got him out to the ambulance he was already dead.
Copperheads were all over as well. Now they WILL readily bite if disturbed. I used to catch them and keep them in a terrarium through the summer and release them in the fall in time to fatten up for the winter. My dog was bitten by one and I caught that one too. If it had been a canebrake she would have died in minutes. I never did catch a pygmy rattler (different genus) but saw them frequently. My squeeze thought I was very weird because I would stop to drag rattlers/copperheads off the road to keep them from being killed. All creatures interest me a lot.
