In the 1990's , in Pa.'s big woods , on a hot August evening , my son and I were headed on the five mile trip out to the hard top road to go home. "bout a mile from our camp we spotted a very large 45" cream colored timber rattle snake headed toward the driveway to a " below the road" camp. Playing at the other end of driveway next to the camp were three young , little kids. My son and I looked at each other and said , "we can't let this obvious catastrophe happened." Only gun we had with us was one of those rifled , .40 cal. percussion kit pistols loaded with probably an overload of equal powder and #6 fine shot. Tried running over the critter w/the truck to no avail , so capped the pistol , and let the snake have the load at about three feet distance. It took effect , and a guy in the camp came out yelling what are you shooting about? We showed him the situation and his demeanor went from anger to shock and thankfulness. We separated ,and buried the head from the rest of the monster and he took the body to skin and mount it as a camp souvenir. The kit pistol performed flawlessly , even though it had very shallow rifling. My son had it loaded with newspaper for wadding and created lotsa smoke and fire. Guaranteed there was a barbecuing effect on anything shot at three feet distance. ....................oldwood