A Tennessee man named Bub Stevens was driving down Old Highway 64 near Bolivar, TN when he saw what he thought was a snake dart in front of him.
It happened so fast, he had no time to react and ended up hitting it.
“So I backed up and got out, and sure enough it was a big copperhead,” Stevens said.
It was dead when Stevens saw it so he put on some gloves, picked it up and threw it in the back of his truck.
“I thought, ‘Man, that’s the biggest snake I’ve ever seen.'”
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2640313132692480&set=pcb.2640318529358607&type=3&theater
Luckily, Stevens is friends with a well-known Hardeman County outdoorsman named Anthony Landreth, who came to look at the snake, which he confirmed was a copperhead snake.
Landreth took the snake’s measurements and it came out to 49.5 inches long – just 2.75 inches short of a world record for a copperhead snake, who normally are 24-36 inches in length.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2640313099359150&set=pcb.2640318529358607&type=3&theater
“I’m 59 years old; I have never seen any copperhead, alive or dead, that even comes close to that,” Landreth said. Landreth donated the snake to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), who are going to have a taxidermist mount the animal so it can be used for educational purposes.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2640313186025808&set=pcb.2640318529358607&type=3&theater