AUSTIN — Gathering rattlesnakes is a familiar chore for Rob McCann, who helped collect 24,000 pounds of live snakes for the annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Round-Up in West Texas back in March.

McCann said he personally rounded up about 200 pounds of snakes, “fuming” them out of a hillside den.

“We just use the fumes from gasoline — 2 to 4 ounces,” he said. “We put it into a pump-up sprayer. It actually intoxicates them, almost.”

Heightened awareness of rattlesnakes’ ecological importance has led to a ban on fuming — or gassing, as it’s often called — in 29 states. But when Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners meet next week, a much-debated proposal that would have ended the practice here won’t be on the agenda.

The idea has been shelved, said commission Chairman Dan Friedkin, amid divisiveness and a committee’s inability to agree on how to best regulate the practice. 

“The method in which snakes are collected generates passionate appeals from those on both sides of the continuum,” he said in a statement.

Commission spokesman Josh Havens said there isn’t enough support to move forward with regulations.

“There’s a lot of emotions on both sides, between the biological/herpetological side and the economic side,” he said. 

At the Sweetwater festival, the rattlers are milked for venom, skinned and fried, and prizes are awarded for the longest snake.

Rattlesnake roundups also take place in other Texas cities, such as Big Spring and Freer, but Sweetwater claims to be the world’s biggest.

The economic impact of the event is clear — $8.6 million last year, said McCann, a 23-year member of the local Jaycees club that organizes the roundup.

Organizers are not “beating ourselves on the chest” over the decision to drop a proposed regulation, he said, but they are happy with the outcome.

“If somebody has a better idea on how to hunt rattlesnakes, we are all ears,” he said.

There are, however, places where rattlesnake roundups have morphed into events with a wider focus.

Tammi Hall, executive director of the Claxton-Evans County Chamber of Commerce in southeast Georgia, said organizers of a rattlesnake roundup there converted the event to a wildlife festival four years ago. It now emphasizes conservation, complete with fish tank displays and working-dog demonstrations.

“It was very well accepted here in our community,” Hall said. “If anything, it helped us to gain the support of several organizations.”

Georgia Southern University’s Center for Wildlife Education participates in the festival, which Hall said draws 15,000 to 18,000 people to a community of 2,400, and has an estimated economic impact of about $1 million.

“We garner greater economic return by getting on the right side of science,” said Steve Hein, director of the wildlife education center.

Gassing snakes and collecting them to be killed and sold for meat and skins yields “collateral damage” to other species that share snakes’ burrows, such as tortoises, Hein said.

On the other hand, McCann stressed the potential harm of snakebites to people. Treatment costs about $200,000. 

And, in the community outside Abilene, rounding up rattlesnakes is a public service.

“They’re everywhere,” he said. ““For us not to do this, it’s not an option.”

Throughout the United States, people are nine times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a venomous snakebite, research shows.

According to University of Florida researchers, five or six people in the U.S. die from a snakebite each year. 

In many cases, those attacks are provoked by people who’ve been drinking, Hein said, noting that the “dangerous animal” in many cases is usually the human. 

“Dogs and bees pose a bigger threat than the presence of rattlesnakes in the ecosystem,” he said.

Meanwhile, Havens said the Parks and Wildlife Commission plans to continue working to address issues with rattlesnake collection. 

“We believe there are better options that don’t impact non-targeted species,” he said. “Our plan is to continue to work with the snake-collecting community.” 

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.