LANE ? Dallas Brakeville has been handling western diamondback rattlesnakes for about a dozen years, but he knew it was time to quit last year when one slipped out of his grasp during a demonstration in Ottawa.

His decision was reinforced last winter when he was bitten by a diamondback during a sports show in Omaha, Neb. The snake, luckily, didn’t inject any venom.

“I was very lucky,” Brakeville, 63, said during a recent interview at his farm near the Franklin County town of Lane.

Brakeville grew up catching nonvenomous snakes, and he’s always had a fascination with them, he said. But it wasn’t until 1989 that he and two brothers started hunting rattlesnakes in Oklahoma. He also started putting on demonstrations with rattlesnakes and other venomous snakes for Boy Scouts and other groups and events in the Franklin County area.

At a motel in Okeene, Okla., Brakeville met two other Kansas snake hunters, Gary Bliss, from Downs, and Andy Stewart, of Liberal. They decided to form what they called the Rattlesnake Wranglers and do their own snake shows, starting with a sports show in Jonesboro, Ark. After a couple of years in Jonesboro they got calls to conduct demonstrations at the bigger winter sports shows in cities such as Kansas City, Mo., and Minneapolis.

Brakeville, a retired meter tester for Kansas City Power and Light, said he never got nervous with the dangerous snakes.

“I’m not nervous or afraid, but I’m very alert,” he said. “You are pretty much on your own when you are handling a rattlesnake.”

Brakeville was putting on a safety demonstration for the city of Ottawa last year when a diamondback he was holding twisted free. Brakeville caught it safely, but he considered it a wake-up call.

“I’ve got some arthritis in both hands, and I can’t hold them like I used to,” he said. “I decided it was time to quit.”

But Brakeville didn’t want to break his commitment to the other Wranglers to do their sports shows this past winter. In Omaha, Brakeville was standing in a pit with 100 rattlesnakes when he felt something warm running down his leg into his boot. He left the pit and discovered it was blood from a snake bite just above the boot. He went to a hospital and learned the snake didn’t inject venom.

“I didn’t even know I’d been hit,” he said.

Brakeville used to keep about 150 western diamondbacks and other rattlers, along with venomous snakes such as copperheads and water moccasins, in containers in his basement. He either caught the snakes himself or purchased them from other snake hunters. He obtained state and commercial licenses allowing him to keep the creatures. Large numbers of snakes were taken to shows so they could be rotated every two or three days.

“The snakes get tired,” Brakeville said. “If you don’t rotate them, it could kill them.”

The venomous snakes are gone, now. The only snakes Brakeville keeps are a couple of nonvenomous corn and milk snakes. They’re in display cases in his living room.

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“Sometimes people will still call me and say they have a rattlesnake and ask me if I want it,” he said. “I don’t. I’m done with them.”