Dat be wrong ,Bro I caught a bunch of Gopher snakes as a young kid in the mountains in SO CA and found out most of them are gentle and won't bite you unless your to rough with them while catching them. They do eat rattle snakes according to local Indian that worked on a ranch near where I use to spend the summers with my Grandma camping out at a National Forest camp ground back in the early to mid 1950s.
There was another kid that wanted to become a snake specialist after going to college later, we caught every snake we could including Pacific Western rattle snakes which were very easy to catch and mild mannered and Timber or Diamondback rattlers, which were a lot meaner and harder to catch alive
Just what every 7 to 9 yr old kid should due on their summer vacations
I've caught and release a lot of snakes since then, my wife hates them, she screams loud and runs fast every time I brought one home