Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Brown recluse

Oh, you were serious. Sorry.

We have them here. Always shake out my shoes and.boots that are in the garage.before I put them on. Another reason I apply tick granules around the base of my house is that it seems to keep the spiders away too.

I got bit by a Brown Recluse about 8 years ago. Got real sick (like a bad flu) for about 2 days before I noticed the bite. I had just talked to a guy a week or so earlier about how to identify and treat a BR bite, should I ever get one. He referred me to the website below.

https://www.badspiderbites.com/spider-bite-treatment/

I followed the procedure he outlined and within 2 hours, the symptoms had diminished substantially and were gone before bedtime. The guy was Gerald (first write-up on the website) and he was in our gun club. I was fortunate enough to know a vet who helped me out, too.

Sounds crazy, but it worked for me.

I had a story similar to that. I was riding my Harley home from work on the freeway when something black hit my face. I didn't pay any attention to it until I exited and was waiting at a red light. Then I heard buzzing by my ear. Without thinking (What I normally do), I stuck my hand inside my helmet and got stung in my earlobe. Right then, I'm whipping off my helmet, my bike dies because it needed to be switched onto Reserve, and the light turned green. I'm sure all the motorists around me got a good laugh out of it. After that, once or twice a year, I'd get a swelling in my earlobe. It felt like I had a BB in there. Several years later, I'm looking in my bathroom mirror and saw a black spot on my earlobe, just under the skin. I dug it out and it was the bee's stinger, which had finally worked its way to the surface. Never had any swelling after that.

My son was bitten by one while moving lumber. The characteristic blister formed over the bite site. An internet search found reference to using nitroglycerin patches on the wound to increase blood flow and prevent rot. I showed it to the doctor, and she said, "Sure, why not? It can't hurt anything." and wrote the script.

Bite healed up in a few days. No rot, no swabbing out a big wound crater twice a day. By comparison, one coworker had a nickel-sized scar on her ankle, and another wore a bandage over his bite for months. The rot happens because of poor blood flow caused by the venom. The nitro helps prevent that.

I had a bite that wouldn't heal for weeks so finally took a hot iron and burned off all the red inflamed tissue and it started healing almost immediately and was just a small scab after a few days.

The heat seems to neutralize the poison so the faster you can slap a hot iron on it the smaller will be the injury...then keep on fighting.

Don’t get too comfortable. My bear camp is 38 miles south of the Canadian border, I was down helping a friend 40 miles south of here who was nailed by a recluse there. Wicked damage to his leg.

Osky

Having recently replied to a similar OP and noting an experience with a Brown Recluse bite on my forehead right above and between my eyebrows, I will not repeat the painful details other than to say it was fortunate that it was not an area with deep flesh tissue (the venom did try to travel in the bloodstream) and even more fortunate that a lady ER doc in Los Alamos made a quick and specific diagnosis and used the Dexamethasone injection technique. Potential big trouble avoided.