Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire SNAKE BITES on the rise!!!

I talked to a friend of mine who works at another local hospital. She told me that they had 4 snake bites admitted in the last 6 or 8 weeks. Maby its a locale thing???? I dunno. I just cant remember ever seeing as many patients in with venomous snake bites in my whole career. When we get these folks in, they get the antivenom, which can cause some seroius heart issues. If the bite was bad enough, with a large amt of injected venom, the patient can have serious respiratoty and cardiac issues. Some are neurotoxic while others are hemotoxic....and dont ask me which are which cause I dont have a clue. I do know that the ER docs treat according to the suspected type venom.
Thank God I have never been bitten...I would die from an MI before I ever made it to the hospital all the while screaming like little girl!!!! Im MORTIFIED of snakes and mice.

The best prevention to ever getting snake bit is to pass the Bar. Professional courtesy.

Now this I do believe.
g

More Copperheads this year and we've seen some Rattlers it's weird one oldtimer told us it was because of the rain,i dunno but all i see get a free bullet hoe baseball bat shovel or whatever i can use to seperate the head from the body.with the Weather approaching the Gulf Coast i'm sure some of yall Northerners will be coming down for your jobs or helping out and may run into a Coral snake remember this saying and it'll help you out"Red touch Yellow,kill a fellow Red touch Black good for Jack." the latter is a harmless water snake the former is the strongest venom we have in Bama.

Interesting that you should post this. I dreamed about snakes last night... It's the first time in a looooong time (actually, I can't remember the last time) that I've dreamed about snakes.

There was also a tarantula-type spider in my dream as well.

Penny

In the link to the pictures and article by NurseKat, unless I read it wrong, the deadliest symptoms are occuring in Arizona, and were from bites from the Mohave ratler.

From what I have read, the Mohave rattler has the most toxic venom of all the rattlers, a combination of both hemotoxic and neurotoxic venom. That could be the reason for the sever reactions and deaths, because those bites were from the Mohave rattler.

In venom toxecity charts I have seen, the Mohave rates as having about the 10th deadliest venom of any snake in the world. Actually, it appears to be tied with the Cobra and Coral Snake if there is a contest for the snake with the most toxic venom.

I don't have an explanation for why it appears more people are being bitten by the Mohave than other rattlers common to that area, unless Mohave rattlers are more common than the other snakes.

Two friends were camping out one night, when all of the sudden one of them jumps up screaming,

"A SNAKE JUST BIT ME ON THE BUTT!!".

The other friend said, "don't worry, I am going to town to find a doctor, I will be right back!".

So he goes to town, and finally finds a doctor.

"Doctor!! My friend just got bit by a snake!!!" the friend says.

"It's ok", the doctor says, "all you have to do is suck the poison out.".

The friend says thank you, and runs back to the camp site.

The injured friends asks, "WHAT DID THE DOCTOR SAY? WHAT DID HE SAY?"


The other friend replies, "the doctor said your gonna die!"

The bites we have seen have just caused the tissue sloughing and necrosis, in addition to severe pain. We have not seen a fatality yet. Most likely in part to use of the antivenom. The site that I posted was interesting to me because of the similarity of the tissue damage from the bites. I dont have have a clue about the snakes the article referenced but the bite damage is very similar to what we are seeing here.

Several years ago, I met Ross Allen, who processed snake venom at his place in Florida. He had been bitten several times and I asked him what was the worst bite he ever had.

He showed me his thumb, which was shriveled up smaller than the first joint on his little finger. He said that one, from a Cotton Mouth. There were photos on a bulletin board showing various bites. They were similiar to the one in your link. Some were on arms, and can you imigine an arm bursting and swelling up like that finger?

I don't think there are Mojave rattlers in Alabama, probably only Eastern Diamond backs and Timber Rattlers and Cane Breaks. Some say that the venom from Timber Rattlers and Cane Breaks is more toxic than that of the Eastern Diamond Back.
All are bad news if you are bitten, but I have read that the Mojave has the most toxic venom

My one friend who got it in the finger by the Pygmy Rattlesnake sloughed a bunch of tissue and lost range of motion in his pinky, where the bite occurred. The other had his forearm swell up the size of 5 pound tube of hamburger, lost alot of tissue, and had nerve damage. It was pretty ugly. I don't play where venomous snakes are concerned. I've shot more moccasins and Canebrake Rattlesnakes than I care to count, and don't regret any of them. The largest snake I've killed was a 6' Eastern Diamondback. Man, you talk about the shivers, it was one BIG snake. It took three CCI shot cartridges from a .45 Colt to settle his hash.

We had a fellow named Maynard Cox who lived in Green Cove Springs, which was 5 miles from where I lived in Orange Park, and he is one of the world's foremost experts on North American venomous snakes. He's been bit a lot, and has developed somewhat of an immunity to rattlesnake venom. He's a funny kind of guy, but everyone calls him when they've got a snake problem. He'd make a good Fundamentalist Preacher, 'cause he handles those snakes like a pro.

Kat some of my club members (in NE MS) swear there are a lot more snakes this year. A good many of them are now carrying .410 single shot pistols when they go in the woods. I personally have not seen any more than normal but then I do not go looking for them.

The number of snakes could be up because we have not a very cold winter in several years. We have also been dry for the last 3 years. The farmers tell me field mice numbers are up also.

So as prey numbers increase so do predators.

NurseKat, back in wildlife biology classes, we were taught that predator/prey populations were cyclic, and that population increases of snakes follows close behind population increases of rodents. I wonder if you're seeing more rodent borne diseases like Hantaan Virus? We had a mild Winter followed by a mild Summer with a good amount of rain, crops were good, and critters are everywhere. Lots of deer, turkeys, rabbits, squirrels... I don't know about Alabama, but I imagine you'd have much the same. I just read some study on bear attacks out West blaming a bad crop of pinion nuts for bears coming down from the mountains and attacking people. There's got to be a link somewhere. I'd bet your rattlers are somehow responding to a food source's dynamics.

there are two mohave rattlers....the regular mohaves and mohave greens....mohave greens are the really deadly ones...they are a specific location of mohave's.....the west coasts southern pacific rattler is also particularly nasty....actually the prairie rattlers we have here are pretty toxic drop for drop but dont produce much.....

mohaves are the most toxic rattler IN THE US.....once you get south of the border rattlers climb in toxicity and they get pretty good sized where most of the really toxic ones in the states are small to midlin.....

they are no where close to the top ten most toxic unless your looking at a condensed list specifically done to put them on it....cobra species range in toxicity from that of a copperhead(actually fairly close to harmless when compared to front fanged venomous snakes, antivenin is rarely needed to save a life with a copperhead bite, just to slow down tissue damage which isnt much compared to most of their buzz tailed cousins) to that of being pretty close to a sure thing your going to die quick with no treatment.....infact king cobra venom isnt all that toxic....most rattlers in the US have stronger venom drop for drop....however none of our snakes can compete with the volume produced by a 12-18 foot king cobra....king cobras kill yah by the quantity not the quality of their venom....US coral snakes are nowhere near the top 10 either....hell MOST of the land based top 10 live in Austrailia followed by Africa than Asia.....dont believe a single New World snake species cracks the top 15.........if your going by groups such as "rattlers" "cobras" "coral snakes" "mambas" ect than you can get rattlers in the top 10 but if yah go by individual species yah cant do it.....only rattler in the top 20 in subQ injections(most likely type of bite) is the tiger rattler from a lil bit of south central Arizona but mostly in Mexico.....mohave greens are around the high 20's low 30's on the list..........

Interesting, thanks Sheridan.

You up at the lake?

nope calling for rain and actually believed it so we came home.....have a paying carpeting job to do anyway......cant get down the Dog Creek Road if it rains so i figured i might aswell earn a couple hundred bucks instead......saw some decent speed goats on the way back to town on the Willow Creek Road but nothing huge....

Right on.

That gumbo gets greasy!

Rattler, the list I saw did group some different snakes togather.

The top of the list was the Inland, or Small Scaled Tiapan, in Australia. In order of toxicity, Australia had about the top seven, including the Brown Snake, Tiger Snake, another type of Tiapan, and some others. One of the Sea Snakes was included in this list of of snakes with highly toxic venom.

As for as your statement that a Cobra kills by quantity, not quality, I am not in a position to argue with you on that. It would stand to reason that a large quantity of a mild venom would kill you just as dead as a small quantity very toxic venom.

On the list I mentioned, and I found it on the internet, I can't remember where, some snakes were in groups with others, based on the toxicity of their venom. The Mohave and Coral snake and some species of Cobra, the King Cobra I think, but I don't remember for sure, came in at about tenth place. What I mean is, these three snakes, and there might have been others, had venom, on a drop for drop basis, of about the same toxicity level.

The study was not based on quantity, but quality. I don't remember the exact method the study was made, but it had to do with the smallest amount of venom tested to kill 50 percent of the labatory mice the venom was injected in.

The Inland, or small scale Tiapan was first by far, but one interesting statement was that there had not been any reported deaths from this snake, although there were deaths from the Tiger snake and others that tested less toxic than the Tiapan.

There was some question that perhaps venom acted differently in people than it did on lab mice. What I mean is, while a paticular venom might be very deadly to a mouse, it would not be as deadly, or it could be more deadly, to a human as a paticular venom from another snake, so the toxicity rating might be different from mice as it is for humans.

In the area where I live, Georgia, the Timber Rattler is the most common, although rarely seen, and further south, the Eastern Diamond back and a sub-species of the Timber Rattler, the Cane Break rattlers are found. Although the venom of the Eastern Diamondback is rated more toxic than either the Timber rattler or Cane Break, some studies show that there is a higher percentage of deaths from the latter two than from the Eastern Diamond Back.

From first hand accounts I have read, the Western Diamond back venom must be very toxic, going by all the tissue damage the bite causes.

It surprised me than the finger Ross Allen showed me, and stated that this was the worst bite he had experienced, was from a Cotton Mouth bite, because he had been bitten by snakes with much more toxic venom than the Cotton Mouth.

The Cotton Mouth is another one we run into occasionally in this area, and quite often further south.

Do you have any training in the study of venomous snakes? I don't have any training, medical or otherwise but I have an interest in learning about them. I read everything I can find about venomous snakes and venomous snake bites.

Probably should point out that while snake bites on the rise, walleye bite on the drop.

I have a hunting lease in Tennessee. I put in approx 20 food plots, trim shooting lanes, and hang stands this time of year. Would you believe it is against the law to kill a rattler or any snake in Tennessee? Also, illegal to kill albino deer. Very strange.

In the case of snakes, the triple S theory works in Michigan.

Shoot, shovel, shut up!