Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Black Mamba Question.

Funny how snakes in general seem very sensitive to exact eco systems/locations. I've got various friends who live within a couple of miles of me in a variety of directions and they all get puff adders, cobras and mambas on a weekly basis. In the last 10 years, I've had 2 or 3 mambas and one spitting cobra and that's it.

As for messing with them, I kill them if they get in the house or into camp but other than that, I have the agreement that I leave them alone and they leave me alone and in 30 years of hunting Africa, I've never been bitten.

i don't see the big deal with mambas. all the local hunters know what to do when you get bitten by a black mamba. simple, wright the word mamba on the ground and go an lie down in the shade. simple. that why when your hunting buddies find you, they at least know what happened. and of course the shade speaks for it self. i mean have you ever seen a corpse that spend some time in the son.

you aint the first to make that comment 'bout me and likely wont be the last.....every time my wife sees me dive into high grass she yells "DAMMIT! LEAVE THE SNAKE ALONE!" she doesnt even have to see the critter to know what im after

I'm not afraid of snakes, nor am I afraid of Lions, Buffalo, Hippo, elephant,the Taliban, Mexican Cartel, or Alquida, but I have a damn healthy respect for them, and don't play silly games when in their bubble...These things kill people that are stupid or careless.

very true.....round here, after over 2 decades of chasing snakes here i can tell at a brief glance what snake im going after....hell 9 times out of 10 i can correctly identify the damn things while doing 75mph down the interstate.....put me in Florida and i dont dive into the grass ofter a glimpse of 4 inches worth of the snakes body.....put me in Africa and i wanna see the entire damn snake before screwing with one, and even then maybe not cause some of their lil ones dont fit into the nice categories we have over here in the states and can screw up your weekend real quick....if it turns out to be a python ill likely loose interest in shooting anything till i catch it and check it out more closely

Very interesting and informative thread gentlemen. Thanks. All we have are prairie rattlers here in the way of venemous snakes. That is enough.

does anyone know why snake handling tongs are so ridiculously expensive?

Here, they start at the equivalent of about US$80 but when I look at 'em, I reckon you could make one for about $15.

niche market.....kinda why some of the carpeting tools i use are so expensive when they look easy to make....you aint gonna make money on them via volume....

almost have to laugh at this.....almost....if yah can get to the hospital or antivenin and someone that knows how to use it you can live through a mamba bit most of the time....however, given they have highly neurotoxic venom, if your feeling the effects of the venom and your more than 90 minutes from the antivenin yourself, ill defiantly go with the thought of just making itself comfortable cause your chances really arent very good....

I've never had to do it but have been (repeatedly) told that in the old days, they used to put the patient on the bonnet of the Landrover, press an HT lead near the wound and turn the engine over.... I'm also told there has been a lot of research on using cattle prods etc in a similar way.... I haven't ever seen any proof of that though.

The theory does make sense though as venom is made up of chains of protein and in theory at least, electrical current would break up those chains of protein.

if the choice was dieing and giving it that a shot, i'ld say wire me up.....i dont have much faith in the technique knowing what i know bout snake venom and i do know more than the average Joe, im more inclined to think the snake didnt inject a full load of venom and you would have survived regardless....but as i said if there is no other option, in the case of something as toxic as the black mamba, ill take the electric shock and hope for the best cause at that point a lil more pain is the least of my worries.....

You have to wonder what they were thinking when they tried it for the first time

given the likelihood of you dieing from a bite if your that far out in the bush someone prolly thought what the hell why not.....if you take a full bite from a mamba and you arent near a hospital the chances of you surviving are prolly pretty close to you winning the lottery....the issue is snakes can vary how much they give yah from none at all to completely emptying their venom glands into you which is enough to kill you many times over, its an active choice they make....you can get bit by a mamba, be envenomated but they didnt give yah a lethal dose, your still gonna be in bad shape for a bit....they can also give yah enough to where you would survive in a hospital without antivenin but not out in the bush cause they can put yah on a respirator and keep yah breathing till the venom gets broken down by your body.....there are a whole lot of "ifs" out there for me to believe in the shock therapy....but i get bit by a mamba 2 hours from the nearest hospital or antivenin, your going to be wiring my arse to that vehicle and shocking the hell out of me

I can understand the theory of how it works and it makes sense but I'd have thought time between bite and shock would be a large factor in effectiveness of the treatment.

Actually, I reckon the cytotoxic venoms would in some ways be worse than the neurotoxic.... at least with a neurotoxic bite, it's over one way or the other fairly quickly but with cytotoxic venom, it must seem to go on forever......

Jim,

The other vital fact you've missed about Mambas is that they scare Canadians even more so than Rhino's do!

Regards,

Peter

Now Mr. Atkinson, now what do you really think, would have happened that day if that PH with a bad eye didn't shoot and kill that snake? I am all eyes and ears to this replay sir.

The following videos have a rather high "pucker factor"!!

Video 1

Video 2

Mike

my issue is if it destroys the proteins of the venom why in the hell doesnt it do more damage to the proteins in the body around the bite site...

as far as neurotoxins versus the various others, yah need to keep in mind with rare exception most snakes carry a cocktail of most all the types....the neurotoxin of a mambas bite just kicks in alot faster than the various other toxins the mamba has in lesser amounts....the average, healthy adult can take a full bite from a US copperhead and never truly need antivenin they will give it to you to slow down tissue destruction but your not likely to die from a bite on the hand....maybe loose a few fingers but you wont die....

puff adders have some really nasty venom but it is designed almost totally for tissue destruction, its real good at basically dissolving muscle tissue almost like acid....like most snakes with similar venom, the venom rarely kills yah unless the fangs injected it directly into a major vein or artery...

the Gabon viper is sorta well known for this due to its huge fangs....infact individual snakes that have had their venom glands removed to make them "safe" have still killed ppl cause due to the force of the bite(4-6 foot snake, 20 plus pounds) coupled with the 2 inch fangs, ppl have had arteries in their arms severed and bled out....

what usually kills yah in the instance of the puff adder, aint the venom, its the infection that sets in as that dissolved flesh starts to rot....

boomslangs have nasty venom aswell....different from mambas or adders, their venom completly gets rid of you bloods clotting factor and starts screwing with the integrity of the vein and artery walls, you start bleeding from everywhere, your eyes, nose, mouth , belly button and elsewhere in a bad bite....

double post

I have only had one encounter with what I thought was a common snake of some sort at the time. I was riding in the back of a toyota truck with my PH. The land owner was driving the truck, chasing after a herd of white-blesbok.

This went on for 40 minutes or more, trying to get close enought to put a stalk on this particular herd. I got a little antsy as the sun was about 30 minutes from going down. I told the PH to stop the truck. He told the driver to hold up. I stated I could get the job done on the blesbok by just walking the 1/2 mile or so on foot. PH said not a good idea! I said: Well I am going to do so. I grabbed my rifle off the rack and proceeded to climb down out of the back of the truck.

The PH grabbed me by the arm and pointed to the long snake making it's way in the field. I do remember that we passed several big termite hills just prior to stopping. This snake was like 35 feet going away from the truck. There was not much grass on the ground either, just a reddish tint to the soil. The snake must have been every bit of 12 or 13 feet long, with a silvery color on the whole of it's body. I saw NO BLACK anywhere! I got a lesson taught to me that day.....this was an adult BLACK MABA I was told. It seems the only black on them is inside their mouth. The opposite of a Cotton Mouth but black as the ace of spades I was told. Later I got to view a picture of such a snake......blacker than coal.
I dare say I stayed in the truck.