Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Black Mamba Question.

I'm fairly well versed in electronics/auto electronics and am always happy to admit my own ignorance. But I can't for the life of me figure out what an "HT lead" is. Can someone please tell me what that is? Several of you have used the term in this thread. Maybe this will be one of those forehead-slappers; but, I'm at a loss. Thanks in advance.

High Tension lead (i.e. downstream of the coil in an "old-fashioned" vehicle, so a spark plug wire, or the main lead to the distributor (again, in an "old-fashioned" vehicle).

John

High Tention Lead...Goes from the coil to the centre of the distributor cap...

Slapping forehead. Thanks guys. Now I can get back to work.

Damn Johnny Foreigners don't even speak the Queen's English.

hey, 'least we aint as bad as the Aussies......half the time i swear they aint speaking English, let alone the Queen's English

No argument there buddy!...... although at least they can spell.

well hell, i never claimed i could spell

Can any African Medics or any MDs chime in here...in the US with on or two exceptions, our venomous snakes are hemotoxic, and our protocals are a loose dressing and transport...then antivenom as needed. An Aussie medic I'm friends with says they use wide occlusive bands on bites there due to the probability of a neuotoxic venom....what are the first aid protocals in on the Dark Continent...and lets be adults and skip the "John..he said you were gonna die" jokes please.

I blame it all on your teachers. for example, they forgot to tell their students about the the letter U or where it should go in words such as colour and humour etc.

I'm not a doctor but in Africa, we have three treatments.

tightish bandage from the site of the wound to the trunk and back to the extremity of the limb and try to get the patient to hospital.

OR

Electric shock.

OR

Sit the patient up, put his head between his legs and tell him to kiss his arse, or if he's American, his ass, goodbye.

First ID your snake....

Right there is the crux of the issue as Africa has such a wide diversity of venomous snakes.

Even the apparently simple idea of washing the wound with soap and water is some what controversial, as one school of thought thinks it removes excess venom to prevent it possibly entering the body via the wounds, where as others say leave the venom as Doctors at the hospital can swab it and use it to determine the species and therefore the treatment...

I forgot to mention snake ID and should haver mentioned it but as for washing the wound with soap and water...... not very likely to have the facilities in the bush but I guess an antisceptic wipe wouldn't do any harm.... probably wouldn't do much good either... but worth a try if you have time.

nah, i think our way is correct

however can you tell me how in the hell the Brits and Canucks get "Leftenant" out of Lieutenant and the Canucks get "aboot" out of about....

best one though is the wife and i went to a wild game dinner up in Regina, Saskatchewan Canada and one of our buddies up there is a Scotsman born and bred who moved to Canada as an adult.....he kept telling my wife they some times have "bar" at these dinners.....my wife, a hunter herself, could not figure out what in the hell he was talking about....took me 15 minute to decipher he was saying "bear"

And New Zealand. None there either.

Got a few in Oz though. The top 10 in the world are all from there. Very primative though, no hypodermic fangs. They are concave and shorter than modern period snakes.

IIRC, the black mamba, along with others such as the many-banded krait, were often referred to as two-step snakes during the Vietnam war. While the two steps may have been a myth to keep the GI's alert, I don't think it was far off. According to a Marine buddy of mine, the methods of dispatching varied when you crawled upon one, but did not always make use of a firearm as it could compromise your location.

actually they be hypodermic, they just dont fold......your lil death adder over there has some monstrous fangs given they wont fold like a rattlers or other viper....a half meter death adder has the same size fangs as a 3 meter mamba....

as for all of the top 10, depends how yah define the top 10 which is a whole argument unto itself per drop including sea snakes that happen to be in your waters as well as most of Southeast Asia yeah yah got all of them.....just land living snakes and i think your down to 7 of 10.....per number of deaths i dont think yah have any

Snake toxitity is graded on a scale whereby the central point is the Indian Cobra at "1". All snakes are graded as less toxic, or more toxic.

The most toxic US snake according to the head toxicologist at Taronga Park Zoo, who graciously provided lectures on the subject to SCI, is the diamond back rattlesnake which has a rating of .9. He is also more deadly because he has longer fangs and is able to pump in volumes of venom, intensifying the danger.

The worst of the Aussie mongrels is the Inland Taipan, also called the Fierce Snake. It has a rating of 49. Almost 50 times more toxic that the Indian Cobra.

Nasty stuff. Because of Australia's isolation, the snakes are very primative and have not evolved as other world snakes, especially in the fangs which are much shorter than many new world snakes and are not hypodermic.

So said the number 1 expert in the country. We did not break the conversation down into individual snakes other than the species we were most likely to encounter which was the browns and blacks, of which a King Brown, also known as a Mulga snake, is actually a Black snake so Anti venom for a brown snake, will not work.

The other surprise during the lectures was that Anti Nenom does not cure you of snake bite, it only deactivates it. Another snake bite can reactivate the original venom.

Becuase of the severity of the venom, the short fangs often only pierce your jeans and venom can sometimes be seen running down your pants leg. This also means that any scratch is still a snake bite. Any skin broken is also classified as a bite as it doesn't take much of a drop to do the job.

Although Mamba's were discussed by comparrison, my concentration was obviously towards local fauna so I cannot add more to it.

drop for drop of venom you guys have some truly nasty customers down there.....your inland taipan that you mention is the most toxic land dwelling snake by quite aways.....but its also out of however you want to rank the top 10 snakes prolly the least likely for you to get bit by cause they live in some real remote country....far more likely to get bit by the king brown cause it lives around some of your cities...

i dont view your snakes as primitive, atleast not any more primitive than a cobra or a mamba.....physiologically are they more primitive than our rattlesnakes? yeah but their venom is as highly evolved as any other venomous snake species....our rattlesnakes are considered the most highly evolved snakes but if yah ask any keeper they are dumb as a rock compared to king cobras which technically are a more primitive snake....

drop for drop our diamondback rattlers dont have that toxic of venom compared to some of our smaller species....the lil 4 foot prairie ratters we have around here in the frozen north are more toxic, southern pacific and mohave greens are more toxic yet.....but like your king browns our diamondbacks live in areas with more ppl and are a big enough snake though they dont rank high drop for drop, they are packing a whole lot of drops in that big head of a 6 foot plus snake.....

Correct.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Fangs-of-deadly-venomous-snakes

The snake that is most likely to kill is generally regarded as the Coastal Taipan. I don't think anyone has survived a bite without antivenene. But those who have kept both the Coastal Taipan and Black Mamba say the Mamba is the more dangerous to keep due to being faster and larger, in other words, greater chance of being bitten.

Most of the research I have done would indicate the black mamba bite would be comparable to the Australian mainland Tiger snake, maybe up to a 75% chance the bite will be fatal without anti venene. The Death Adders are at 50%. But the Mamba would be far more dangerous.

I use to keep reptiles, both lizards and snakes but only Tiger snake and Red Bellied Black snake.