Went on a evening dove hunt 2 days ago. While looking for a cripple I felt something hit my leg just above my boot. I took a couple of more steps and thought I heard a rattlesnake so I stopped to listen (I don't hear well anymore). At that same moment I realized there was nothing around that should have hit me in my leg that high and felt something running down my leg. I immediately snatched my pants leg up and there it was 2 small holes and blood running down my leg. So here I am 1 hour from the nearest hospital by myself. I called my wife and got in the truck and started the trek in. It ended up being a dry bite thank God. All this being said my heart and colon are in great shape.
WOW! Glad to hear it was a dry bite and you are ok! I bet there will be a snake boots purchase in your near future
What did the hit feel like? I've heard some people describe it like being hit with a bat, others say like a mesquite thorn.
Like a dummy I have them. I had just gotten complacent. It wont happen again though. The best way I can describe the hit is if some one held a limb back out of your way but let it go and it hit you. I never felt the poke of the fangs into my leg but felt the blood running down my leg it was weird.
Glad your okay. 'Didn't know there was such a thing as a dry bite. It was your lucky day! Ain't no dove worth that excitement.
I had heard of a dry bite before but had never researched it much until this happened according to statistics 20-25% of all pit viper bites are dry and 50% of all Coral snake bites are dry. Yes indeed luck and the Good Lord were on my side in this one.
I had the same thing happen (bite) to me when I was a kid. Hauled to the hospital with fang marks about 3/4 in to an inch apart, and suffered no effects. I was playing in our chicken yard, so it probably wasn't a rattler. Scared my mother almost to death. Two stories a little off topic but......I was hunting yesterday and it was hot, and I was walking through tall grass and brush before daylight with just a small headlamp, and the thought crossed my mind as to why I wasn't wearing my leggings? A couple of seasons ago my Nephew's wife went out to hunt at the back of their property one evening while my Nephew stayed at the house to baby sit. He got a call from his wife who was in full panic mode as she called him on her cell phone and told him that a rattlesnake just crawled into the popup blind with her. She froz as she pleaded with him to hurry, and by the time he got there the snake had left. She said all she could do was pray, and that seemed to have worked as the snake slithered away before my Nephew got there.
Thursday at 12:45 PM #33 Once i learned that i didn't "NEED" to kill something, and that if i did kill something all the fun stopped and work began, i was a much better hunter.
I have been an outdoors type person all my life, and the only time I have gotten hit by a rattler was at work!! About 8" up on the side of my safety boots, and right into the leather and plastic welt. Good discharge of venom running down and staining the leather. too. I was a roundsman, charged with checking various outer perimeter buildings, and walked by a culvert in the early evening right before sundown. I guess I looked right by him, and stepped next to him as he was getting the last of the days sunshine. There was an eight foot piece of EMT conduit in the back of the truck, and I bet I hit that thing a hundred times before I was satisfied that it had been neutralized!!
For the last 40 years I worked at a government facility here in the Idaho desert. Our original outer fence was single, and the sagebrush would grow right up to it on the outside. We had a series of rattle snake hibernaculums (winter caves) close to us and the snakes would migrate back and forth about 3 miles in May-June and again in late August. You had to be really careful around any brush and debris for snakes. In the mid-80's, we put a second chain link fence around the area and they sterilized the ground between the fences. With no more rodents coming in from the sage brush, the incidence of snake sightings plummeted.
Glad it turned out OK. I went through a snake bite over 40 yrs. ago. Spend a couple days in the hospital . Wasn't a bad hit, ended up with a dark spot about the size of a dime and the doctor cut it out instead of using the anti venom. I still have the snake leggings that a bought a couple weeks later.
A clear conscience is often the sign of a fuzzy memory.