I love happy endings!

I love happy endings!

So do I, oh wait were talking about snake bites...

How bad could it be? I thought they had anti-venom now. Granted it all depends on how quickly you get to the DR but can a rattel snake bite kill you or just cause severe pain?

Back in the early 1980s We used to have a year round hunting lease in Coleman County near Talpa, Texas. This is a rocky hilly oak covered country, and there are a lot of rattlers there.

One day we were hunting some from tree stands, others just sitting on rocks watching a oat field, and another guy we called “Machinegun” because his last name was Kelly. He was real big guy, who looked like Mr. Clean . He had made a blind out of dead sticks, stacked around the base of a large oak tree, so he could lean against the trunk of the tree sitting on a folding camp stool , and look out over a patch of sparse woods down the hill side.

About 12:00 noon I moved to where Kelly was sitting, to bring both our lunches. I could see Kelly long before I go to his blind and there was something strange about him. I kept moving toward him, and he never moved a muscle and looked like a statue. When I got close I said to him did you see anything, and he did not answer, but kept rolling his eyes up and down, first looking at me, then down into the blind, then back to me, repeating this several times. I finally understood he wanted me to look inside his blind. I did, and coiled up between his boots was a big rattler.

The snake had crawled into his blind sometime before two hours earlier without him realizing it. He had been sitting stone still for two hours afraid to move and get hit by that big boy. I had a .22 Beretta pistol on my belt, and I pulled it and looked at Kelly, as if to ask if he wanted me to shoot the snake, he nodded slightly “YES”, and I popped that BUZZ WORM in the head between Kelly’s feet. He looked like a rocket coming out of that brush blind straight up! He said "Man I didn’t think you were ever going to come my way, and I was fighting a heart attack for two hours, that seemed like two days."

The snake was almost five feet long, and a head as big as a full grown toad frog. That boy could have injected a serious amount of venom in one or both of Kelly’s legs before he could have gotten out of that brush blind that was waist high.

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spudmonkey -- look at these photos:


Snake Bite Photos

spudmonkey -- look at these photos:


Snake Bite Photos

Never been bitten. About 5 years ago my hunting buddy and I come to the gate that surrounds our deer camp. I grab a hold of the wire bracket and bam!, I thought I had been bitten by a rattlesnake. I'm doing this little dance, looking for a snake, snake bite, etc. Finding none, I grab the bracket again. Bam! The rancher had electrified the gate and not told us.

Now every opening weekend, someone has to do the "Snake Dance" around the campfire. Some things you never live down.

I almost ran over a coral snake today on my 4 wheeler. He sure was pretty, I let him go.

Never seen one of those in person. Ive heard they are pretty docile. Skinner