Addressing Snake Bites

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Tags: Addressing,Snake,Bites

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back in the woods [Music]

okay guys I want to take a real quick second before we shoot this video or on snake bite to let you know a this is not medical advice okay I'm telling you what I know from research and past experience and before I tell you this stuff and go through this with you on the board I wanted to go through with you my past experience okay I handled venomous snakes and snakes in general for a living okay that's what I did I did this for about five years so I've handled not hundreds but thousands of venomous snakes and I have never been bitten by a venomous snake so with that said I think that prevention is the best thing you can understand about snake bite don't get bit to begin with understand how not to get bit and you won't get bit but with that said you know we're going to talk about the things that you can do if you do get bit but I just wanted you to understand you know that I have I'm not talking to you here from inexperience I'm talking to you because I did this for a living for a long time and I've handled lots and lots of snakes I've handled every species in North America that's venomous and probably 60% of the snakes that are venomous worldwide up to and including king cobras so I understand venomous snakes very very well probably as well as I understand the woods and I want you to know that before you watch this video I appreciate it thank you guys okay guys real quick I'm going to cover a topic with you real fast while we're on this medicinal plant series I want to talk about snake bite I seem to get a lot of questions about that in any medicinal series that I do any anything like that people are always worried about getting a snake bite in the woods again prevent the situation before it happens so you can be proactive and not reactive don't step over the top of the log without stepping on the log and looking to the other side don't put your hands and cracks and crevices don't be where the snakes are going to be and you can cure a lot of those problems listen when you're walking through the woods in case you come across a rattlesnake he's going to let you know he's there before you stomp on it you know water moccasins things like that most of the time they'll open their mouth you know a big mistake I see from 90% of the students that I've been around is they don't know the difference between a water snake and a water moccasin and they can imitate each snake and imitate a water moccasin very well the only thing he can't do is open his mouth that's the tell-tale sign when they open their mouth you see that big white mouth on the inside you're probably dealing with water moccasin at that point you're going to see the fangs okay just back away most venomous snakes if you back away from them slowly they'll go the other way anyway they don't want to come after you and attack you so if you get a snake bite let's talk about that all right first of all I don't want to give you medical advice okay so this is my personal opinion it is not medical advice so with that said what you have to understand is there are two different types of snake venom in the United States for the most part but we're talking about Eastern woodlands we're not talking about the desert okay the Mojave green rattlesnake is different they have a different type of venom some of them in certain areas of Arizona have type a Type B venom we'll talk we're not going to talk about that we're talking about Eastern woodlands right here okay so we're talking about what are you going to run into in Eastern woodlands okay you're going to run into rattlesnakes could be a pygmy rattler could be a timber rattler could be a bubblegum sulfur phase timber rattler could be a green timber rattler could be an Eastern Diamondback if you're down south rattlesnakes period okay copperheads

water moccasins and coral snakes now let's talk about coral snakes for a minute okay coral snakes are the most lethal of all of these venomous snakes the reason is coral snakes are what's called elapids okay they're not pit vipers they're not crotalus they are on lapid's they are in the same family with Cobras okay their venom is completely different

most of the venom from pit vipers like water moccasins copperheads and rattlesnakes is hemotoxic venom in attacks your blood system it gives you blood poisoning elapids their venom will attack your nervous system and there's a big difference as far as what you have to do to treat each one of those what I'll tell you about coral snakes is this you have to work to get met by a coral snake okay they don't get very big their head doesn't get any bigger than the size of my thumb and you have to pick one up and molest it to get bit by you're not going to walk by a coral snake because they hide underneath of things they go underneath logs they go underneath pieces of ten and sheet metal in the woods that's where you got to be careful if you're scavenging for junk okay but they're going to hide they're not out running around like a water moccasin looking for food in broad daylight beside the pond because the fish and frogs they're going to be hiding you've got to work hard to get bit by a coral snake alright if you can buy one of these guys shame on you it's your own fault I can guarantee it was no accident okay the point is coral snakes are bad news all right we'll talk about them last okay rattle snakes copperheads water moccasins okay everyone can have different levels of allergic Nisour allergies to Venom's just like they do with bee stings or anything else okay sucking out venom doesn't work cutting it open and sucking on it doesn't work venom extractors do not work okay forget all of those things tourniquets bad news not advised okay even even things that you've heard in the past where you are supposed to close off the lymphatic area those don't work with these Thai things those are better for coral snakes and we'll talk about that in a minute so what do you do if you get bit by one of these snakes well there's not a whole lot you can do all right what you have to understand is that a lot of bites that you get from snakes especially pit vipers okay

our dry bites and what that means is he bit you but he didn't inject any venom it's a bump bite okay it's a reaction most larger snakes realize that you're not prey they just want to get you away from them and sometimes they'll give you a dry bite most of the time if a smaller snake bites you a baby snake of these species it's almost always going to be a wet bite so that means that he's injected venom into you immediate signs of venom of envenomations are pain swelling an immediate area you know nausea of the stomach headache vomiting within you know a few minutes or an hour those things will tell you that you've been envenomated by a venomous snake what can you do about these things okay we're going to go back to one plant and one plant only that we're going to talk about we're going to talk about the master drawing plant plantain okay a plantain poultice will draw some of the venom it's not going to get it all it's not going to suck it out magically but it will help all right so you can wrap that wound area if you've got two puncture marks from the fangs you can wrap that wound with a spit poultice made from plantain and it will help draw out some of the venom it's also a little bit anti-inflammatory what you need to do with this is you need to wrap it and immobilize it as if it were a fracture okay that's all you can do immobilize it like a fracture so you're not moving it around a whole bunch put a splint all the way down your leg if you've get gotten bit you know any ankle or above the leg and the calf somewhere okay

splint that thing off if you're by yourself you know the best thing you can do is get out but don't panic do not panic when you get bitten by a snake because it makes you it makes everything go faster it makes your circulatory system run faster and remember what I said it's blood poisoning from these pit vipers you want to avoid that okay so you have to remain calm but you do want to get out if you can if you're with someone that gets a snake bite the best thing you can do for them is to lay them prone and

that limb immobilized but not above heart level and not below heart level at heart level even now laying flat on the ground is the best thing you can do and seek medical attention for them as quickly as possible I will tell you that not too many people in the United States die every year from snakebites okay of the three snakes in my personal opinion copperheads are the least likely to do anything more than make you really really sick okay water moccasins have an enzyme in their venom that causes necrosis and so do rattlesnakes but copperheads are notorious for it because their water moccasins I mean are notorious for it because they have a very dirty mouth they eat fish and frogs and things like that they just have a lot of bacteria in their mouth generally and they have a tendency to get infected very easily but they also have a necrotic enzyme in their venom and that's all Venom's are proteins and enzymes that helps break down skin so you know you're going to get your going to lose some skin around the binary or a finger or whatever the case may be for sure most of the time from a water moccasin bite rattlesnake bites have the same thing they do have some necrosis value in there in the enzymes of their venom as well but rattlesnake bites are usually generally rattlesnake bites are going to be worse depending on the rattlesnake okay but rattlesnake bites are going to be the worst of all the three but very few people die from these type snake bites if you can get out you know if you have to sit there and suffer for several days then you might have a problem if you can't tend to yourself one thing that you need to remember with any snake bite is it's probably going to make you nauseous you're probably going to vomit so make sure that you have plenty of hydration keep yourself hydrated so you don't succumb to the dehydration before you succumb to the venom to begin with okay antivenoms are not recommended in the woods they are recommended in hospitals but not in the woods now if an EMT administered that to you that's one thing but the Carey anti-venom is useless the one thing you can carry with you that is something I suggest carrying anyway is an EpiPen okay anaphylactic shock comes from the same things in snakes that it can come from in bee stings the venom is the protein and the enzymes in that venom that cause anaphylactic shock so if you get to the point where you having a hard time breathing EpiPen pow okay that's one thing you can do to help yourself but remaining calm staying hydrated not using that limb a lot if you can help it or mobilizing it so that maybe you're just limping and you're not just moving it up and down and circulating that blood so much or forcing it to happen is the best thing you can do if you can get out quick get out if you can't get out quick you're going to have to deal with it but there's a lot of people paranoid about snakes that I get questions from everyday don't be paranoid of them respect them you don't have to kill everyone you see be able to identify them if you can identify these four snakes nothing else matters it's very much like any dangerous plant or any dangerous animal there's a lot less of them that are dangerous than there are that are not dangerous so learn to identify the ones that are dangerous and did you don't have to worry about the rest okay

and these are the main four that you're going to run to in Eastern woodlands okay and coral snakes you're only going to run to down south or on the East Coast

southern East Coast water moccasins copperheads and rattlesnakes are going to be the most likely ones you're going to run into alright and even water moccasins are not very prevalent you know up above Kentucky copperheads another story copperheads are all over the place up here rattlesnakes depends on the terrain depends on the environment okay but there's more species of rattlesnakes in Eastern woodlands and the rest of these things combined because you have timber rattlers you have pygmy Rattlers and you have Diamondback Rattlers so you have three species of rattlesnakes that you could be contending with then copperheads water moccasins and the last one is the coral snake now the coral snake if you get bit by a coral snake that's going to be a big problem okay but the chances are if you get bit by a coral snake it's going to be on an extreme extremity a finger a toe something like that is we're going to bit their mouth isn't big enough and they don't jump up to bite you they're jerky they just kind of jerk around you can I shouldn't say you can pick them up I picked that many many many of them up but

they're very jerky they're not going to just turn around strike at you like a pit viper will they don't coil up and strike they just kind of jerk around and try to grab ahold of you and chew on you alright like I said you got to work hard to get bit by a coral snake if you get bit by one here's the thing all right this is the one that's the worst because they have their elapids and they have Cobra like venom they're neurotoxic venom alright you have to be careful with that so that's the point where you want to wrap it so that you don't get that spread through the lips lymph system okay that's where you want to not put a tourniquet on it but wrap it and constrict constrict it okay constrict that limb so it's a finger I'd go all down the arm it constrict that okay if it's a toe all down the leg constrict that because you don't want that venom to spread that's the problem you don't want to spread through the lymphatic system that's what you got to watch with coral snakes okay you get paid by coral snake

you better get some medical attention because you're going to be in trouble with that one but like I said you got to work at it to do that okay guys I'm Dave Canterbury pathfinder school I appreciate you watching this video I appreciate your support I appreciate everything you guys do for me my school my family and I will be back with another video just as soon as I can you