Is this really how to cure a rattlesnake bite?

Pretty barbaric and ineffective snake bite treatment. But not a lot worse and that sometimes used in modern times. One treatment possibly still used in places is the fasciotomy. They cut through the faccia of the muscles and take out the tissue with the venom in it. This results in a lot of crippling, which, in many cases, is worse than the effects of the venom itself.

The current field technique is to wrap the limb above and below the bite with an Ace-type bandage, not too tightly. This is to slow down the lymph which carries the venom. Then get the patient to the hospital as quickly as possible where antivenint is applied.

You should try it. Create a video of it and upload it to Youtube. Easily break a million views. Make some money off the process. Let us know the consequences... um... whatever you find.

At least nobody suggested cutting the wound with a Bowie knife and sucking the poison out.

I remember a joke about that...

I remember it.

Me too!

Doc says you gonna die, boy.

Really - it is simple? Simple to kill the snake? I'd imagine after he bites - he books it; not to mention you would need something handy around you in which you could kill it without it biting you.

I was thinking of the exertion of subduing the snake, making the blood pump faster. Unless of course you are Paladin and can take it out with a single bullet.

That's assuming you have a gun - that is the problem the sap getting bit is likely not to have the necessary tools to take out the snake. I didn't even think of the exertion part.

Killing rattlesnakes often ends up ironically. A story in Texas lately about a man who tried to kill a rattlesnake. It bit him and it took 25 minutes to get to the hospital. In the meantime he was becoming paralyzed. Some people mentioned that they thought it was a Mojave rattlesnake, which has neurotoxic qualities in its venom. But the Mojave is only found in extreme West Texas, and this occurred somewhere south of Lubbock quite a bit farther east. So they concluded it was just a Western Diamondback, which are apparently evolving neurotoxins in their venom.

About 20 years ago I knew somebody who told me a friend of theirs found a rattlesnake on his Ranch and went back to the house to get a shotgun. While coming back and climbing over a fence the gun discharged and killed him.

That's rattlesnakes 2 Texans 0.

There was a spot near the river in Corpus Christi that I visited out of curiosity, years ago. Looking around, I was darn near surrounded by some big rattlers. Fortunately they held back and I had time to get out of there.

I know that some species of snakes have more defensive or violent temperaments than others. Western diamondbacks have a bad reputation for being hot-tempered, but there are also individual variations within the species. I remember once encountering a very large rattlesnake lying in a loose coil with its head stretched out in front. Two more steps and my foot would have been right on his head. I stopped and he pulled his head back, but he never rattled or even got upset. He was a laid-back old guy.

I read a study of Timber rattlesnakes in Pennsylvania. Timber rattlesnakes range in a large part of the US east of the Mississippi, but they also range in the eastern part of Texas. In the South they used to divide the species into a subspecies called the Canebrake rattlesnake, but now they've done away with the subspecies and there is just one species.

Now in Pennsylvania they spend a great part of the year in dens. A female only breeds once every five, six or seven years, because they have to gain up fat stores and become really gordo. Then they mate in late summer and retain the sperm without fertilization and go in to the dens for the winter. It's only after emerging from the dens in the spring that they allow their eggs to be fertilized. They do not eat at all and the gravid females congregate on sunny ledges all summer. They give live birth at the end of the summer, thus they live a whole year without eating.

It's when the gravid females are congregating that hunters encounter them and kill the whole lot. So they're not just killing five female rattlesnakes, there are potentially killing 50 or more rattlesnakes.