This is primarily for medical types who hang here... Have you seen a rise in venomous bites this year? Since my retirement from the military in ‘06, I’ve worked for the same county fire/rescue service here in S.C. Each year, we run a few snakebite calls. Of which, most begin with ~ “Y’all watch this”. We’ve seen nearly double the previous few years total as of a couple days ago. I was just wondering if this is unique to our locale, or numbers have gone up elsewhere. I’m not including the dozens of calls we get where someone is bitten by nonvenomous species. I’m only counting bites(dry or wet) from venomous species.
I have not seen an increase in my area but it does appear that there have been more reported copperhead bites in NC. I have only two predominant species here with the Timber and copperhead (northern and southern). It is difficult to get a full envenomation with a Timber simply because they are docile in my experience. The fatalities have typically been church service related. A full envenomation with one of our Timbers is going to lead to a bad day due to the complexities of the venom.
Precisely. Every bite we’ve encountered has been a copperhead. This is interesting to me. I kind of figured the numbers were higher elsewhere. Thanks for your reply.
