The Snake Hunter discusses his lucky escape from death

Now, my next guest is known as the Snake Hunter. He previously appeared on our show to warn of the dangers of Australian snakes that could be lurking in your backyard, but Mark Pelly nearly became a victim himself of a tiger snake. Yes, we almost lost Mark after he got a love bite from one of the world's most venomous snakes, but he has made a miraculous recovery and he joins me now with a highly venomous tiger snake. You brought in the snake that almost killed you. Why, why? I want people to see how dangerous they can be, but also they only bite you when they're picked up or harassed in some way. So if you leave snakes alone, they'll leave you alone too. Well, you can't leave them alone because your job is to go and pick them up and take them out of people's property. What happened? Because you would have handled probably hundreds, thousands of dangerous snakes in your years. How did this one get you? The routine call out like every other day multiple times a day. This time, however, I had an equipment failure and the snake was quite large, very big, very fast, and it got me on my hand just here and it really, really hurt at the time. Wow, and you would think if you got bitten on the hand, you know what the snake is, you would recover very quickly. You get some anti-venom, but you almost died. How does that happen? So most of the time, almost all the time when a snake bites you, the venom travels through your lymphatic system. I was one of the very rare cases where the snake actually bit me on a vein on my finger and the venom traveled straight to my circulatory system, so it went to my brain and my organs very, very quickly. And your daughter was there and she said she thought you were gone and there was a bit of confusion with the anti-venom because I'm looking at this tiger snake and I would swear that's a brown snake, but it's a tiger and I think they were trying to give you brown snake anti-venom. So how does that work? If you are bitten by a snake, how important is it to know what snake you've been bitten by? It's actually not important to know what snake you've been bitten by, but in my case, I knew exactly what it was, being a snake catcher. My daughter also seeing the snake and she's a snake catcher as well. So if you're bitten by a snake, don't try to capture it and try and bring it into hospital or try to identify it because they can do a venom swab test or they can just give you both anti-venoms. In my case, however, I was bitten by a tiger snake and because the venom went straight to my blood, I was feeling the effects very fast. When I didn't respond to the first vial of anti-venom for the tiger snake bite, they tried to give me brown snake anti-venom and that's what happened. Okay, so you had to convince them, no, give me more tiger snake. Now you've had this close call, you've come through it, thank God. Good and well, so hopefully now we've got a more sensible profession, no? I've still got to go straight back to snake catching the moment I can. Why? Well, I believe snakes play a very important role in the environment and someone's got to do it. If I don't go around catching snakes, then people will try to kill them. And when I was in hospital and I thought I was actually gonna die from the snake bite, my final message where I couldn't even open my eyes to the community was to still keep away from snakes and leave them alone and get a professional snake catcher to come out. I was afraid that my, you know, being bitten by a snake would cause people to try and go after them themselves. Now, your daughter documented your recovery, but she noted that you were copying a fair bit of hate online, why? You're never criticised by those doing more than you in life. And I also have the saying, and Dave Chappelle said it best, when a hero stumbles, cowards rejoice. And the very few people who had something nasty to say, it's a reflection of themself rather than me. So are they angry with you because you're out there interfering with wildlife or is it because they think, yeah, what is the source of their hostility? I think they didn't show any kind of inclination to say they didn't like my job. Rather, they just don't like me. Okay. So no matter what you do in life, you're gonna get haters. Well, yeah, that's not a bad, yeah, that is true. Now, if you were bitten by a snake, if you're out, I don't know, bushwalking and you're not close to a hospital or medical attention, and it is something like a tiger snake or a eastern brown, something deadly, what do you do? What is the thing to do to maximise your chances of survival? Absolutely, the first that you take is you step away from the snake. Don't try to touch it, don't try to handle it, move away, because it can bite you more than once. So you don't wanna get bitten more than once. Absolutely, it can bite you a second time. Once you're safely away from the snake, immediately call triple zero, you need medical help as soon as possible. Yeah, but what if you're somewhere remote? So should you walk towards safety or is walking actually something that's gonna be counterproductive because the blood's going to course through your veins quicker? So if you have no help around you, it's better to walk to a position where you can get a call for help rather than lay there and let the snake kind of take you out. So get to a position where you can get help as soon as possible. Once there, stay as still as you can and apply a pressure bandage and follow the instructions of triple zero. It's critical. Okay, so get phone for help, but if you can't phone, then walk to somewhere where you can. If you're by yourself. If you're by yourself, but snakes, like you said, are typically scared of people. So how many are we losing on a typical year in Australia to deadly snakes? Actually not many for a very good reason. The message of leaving snakes alone is getting out there. And second, Australia is a world leader in anti-venom and the treatment of snake bites. So we don't lose many people. Unfortunately, we recently lost someone in Queensland who got bitten by a brown, but for the most part, people tend to survive snake bites provided they don't get bitten on a vein. Yeah, like you. Do you know as soon as you're bitten whether it's in the vein? Is the impact so immediate that you know it's got you right in the bloodstream? When it bit me, I saw the blood coming out of the bite marks and I saw where it got me on a vein. I actually saw the vein, so I knew myself. And the pain going through my hands was something I can't describe. It was like my bones were on fire. Oh, okay. So if it gets you in the vein, you'll know about it. Oh, goodness me. Mark Pelly, I tried to encourage you to find more sensible employment, but I have failed. Thank you so much for your time this evening. Thank you for having me.