Most people in Wyoming know that bears are some of the most feared and potentially deadly predators hunters have to be aware of.
If you’re in Africa, Wyoming hunters who have been on safari say one of the deadliest critters there isn't as large and prominent. And if you have the misfortune of being bitten by a black mamba snake, there’s really only one thing to do — hope for a good satellite phone connection.
“You’ve got about eight minutes, just enough time to get on the satellite phone and call your family to say goodbye,” said Cody resident Scott Weber, who has had a couple of run-ins with black mambas during African safari hunts.
Black mamba bite victims don’t die peacefully, Weber told Cowboy State Daily.
“The venom paralyzes the respiratory system. It’s like you’re drowning,” he said. “It’s like you’re underwater, fighting for your life, and you’re just deader than hell.”
Weber’s friend David Ball, also of Cody, shot a 7-foot, 4-inch black mamba last week when the snake came into a hunting camp in Namibia, Africa.
He told Cowboy State Daily that he didn’t feel personally threatened by the snake, but having a black mamba in camp wasn’t acceptable.
“One of the camp staff’s mothers had previously been bitten and killed by a black mamba. They don’t like snakes there,” he said.
He added that black mambas aren’t black on the outside. Their skin is actually “a sort of battleship grey.”
Black mambas are so named because the insides of their mouths are black, Ball said.
‘Kill The Devil!’
Weber said his first encounter with a black mamba was during his first trip to Zambia, Africa, 25 years ago.
After an exhausting journey into a remote hunting camp, Weber, his professional hunter (PH) and some native guides decide to go out for a scouting drive.
“The PH had taken the front doors off of the vehicle because it was so hot that afternoon,” Weber said.
Almost immediately into the drive, “dammed if we didn’t come over a black mamba, a 10-footer,” he said.
“I felt something brush past my face,” he added. “It had been picked up by the front tire and shot back, right past my ear.”
The driver stopped the vehicle, with the maimed mamba thrashing in the sand behind them.
“The natives kept screaming a phrase over and over in Swahili,” Weber said.
Weber grabbed a shotgun from the vehicle and blasted the snake just below its head, decapitating it.
But the snake’s jaws kept snapping.
“A black mamba can kill you even in death,” he said.
The protocol in Africa is to bury a slain black mamba’s head, and “bury it deep,” because if somebody is unlucky enough to step on the snake’s head later, the fangs could inject them with deadly venom, Weber said.
Afterward, the PH told him what the native guides had been screaming.
“They were yelling, ‘Kill the Devil!’ Weber said. “They call the black mamba snake the Devil.”
Weber had another encounter with a black mamba last summer.
One morning just before breakfast in camp, there was a commotion. Weber grabbed a double-barreled 12-guage shotgun and went to investigate.
“Sure enough, there was a 10-foot mamba swirling around in that camp,” he said. “So I gave it both barrels and that was the end of that.”
‘Click, Click’
Ball was recently on a “drought relief elephant hunt” in Namibia. He arrived back home in Cody this week, with a black mamba tale to tell.
On one of his last days in Africa, he and his PH were walking through camp, headed to check the camp’s makeshift water heater.
Suddenly, “the PH screamed, not quite like a girl. I looked ahead, and there was a black mamba,” Ball said. “It raised its head up a couple of feet and tried flaring it out to look bigger, much like a cobra. And then it moved away.”
Later, the mamba was discovered “about 20 feet up in a tree” in the middle of camp.
Ball is a firearms and ammunition expert, and it so happened that he had recently developed some “shot loads” for the mighty .470 Nitro Express rifle cartridge.
That entailed replacing rifle bullets with “shot capsules” full of No. 7½ bird shot, just the thing for dispatching dangerous snakes.
He fetched his double-barreled .470 Nitro Express safari rifle and took aim at the black mamba and the tree.
“’Click, click,’ both barrels just clicked,” Ball said. “The one opportunity to test those shot rounds I had developed, and they failed.”
He’d successfully test-fired several of the shot rounds back home in Wyoming. Ball surmised that the seal between the brass rifle cartridge and shot capsule wasn’t as tight as it should have been, so moisture had gotten inside and turned the rounds into duds.
Luckly, he had another rifle handy — a custom-made bolt-action .416 Taylor.
He took aim again and put the bullet just a few inches below the snake’s head, taking its head almost completely off and easing the camp staff’s anxiety.
Did Man Survive Mamba ‘Dry Bite?’
While he was on his trip, Ball heard a story about a man in another camp supposedly surviving after a black mamba crawled into his bed and bit him.
The locals weren’t forthcoming with too many details, saying only that the man had supposedly reported feeling a “warm sensation” in his leg and that he pulled through after a few days in the hospital.
If the story was true, it could have been a rare case of “dry bite,” Ball said.
That’s when a mamba has effectively drained its venom sacks after previously biting prey. It might leave enough residual venom on the snake’s fangs to sicken, but not kill, a human.
Black mambas also have a reputation for being mean.
“They’ll rear up, up to 5 feet high, and come at you,” Weber said. “They can bite you on the chest, neck or face.”
Ball said that although “the mamba has a reputation for being very aggressive,” he’s not sure that’s accurate.
“They’re not necessarily that aggressive, but they will become very defensive when cornered,” he said.
Either way, black mambas are nothing to trifle with, Weber said.
“You can’t get overly paranoid about meeting a mamba,” but native guides and local PH’s have a great respect for the snakes, and are always on the lookout.
“They are a crazy snake,” Weber said. “They’re scary.”
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
