14 DAY TRIAL // A turkey hunter from Alabama has come close to death during his last trip to the woods, after being bitten by a rattlesnake.
The 6-foot (1.8-meter) venomous snake grabbed his left calf and bit him, which could have caused his death had it not been for a $10 (€7.6) bite kit.
Chad Cross of Montgomery remembers feeling light headed and experiencing a sharp pain in his leg right away.
"I was turkey hunting. I got a good look at the snake. He was about 6-foot (1.8-meter) long," he tells WSFA.
"Best way I can describe it is someone taking a full swing with a baseball bat and hitting me in my calf," Cross says.
He tried to keep this calm in order to prevent the venom from spreading in his body, and pulled out his kit.
"I knew I had to calm down and get my heart rate down because the faster my heart was pumping, the faster my heart was pumping I knew the faster that venom was going through my system," he notes.
Unfortunately, he was never forced to use a bite kit before and had no idea what he had to do. He started reading about the steps necessary to pull out the venom and eventually realized how to use it.
"I had to read the directions first because I never opened it up. I've carried it with me in my turkey hunting equipment for years. The process takes a total of 15 minutes and then it says to get someone with anti-venom," Cross details.
When he arrived at Baptist East hospital for an anti-venom shot, he was told that he had a very close call there. He had to be hospitalized for two days.
"You would have died before you ever made it back to your truck if you hadn't had that kit with you," he recalls the doctor saying.