Risks you take when hunting. Part II

On a previous post we have talked about the risks you take when you are hunting, and even when the most obvious were left aside to make room for less evident ones, the post was not long enough to cover all such risks.

That's why on this new post we well continue to remember a few more risks hunters are exposed to, such as:

1. Snake bites

Yes, on most of hunting grounds there are snakes, especially on hot seasons and western and southern states. The problem is that hunters are so concentrated on their own business that forget about snakes and commit the mistake to set their blind or firing spot just there where a snake is living, leading to a dangerous encounter.

To avoid this risky situation, all hunters must be aware of snakes on the area they're hunting, living habits and areas to avoid to be away of snakes.

2. Diarrhea 

It seems meaningless but when you are out on the forest, especially for several days, eating on the ground and drinking water of natural sources, there's a lot of ways to get sick of diarrhea.

That's doesn't mean you ate or drank contaminated edibles, only the environmental changes, stress and changes on food habits are enough to trigger a diarrhea.

To avoid such situation try to carry with you all the supplies you will need, wash your hands as much as possible before eating, try to keep your food as much health as possible and try to avoid consumption from natural water sources.

3. Cold and Flu

When you are hunting your body is under stress. No matter if you are enjoying the trip, your body is still stressed because the extra physical activity, changes on food habits and sleep patterns as well for environmental factors such as cold or hot weather.

Under such circumstances your immune system becomes weak making easier for virus and other pathogens to attack you; especially on winter season. That's why is so usual to find hunters who caught a flu by the middle and late season.

4. Allergic reactions

Most of people don't suffer of allergies or at least they don't know if there's something able to cause them allergies. On this regard, if you have not being exposed before to a plant, food, insect bite or any other substance, you are not able to know if it causes allergic reactions on your organisms.

Thus, once on the forest nobody may be 100% sure there's not something out there able to cause allergies, so there's always a possibility of allergies on one or more of the hunting team members on every hunting raid.

Unfortunately there's not a way to prevent this other than being away of known allergens, however since there's always a chance to get in contact with something causing allergies to us, we have not been in touch with before; it's a wise decision to have emergency treatment for allergies for all the hunting expedition members.

5. Getting lost

This is the sort of situation no one believes it might happen to them, but the fact is that every year more than one hunter get lost. 

Under hard weather conditions, lack of sleep, physical extenuation and many other factors, it's not hard to get disoriented on a given moment, leading to take the wrong way on the bushes.

The problem of getting lost is that hunters might exhaust their supplies or might get deeper on the forest, making harder a rescue, putting this way their lives in danger.

To avoid such potentially fatal situation the best choice is to have a GPS and a back up GPS, both of them with enough batteries. This way in the case of being lost, it will be easier to find the way back home.

Same occurs with radios. It's important to have enough radios as well batteries in order to be connected with the civilization and ask for help in the case of getting lost or hurt.

As you may see there's a lot of things which might go wrong and even when nobody is able to prevent all risky situation, a good planning will help to minimize consequences on the event of exposure to one or more of the above mentioned risks.