When I lived in the Philippines as a kid, my friend and I caught a monitor lizard about six feet long with a homemade trap we built. (they look like Komodo dragons, just smaller and more slender)
I do recall something about their saliva being poisonous if you got bit, but I suspect it was less likely venom and more likely bacteria of all kinds I guess. We treated those large lizards with respect, not because they were venomous, but because they were large, strong, and very fast with big teeth, IIRC.
My friend’s dad was a LCDR involved in the SERE training on the base they gave to the pilots who were going to Vietnam. So, he was teaching his three sons survival skills. Probably his daughter too, who was in my class in school, but she didn’t talk about it.
Her brother and I were all over that stuff. It was interesting. We used to like to stomp around in the jungle, and even had our own machetes (I was 12 or 13 at the time)
Sounds like fun