What snake challenged you the most?

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Ryan Thies
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Ryan Thies »

Hardest acquired herp is a no-brainer. I do not know how many herping hours were spent looking for one of these. However, my several year curse was finally broken when Brian spotted this in a rock crevice. This was my first one.

Eastern Coachwhip!
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Then during the fall, Mike flipped up this little guy.

Juvenile
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Finally this spring, Brian spotted this brute sticking his head out from under a rock
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I believe my curse is finally over. I have seen three in the last year or so and I hope I continue to see them in the future. It is nice to know that extreme persistence has paid off. Let that be a lesson for all of us. If you really want to see something, do not give up. Of coarse, be ethical in how you accomplish your goal.

Ryan
Paul White
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Paul White »

I'm in Amarillo, TX. It's not so much a lack of cover, it's just that it's not productive. I've found black widows (I scream), solfugids (ditto), scorps (again), centipedes, millipedes (which are sort of neat), and tons of other inverts (found something I didn't recognize last week) but hardly any snakes. I've basically quit flipping at this stage after a black window incident early this season.
I seem to find lots of snakes of different species associated with clumps of yucca; I suspect that they use the dead leaves on the bottom for cover/nesting/hunting. There's occasional rock cuts but those are really hit or miss; just hiking in tall grass is more productive on a snakes per hour basis.

The biggest things for me: I'd love to find consistent places for hognose snakes and lampropeltis. Longnose would be neat but I suspect that's more of a time thing. The ones I've found have *always* been well after dark, and I just don't get to spend much time out then. Gotta go to work in the AM ya know. I find tons of Masticophis, Crotalus, Pitouphis, a reasonable amount of Elaphe (great plains rats), Thamnophis, Neroida. Heterdon is really hit or miss, lampro's...I finally found a king this year. Diadophis I see sometimes after rains. Rhinos...I know a great place but it's not easily accessible.
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gbin
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by gbin »

Brian Hubbs wrote:... If you read (especially the old books), you might get some clues...and then the hard to find animal becomes the easy to find animal. :D
I can't argue with that; some of the biggest herp hunting successes in my life have been largely a reward for having first done my homework. And sometimes, instead, one simply needs to put in the time and effort to figure things out firsthand when there isn't any literature available to help. But sometimes luck plays an awfully big part, too. A person who knows what s/he's doing can nonetheless occasionally have quite a run of bad luck, just as the greenest newbie can occasionally have quite a run of good luck. For a personal example on the other end of the spectrum: Even as buddies were laughing at me for my difficulty in finding pyros, they were marveling at my seeming knack for finding AZ corals and gilas (no, not while hunting pyros! ;) ) - and I knew essentially squat about finding either of the latter species.

Gerry
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Brian Hubbs
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Brian Hubbs »

True, Gerry, we can all have bad timing.

Paul: I don't know how much YOU know...but from what you've said, I would suggest hunting earlier in the year (like late march, early April to late April, for flipping). Pay no attention to the weather as long as temps are above 55 degrees with sun, or above 65 degrees with clouds or rain, and the ground is somewhat moist. This is just general advice, and you might already know this...
Paul White
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Paul White »

I should have but I didn't. Looking back pretty much all of them I found were spring.
I haven't noticed a correlation with recent moisture (i.e. the ground being wet) but wet years were better than really dry ones. I'd suppose that reflects the effects the weather has on the toads that they eat.

edit: I'm assuming yo u're talking about hoggies. If it's Lampropeltis I'll give it a try next season come spring. Heh. I've got those 2-3 animals I really really want to find but oh well. Still seeing stuff.
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Tim Borski
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Tim Borski »

chris drake wrote:Alterna is also my #1. It took me 6 years of making 2 trips a year before I found the holy grail of west Texas. We've looked from Del Rio to Presidio. Last year on the last night of a 4 day trip we hit the jackpot. We spotted 3 on the second cut we shined. I've never felt a rush like that herping. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest when I spotted the first one in my light. We only got to admire that one for a few seconds before it disappeared into the cut. It was a nice light phase blairs. Standing at the truck discussing what we had seen Mike casually shined the cut next to him while smoking a cigarette and yelled "another one". It was sitting in a large hole in the cut but was unfortunately being eaten by something. We must have scared off whatever was eating it when we pulled up next the cut. We then decided to walk the cut one more time and thats when we spotted a black on black blairs phase crawling down the cut. Unbelievable. 3 in less than 15 minutes. And to think we were considering heading home that day because it was cold and rainy. I've spent 6 nights out there this year so far and back to finding none! lol. My next goal is a blonde suboc. :)

Chris
Chris, got some pics in situ?
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xxxHERPERxxx
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by xxxHERPERxxx »

Without a doubt it was the Timber Rattlesnake, but I've always had a soft spot for the Southern Hognose, just havnt looked for them as much. The southern hognose is my #1 most wanted snake of all time.

Found my Timber last year...

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Don Cascabel
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Don Cascabel »

CROTALUS LANNOMI - Talk about blood, sweat and tears!

Don Cascabel
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FunkyRes
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by FunkyRes »

Don Cascabel wrote:CROTALUS LANNOMI - Talk about blood, sweat and tears!

Don Cascabel
Amen to that - that was an awesome discovery.
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atheris978
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by atheris978 »

If it were not for this forum, I wouldn't think the eastern coral snake existed. It's like a haunted long running joke that I can't find one. Not even a DOR!!!!!!
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chris_mcmartin
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by chris_mcmartin »

atheris978 wrote:If it were not for this forum, I wouldn't think the eastern coral snake existed. It's like a haunted long running joke that I can't find one. Not even a DOR!!!!!!
Same here--although I don't target that species, I've been called out on "snake calls" where there is allegedly a coral in someone's yard, and although I always tell the homeowner to keep an eye on it while I'm en route, it's always gone by the time I get there.

I DID find a short length of DOR skin in that area (San Antonio) which based on circumference would've been a MONSTER coral. Also found a whole DOR in Val Verde county.
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gbin
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by gbin »

I used to see eastern coral snakes with some regularity when I lived in northcentral FL, but I used to hunt a fair bit later into the night/colder than a lot of herpers ordinarily do and I think that upped my odds of seeing them. Much of that time I was living in rural Putnam Co., too, where they seemed particularly abundant. At one dilapidated house we lived in for a while there we even had a coral repeatedly trying to get in through a gap under the front door :o , and on one particularly memorable morning when I was walking my new puppy about a half mile away from said house he stepped right on a coral that was half hidden in leaf litter on the dirt road :shock: . (I know, I should have been watching him much more closely, and did thereafter.) The snake immediately went into full-writhing-and-cloaca-everting mode, causing the pup to jump a few feet in the air and then scramble back to me for safety as soon as he hit the ground; neither animal appeared to suffer any harm from the incident, but that dog is still pretty well snake-broke to this day. :lol:

Man, that was an awesome place to live... I regularly found pigmy rattlers and gopher tortoises around the neighborhood, too, and one day I even found a young diamondback rattler gliding across the yard.

Sorry to bother y'all with my off-topic reminiscences. I guess I've been suffering a bout of nostalgia, lately... :oops:

Gerry
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chris_mcmartin
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by chris_mcmartin »

gbin wrote:Sorry to bother y'all with my off-topic reminiscences. I guess I've been suffering a bout of nostalgia, lately...
Old age will do that to you. :P
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gbin
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by gbin »

chris_mcmartin wrote:
gbin wrote:Sorry to bother y'all with my off-topic reminiscences. I guess I've been suffering a bout of nostalgia, lately...
Old age will do that to you. :P
Ouch! The truth does hurt!

Gerry
chad ks
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by chad ks »

Don Cascabel wrote:CROTALUS LANNOMI - Talk about blood, sweat and tears!

Don Cascabel
Dude no kidding, this by far takes the cake and tops the list for me. I won't hold my breathe on this but a post of that experience with some narrative and a good description of the time and effort it took to find those critters would be earth shattering. :)
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Don Cascabel
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Don Cascabel »

RE: Lannomi

Well I think JJ and I shared some insight on our long tail quest on this forum when the pub came out, but I guess that is all lost now:

I will give a quick sum up...

When I first started herping Mexico in 01 I though stejnegeri in Sinaloa would be the first "montane" from Mx I would come across. Tim and a few girls and I were in Sinaloa looking for them in 02! When I decided to move to Mexico I quickly realized that the rest of the montanes were far easier, and several attempts at both stejnegeri and lannomi came up empty-handed. The more I came to "know" lannomi habitat, the harder it seemed. There are some tricks to finding rattlesnakes in Mexico which I have now mastered, but unfortunately the "long-tails" don't seem to play along.

After several visits to the lannomi type locality by us, plus reading on the failure of others, it became obvious that the type wasn't going to produce. Unfortunately during my time focusing on Colima, I never did have the self-confidence to follow my instinct of looking for them in that state. The ease and excitement of finding all the other montanes in Mexico was far to distracting. After a rumor (backed up by dubious photos) of a lannomi found in Colima we decided to concentrate our efforts on that state. After various failed attempts in Jalisco and armed with google earth and the information from the dubious accounts we narrowed down an area. It took several weeks of hard work, no food, pure endurance, cooperation with the locals and several diseases for us to break through, but finally we got the damn snake. I have field herped a good selection of vipers but without a doubt the longtails are the hardest. We have now gotten lannomi and ericsmithi (which seem to be the same snake) and will hopefully score on what has turned out to be the hardest Mexican crote (stejnegeri) this year.

Cheers,

Don Cascabel
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Don Cascabel
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by Don Cascabel »

PS - I won't go into details about blood, sweat and tears but I will say that all did happen. Being able to understand and negotiate with Mexican drug traffickers is a must when looking for longtails....... as is having an to talk your way INTO and OUT OF any situation you can possibly imagine.

Cheers,

Don Cascabel
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dezertwerx
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Re: What snake challenged you the most?

Post by dezertwerx »

Don Cascabel wrote:PS - I won't go into details about blood, sweat and tears but I will say that all did happen. Being able to understand and negotiate with Mexican drug traffickers is a must when looking for longtails....... as is having an to talk your way INTO and OUT OF any situation you can possibly imagine.

Cheers,

Don Cascabel
sounds pretty crazy don cascabel... its hard enough finding what you are desperately looking for... then add in the safety factors, like you mentioned. Defintely takes some guts & determination.

Congrats!
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