Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Still not as good of a pic as I would like, but........

Beautiful snake Mr. Box. Looks to me like that one is probably interchangeable w/ Dennie Miller's blairs and Chris Sheldon's alterna as far as the best from the Gap. Congrats on what will probably turn out to be your best w/c alterna ever. You may as well stop looking now because it won't get any better than that one. LOL

DB

Thanks Doug. I thought the same thing when we found it. I kept looking at it every few minutes to make sure that I wasn't imagining things. I think that I will keep looking though.

Thanks for the photos! I'm still drooling. Now thats an AWESOME alterna!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've seen in person or through photos over 30 gap alterna since Denny Miller's 1st wild caught and I put yours right up there with the 2 Doug said plus Dan Johnson's Stillwell blairs.If you put a gun to my head I guess I would put Denny's #1 and yours 1A, Dan's #2 and Chris Sheldon's #3.. Also Dave Doherty and Bob Mackin caught one each that are probably very very close. I remember Mackin's snake he named "narrow bands" and he caught it at the same cut yours came from. It was a super light phase also, just 25 years earlier! Definitely yours is the wild caught alterna of this century. Congratulations again!!
Any chance I could get a 35mm print of it for my Black Gap photo album? I would pay for all expenses involved of course. BA

yeah Brad, I never saw "narrow-bands" in person, but I do have a photo of that animal and WOW! Very similar to ours in color (as far as I can tell from the picture that I have). Denny's snake is just spectacular because of how unusual it was and it had great color as well. Dan's Stillwell had a lot of outrageous orange. Chris' speckled snake is probably the most unusual and cool. Many, many nice snakes from the Gap. A lot of dog ugly ones too. Many of those Dogs have throw some spectacular babies. Quite a crazy gene pool down there. Any wild caught Gap snake is a special animal.

Many congrats on finding this one. It is definitely on my top ten list of the most beautiful alterna ever caught. It must have knocked your socks off seeing it in the wild! --Henry W.

It certainly did. I had been hunting the Gap for a LONG time and this was my first. I had actually pictured the snake that I would most want to catch at the Gap in my mind and it looked a whole lot like this one.

Ok, we have seen lots of Alterna this year from various locations. Only +/- 2 known Gap observations.

This animal in my opinon deserves ALTERNA OF THE YEAR... Damn is that snake hot. I can only imagine the goose bumps and the butterfly you got in your stomach when you saw it.

Congrats...

Submit 1 vote for Alterna of the year.

Best Wishes,

SXO792

be one of the best ever to be found.I would say top 5 for sure.

L8r Shannon

This may be biased since I was one of the trio who caught the snake, but I think it may be one of the nicest of the decade. I know there have been some really nice S & W Alpine, Christmas, Gaps, Huecos and others caught in the past. I would like to see pictures of other peoples snakes who thinks theirs rank in the top 10 of the decade or ever.

Well, it certainly gets my vote! I guess that I am a little bias though. Thanks guys for all the nice words. I don't find myself being lucky often. I am very thankful for the opportunity to be in on this find.

That is one gorgeous Black Gap alterna. Chris Drake