Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I live in jacksonville fl and have recently gotten into hunting snakes..more specifically i want to find corn and scarlet king snakes. The habitat here seems perfect for them with all the sandy pine forests and cabbage palm. I have spent whole days looking for snakes and still havent seen one. I read that they like to hide under pine bark so I just kinda walk around looking for dead pine trees and look in the stump, look under the bark around it, etc.. but i never have any luck...do any of you more experienced guys have any tips that you could give me to maybe help me with my searching? thanks guys.

Yea, leave natural cover alone(not much left) go find some tin or boards or tarpaper or trash piles, etc. This time of year in your area IS PERFECT. Cheers

I agree with FR. Look for trash piles. You might also want to set up some sites of your own, but get permission from the landowner first to avoid a tresspassing or littering citation. Stacks of tin or boards near the habitat you are searching should be way more productive than looking in/around stumps/bark.

Good luck,
Michael

Hey, maybe you just stink at it! I can come out of the woods with a bag full of snakes, but I admit, when it comes to fishing, I just stink at it. Just a certain knack for snakes somehow, been known to drive some friends crazy when they can’t find squat in the same place, but can’t catch a fish...

Try getting this book. It just came out and is highly recommended.

at this link....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/index.html?ie=UTF8&sellerID=AANL4JWED349B

They found tons of snakes but then couldn't find their car. Only kidding but seriously, how many of us have wandered far afield in our quest to find herps and realized that we were pretty darned lost.Maybe a very few, but it happens to me all the time. Of course, I still walk into the walls in my own house so I am a bad example.

I bought a very high quality hand-held GPS last fall and used it for my last trip to the Sandhills in September.

With it I was able to "mark" every snake I found and enter detailed information about each find. I also bought a topographic mapping program to go with it which is on my computer and syncs with the plotted points from the GPS.

The result is that I was able to download all of my finds to this map and see the location of every find while I was down there - good information for the next time. I even printed the map with plots to a .pdf file and emailed it to a few friends that were headed in there a week or so after me. I plan to mark every find from here on out with this device.

IN addition -- before I "jumped off" and headed away from the vehicle I "marked" the location of the vehicle. That let me walk as far into the woods as I wanted without the fear of getting lost - because this device pointed me back to the vehicle. It's not like we were in Alaska --- but the Sandhills is a big place and you can get lost in there since it all looks the same once you get back in it.
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ECC
www.eastcoastcolubrids.com

Home of TEAM ECC
It's an Inner Circle thing... you wouldn't understand...

ah, herping in the 21st century. that is the best use I have heard of so far. good planning and good idea to map it out. Could be a useful tool for marketing locality specimens.
How well does your unit work under tree cover (no idea what the sand hills look like) and/ or on cloudy days?
daveb

i have a similar tool...

to tell ya the truth, i have no clue why i got it, most (if not all) of my pix are taken from the commfort of my home. but the idea/concept is it is pretty cool.

go to the link and click on the "learn" tab... there's a cool little video that shows you how it works

~Z

Sony GPS Unit Kit GPS-CS1KA

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Floridana Morphs: Resource Site

you can save the Lat/Long of the pizza joint a few blocks away and and push man overboard button next time your at the Empire State Bldg.so you can tell tourists the exact location.Yumm N.Y. Pizza.
What ever happened to the snake devining rod ----Y...........

Snakes and snake hunting. There is no question about it.

While its a great tool for the Study(scientific harassment)of snakes. Its horrible for the snakes that are going to be collected by hobbyist. Before GPS, snakes had the advantage of forgetful minds, not they are all on permanent record. So even their next generations are in trouble.

Its kinda like fishing with gernades. Its still fishing, you just do not need to know as much and you can catch more. Cheers

right behind the internet!
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Herp Conservation Unlimited
Mexicana Group Directory
Photography by Joseph E. Forks
Captive Bred Locality Matched Desert Kingsnakes

cell phones

it is sad about gps giving locations of colony/groups that will now be pilferred, by any yaahoo w/one,seems like shootin fish in a barrel to me? commercial collectors gotta luv it,,,,,, ahhwell

i still follow Arlo's advise see off of the side of the side of this side road at the bottom of this cliff there was this pile of garbage... hey always worked for me,,,,,,,,thomas
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Morphs... just like baseball cards BUT ALIVE, how cool is that???

my website www.barmollysplace.com

hobbysists??? really??
haha!
Hell ask my wife, I get lost going to the store for the newspaper!
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

I'm glad you caught the typo Mark, as I usually correct stuff like that. Its a shame that edjicated peeples prowdly poste on hear but have no inklinge dat wot dey are doing isss to give de impreschun by the lowzy spelling dat dey are not of de wizzzdom dat dey think dey am.

.
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Work is the curse
of the drinking class!

don't blame me, blame the government. i was public schooled, you know...
i was a pretty good speller when I used a pen and paper. I didn't have a keyboard until I was 29 and by that time, its too late to learn anything new. Now when I type I get all sorts of words that appear, and I don't know what some of them mean!

By the way the definition of hobbysist is:
a herpetocultulral hobbyist that uses hi tech devices to assist them on their way back to a good herping site. hobby plus assist equals hobbysist!

e.g.: ECC hobbysists in the sand hills of North Carolina.

db

No blame intended. I love the defending of the new word "hobbysist". I recently reviewed newly accepted words in the english lexicon. It stands besides "EggCream Corn"-defined as a creamsicle corn that retains its egg tooth throughout life, "Iguanwich"-which tastes very much like chicken, and "Brookstones"-defined as a Florida Kingsnake that enjoys some good weed.

Yes as an enterprising teen I left no tern unstoned....
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

Males sense to me.. Plural hobbies...= hobbys ist!
You do have more than one hobby, don't you?
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

ya know, maybe Dave had something there after all. Hobbysist. yeah, but now we gotta also accept into our lexicon such words as herpetologsist, chemsist, histologsist, physicssist, ovariansist.

You're quite the cunning .....-ist!
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

lol. i remember the joke. so when ya coming up here to look around for e. kings. im sure Tony would also enjoy seeing you up here. good time probably late april early May time frame.

Man, I'd love to head up there. I have some relatives in NC so it's not a stretch to pull it off..Maybe I can make it happen...
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

Let me know buddy. been talking about it for quite some time now. lets try to make it happen. plus you can meet all the local herpers here and play with their collections as well. added bonus is that I know many of the local watering holes here too(as they know me).Just make sure you dont put a pox on me and all my ancestors.

Now THAT'S an enjoyable hobby!

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

you all can get started with the great "narcissist", then expand into other progressive words ending with -sist. ask your local librarian for help finding more on this topic!

personally, I would rather be known for my great contribution to science, the coining of the phrase "brooksi phase of floridana (BPOF)", a great herpetocultural and marketing tool for hobbyists and hobbysists alike.

Howie, when are you going to come up and look for red backed salamanders in the leaf litter? I have told Mark a hundred times he should move up here (no hurricanes), but every time I mention it he just ignores me, lol.

daveb

Howie will get BPOF mixed up with BYOB and you know what kinda problems we'll have then..
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

One man's problem is another man's sustenance. alcoholsistic? maybe

>>Plural hobbies...= hobbys ist!
You do have more than one hobby, don't you?>>

how much time do you have? lots of hobbies, doesn't mean I'm good at any of them though, hahaha.

I like your definition, plural hobbies...

maybe a hobbysist should be defined as a jack of all trades kind of thing? first be a hobbyist, then once you achieve a master status, become a certified hobbysist.

btw, how are those northerns?

daveb

hey man, I'd love to catch them thar red backs but why do i have to come all the way up there to do it? when are you coming on down to poke around for kings?i know for a fact there are no easterns up by you, kings that is. hey, I wonder what the lobbysists are going to do if barack gains the presidency? sorry, had to use that in a sentence.

They are still up there since we missed the best shipping times before winter. No taking chances.
I hope to have them in my collection very soon!
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

see, this is I always take my horse and my dog with me into the woods... I guarentee no matter how lost I am, the horse always knows were home is and has no qualms about duckin under every tree between were he is and the barn lol...

and as a plus, he's good about lettin me know were the snakes are, but I seem to have misplaced the photos...
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~Maggie~

"Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious."
1.1 Cal Kings
1.0 Mali Uromastyx
1.0 Brooksi
0.1 Red Belly Piranha
1.0 Quarter Horse
1.0 Australian Shepherd