Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey there. I caught a normal gopher snake in Long Beach yesterday. I have not handled one since I was a kid (many years ago - I'm 41 now).

He was quite mellow and frankly I was surprised. The few I caught as a kid were mean and nasty.

What is the normal attitude of a wild and then captive gopher snakes.

I breed large boids and have been for over 20 years. Although the large ones give me a good adrenaline rush, catching a wild snake (even a harmless gopher) is always pretty exciting for me.

Rick

I have kept more wild caught pacific gophers than captive bred. In my experience WC tame down extremely fast, if they aren't already tame. I assume that WC and CB gophers have about the same rate of aggressiveness but in my experience I have only come accross one WC that was not tame within a day or so of captivity. On the other had I have had or dealt with multiple CB gophers that stayed aggressive overall.

I believe it is just normal variance and will just depend on the individual snake. Similar to how some dogs are short tempered and others wouldn't do anything no matter what was done to them.

Sean.
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1.1 BRB
0.1 Pacific Gophersnake(unproven Hypo)
1.0 Amel Pacific Gophersnake
1.1 Triple Het TPRS's
0.1 Silver TPRS
1.1 Amel Bloodred Corns
0.1 Abbott Okeetee Corn
0.1 Blizzard Bloodred Corn
1.1 Thayeri Kingsnakes
0.1 Reeve's Turtle
0.2 Amstaff's
1.0 Pudytat

I caught a Great Basin Gopher last week myself (and like you, most of my experiences with them were way back in the last century).

He immediately went into "Rattlesnake Impersonation Mode," and while I was congratulating myself (this was the first place I looked), he acted pretty fearsome. I wish now I'd taken a photo but I elected to bag him while I decided what to do with him (at least my preliminary judgment was it was a male).

I took a walk down the hill looking for others and finally decided the nine snakes (and 18 corn snake eggs) I have right now are adequate, so I returned to the discarded carpet remnant he'd been hiding under and released him.

At this point I decided on a few photos, but it was apparently clear to him by then that I wasn't buying any bluffs, and he was all for getting out of Dodge. I managed a few shots, but nothing as dramatic as I would have been able to get earlier.

Right now I own two gopher snakes, one a W/C adolescent and the other a yearling C/B, as well as a three-year old "Texas Bull." The bull's attitude is clearly the most cantankerous, and she actually nailed me last week (I'd forgotten to wash after feeding some frozen mice to another snake); the two gophers are milquetoasts.

For the most part, what I remember of the gopher snakes from 40 years ago was they all pretty much tamed down easily with one or two exceptions. Of course the other snakes I readily brought home were usually western racers, and these were almost always nippy in comparison.

I've kept quite a few San Diego Gophers, and from what I've experienced they make fine captives. They tend to always stay a bit spastic, but I've never experienced any aggressiveness. Here is one from an area here in Chatsworth.

reako45