Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I live in the sierra's of central cali, well the foothills, on my parents property we get rattlers, gophers, kingsnakes, and racers, and prolly more but I don't remember them. My parents have a pond on their property and as I was walking down the hill to the pond I noticed a snake skin coming out of a gopher hole. It's pretty large, about 3 -4 feet long, I never did find the head as it was stuck in the hole. I guess it shed it's skin coming out of the hole. I can kinda make out a pattern and my guess is its either a gopher or a rattler, but I didn't see any rattles um, I'm not sure if that means anything, I know your supposed to be able to tell the age of a rattler by the number of rattles. I was wondering if there is anything else that would point one way or another.
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My greybands:
Prince Mandrake and Princess Caldera

When a rattler sheds, its shed will be missing the pointed tail you find on kings, gophers, etc. On my western diamondback that i keep, his shed skin leaves no question as to pattern, ive even cut up the belly scales from the tail to the bottom lip and glued the skin flat to poster board, looks cool. It is impossible to tell the age of a rattler by the number of buttons on the tail. When i got mine it wasnt even a year old and was going on eight buttons. He got all the way up to thirteen and broke it off in his cage back down to nine all in the last three years. They get one segment of buttons each time they shed, so the number of rattles just indicates how many times it has shed since it last broke rattles off, and in the wild that happens more often than in a cage. Hope that helps. Skinner

If you still have the skin, there are a few things you can check that might help narrow down the species. Are the scales smooth or keeled? Is the anal plate single or divided? Unfortunately, both gopher snakes and rattlers have keeled scales and single anal plates, so if it's down to those two, you're out of luck so far. The clincher would be the ventral scales under the tail. (This assumes that the tail skin doesn't come to a point; if it does, it's not a rattler.) Rattlesnakes have a single row of ventral scales under the tail; most colubrids, including gopher snakes, have a double row. Hope this halps, michaelb

Looks like the tail comes to a point, but the tail piece is broken up so its hard to tell. Thanks for the info
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My greybands:
Prince Mandrake and Princess Caldera