Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Four of us headed down to the Carolinas to do some snake hunting and visit friends. We saw many snakes between Friday April 29 and Sunday May 1. Oddly enough we did not see any Corns or any representatives of the Rat Snake family. I figures we would at least see Yellow or Greenish Rats as we drove down the coast. We really hoped to see Eastern Kings and a Scarlet King and we were lucky with these! These two Eastern Kings were found under the same board in a roadside ditch in Edenton, NC. I liked the wide chain pattern, but the snakes themselves looked rough. Between being in shed and scars on them they did not too great. The bigger one was about 4 feet.

Here is another pict of the NC kings

South Carolina had its share of Easterns as well. We started out looking Sunday morning on May 1st in McClellanville, SC. Within minutes at the first swamp, Rob spotted and tonged this good-sized Cottonmouth. He posed nicely and was then sent on his way.

Within minutes of the Cottonmouth, this nice looking Eastern King was seen starting to cross the road. In case the photos don't show it, she has nice chocolate color especially on the belly.

Another few minutes later, we turned some carpet and Rob found this second Eastern King. This one was larger (about 4-4.5 feet) and had an aberrant pattern to its chain. Three snakes within the first 15 minutes!

Unfortunately, the only Scarlet King we saw was this DOR one, found a few roads nearby.

np

hope you had a good time, thanks for sharing the experience.
Dave B

Thanks, it was a great time. We all have families and have not done anything like this for 10 years, so it was great getting away. we are hoping to do it annually now.

Can't wait until next year.....!
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1.0 Malagasy Giant Hognose
0.1 Jungle Carpet Python
1.0 Mexican Black Kingsnake
0.1 Guyana Red Tail Boa
1.0 Ball Python
1.0 Black Milksnake
0.0.1 Tiger Rat Snake (Spilotes)
0.0.1 Blue Tongue Skink
1.0 White Lipped Python (Black phase)

Nice looking snake. I always wonder when I read the posts about catching wild snakes. Are they that easy to catch? I would think they would be very fast and "feel" that your near by.
Thanks

Thanks! The ones we caught were easy enough, we also missed many...the racers and water snakes! I think we saw about 5 or 6 racers throughout the weekend that were in the open or crossing roads and we only caught one. The water snakes were the same way. They would quickly dive into the water. The other stuff was either under something or just moving slow. The brownish Eastern was the only snake to bit and that stopped after a minute. We also caught a Copperhead and Cottonmouth that was not given the opportunity!

Beautiful ! Maybe I can use one of those shots on my site ?

Keith
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sure, let me know if you need them emailed to you...

You need to come by and visit me (I live just south of Fayetteville). Corns are almost as abundant as black racers here. Just one example: Found three big ones under ONE carpet just a couple of days ago (a four footer, a four and a half footer and a BIG five footer)!!!But E. Kings are a little tricky to find around here, but when I do. . . they're usually nicely contrasted animals with very clean white bands (almost like a cal king). Scarlet kings are also found occasionally.

Zee

hey Zee,
those are huge corns! That must have been quite a sight. We drove through Fayetteville on the way home but we were in a hurry to catch a flight out of Baltimore that night, so we saw it at 80 miles an hour. we will have to meet up next year!

Sounds good to me. . . Always looking forward to meeting fellow herpers. I will try to post pics of some WC corn pics on the corn forum tomorrow (having some problems with my battery charger in my camera).

Zee