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Another full night of mojaves, 10 of those, other snakes were long nose, DOR gopher (lots of DOR gophers this year) and the highlight of the night: southern pacific rattler (helleri) and a monster! Car was coming down right as I got to him, pulled him to safety literally seconds prior to losing his head! Large well fed, probably 4', biggest we have seen so far. Rattled a little when I touched his tail, but didn't mind being hooked, tried to escape but we repeatedly took shots (only one was good) and he was pretty well behaved. Other highlight was a mojave with no rattle, torn off not a birth defect. Just goes to show you can't count on a rattle to identify.

mojave minus rattle

closer

intense green mojave

Another mojave

And finally the helleri! Happy Hunting!

Great coloration in the first two. Too bad about the first ones rattle. Maybe he got tired of the bad rap Rattlers get and ripped it off himself to look more like a Gopher snake!! Lol!!
Check my reply to your reply below. I just got finished talking about Majaves'!!
Great finds, do you have any pics of the Long nose snakes you've found this year? I can't believe I've never seen one yet. All I hear is how common they are!
Happy hunting!!
Ryan

Long nose pics don't come out too well for this trip, but there are a few that I posted down this page further as well as some by Jeff. To make it easier, I will post one in this reply too.

Ha ha! I've done the kamikaze snake grab for an indigo that was being purposely aimed for by a truck once. Not recommended or advised. And don't you hate it when you get a tailgater right when you think you have the road to yourself? Or when the wind comes out of nowhere at 60 degrees? Things that make me use bad language...

Good thing you saved the indigo! Mine was less kamikaze, I was off the road and the car wasn't too close, but any later and we would have one more to add to our DOR list.

The roads I hunt are pretty well traveled (not the road with the helleri though), half the snakes I see are DOR, so I get people on me often. I usually pull over when they are coming. There was one this year where there was nowhere to pull over, so I picked up some speed for this guy until I could pull over (nowhere to pass either) then there was a snake in the road! Now I had to turn around, and luckily the snake was not hit. Unfortuantly for me, he escaped, so I will never know what it was, just that it made it out alive. I'm thinking maybe a glossy snake, but I've been wrong many times. I pretty sure it wasn't a rattlesnake though, which made us really sad to miss out on catching and photographing it.

LMAO!!! You got that right!
Todd

Nice shots! one looks like its almost missing the black rings entirely, also seems absent on overall pattern, very neat!
Keep em coming

B

Thanks! We have seen a few with light pattern and as few as one ring.