Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just wondered if anyone on the board has ever hunted/collected any Alterna from the "King Mountain" area? Just about an hour south of Odessa Texas.

We used to hunt there quite a bit several years ago. I caught my first Alterna there (nice adult male) but I haven't been down there in years.....hard to hunt it now due to fences/gates and too many people knowing about the location. For a while only a small handful of people even knew how to hunt this particular location.

Lots of folks hunted that area and did well.

That's the only place where I'm batting 100% success. I went there one time, and one time only. My brother and I were creeping up the hill looking out the window, and he says "are you sure there are gray-bands here, it looks kind of crappy?", and I said "yup, there's one right there!". We left and I've never been back. Don't want to spoil that

Forky

My very first trip there back around 1991 we caught a good looking male that night.

I made several other trips down with others and we probably collected 3 or 4 more over the years. My last trip down sometime in '95 ish I caught on myself. Walking the edges of the King Mountain cliffs and a nice looking adult male was just sitting under a rusted pipe.

We never road cruised down there. We always got up on top of the mesa and walked the edges of the cliffs. Normally we would collect quite a few copperheads and blacktails. We did get a coral snake one night, which I thought was pretty cool. We found several mottled rocks in that area as well.

Upton county would be a new county record for coral snakes, in case you ever find another document it.

Forks

Yes, and I think it was documented shortly thereafter but I can't be totally sure if it was.

We knew it was way out of range though. I had decided to not walk so close to the edge of the cliff and took a detour about 20 or 30 yards in. I looked down and there it was......kind of caught me off guard because we never heard of anyone seeing or collecting a coral from there. It was a full grown male and had really good color. We bagged it up and took it with us.....I can't recall who we ended up selling it to though.

I know a guy who hunted the king mountain area back in the 80's and he never saw one either.

it's not showing up in the database. was it deposited in a museum?

This has been over 10 years ago....So, I'm not totally sure if it was documented. I know the guy I was with talked about documenting it etc and several people who used to hunt that location mentioned the same thing.

I could have assumed it was documented but since I didn't actually get that done myself....I can't be totally sure.

I caught it myself though...but gave it to the guy I was with. Who at the time I worked for at his reptile facility. Richard Evans with West Texas Reptiles....he is known mainly for the albino hognose. Which I was also involved in (both strains).

are you out of El Paso? I can e-mail you a few spots to check out if so.

Forky

No.....Lubbock Texas here!

That makes sense, King Mt. is the nearest local to your home base.

Forky

Yeah, we used to head down after work, hunt all night and sometimes drive back that morning. A few time we would stay two night to hunt the Iraan area. Never pulled any alterna out of the Iraan area though. But we caught several mottled rocks from there.

King Mountain has been "shut-off" for about 3 years now. The west side (where you got your male) is where all the radio towers are. It has been closed off even longer. The east side road (where Forky and relatives have had success) was removed from the state maintanence list 2 years ago and is now privately maintained. That is when they "locked the gate", so to speak. The property we had access to (where Doug Wuerch and I collected a pair and obtained one male from one of the ranch-hands) on the north side used to be incredible... it was private property and so there were no "commercial collecting" going on... we had several nights where we would see 5-10 pictigaster and 2-3 molossus. When Mrs. Speck died, her son from the "big city" decided that we should pay a "lease fee" like the deer boys...

Yeah, Richard sent that Coral Snake to a dealer in Florida... the significance of that animal was definately more than the $30 he got for it!! I remember that animal was HUGE!

When you come to Angelo to get your Pandale alterna, give me a call. It would be nice to visit again... been too long! Tell Jen hello!

Happy herpin'...

MP

Yep...that coral was huge. $30 sounds about right ha ha!

I'll let you know when we are headed down...it will be good to see you guys again! Cooper is excited about getting into all of this!

Those old hunting days were fun though! I remember some nights you would barely have enough time to bag a snake up before you spotted another one!

-Dave