First snake hunt, certainly not the last

On the weekend of May 8th and 9th, David and I headed out with our good friend Blake, to experience our first snake hunt. During the ride down to what was to be camp, was basically "snake education" where we discussed our favorite species and our experiences with them. Blake decided to make a detour and show us novice snake hunters some good road hunting areas. He filled our ears with tells of Canebrakes and monster Rat snakes he had encountered during his hunts. We continued our journey with only one more detour at one of Blake's tin sites. He led us to every piece of sheet metal as we eagerly searched through it for any sneaky serpents underneath. We wouldn't uncover any interesting critters here which left the us snake hunters (novice and experienced) eager to get our eyes, hands, or hooks on a snake. When we finally reached our destination of camp, we set up and then spent a few minutes enjoying the scenery of the above tide creek and was fortunate enough to hear Blake say "Theres one!". David and I turned to see a decent sized Piscivorus making his way across the creek. We proceeded to road hunt for a few hours, unfortunately seeing nothing. When we returned to camp, we built a fire and had a tasty feast of "Steak on a stick". We woke up around 7am the next morning and continued our eager search for some snakes. The first three tin sites we would stop at would turn up nothing, but we soon would. At the next spot, we dug through some debris and tin and found nothing. This is when Blake turned to me and said "Flip that piece, Neil." I carefully spotted the piece of tin that I would have otherwise over looked because it was covered in loads of shrubbery. As I safely maneuvered the tin, my eyes popped out of my head like soft balls. I found a pair of adult Black x Grey Rat snakes. David and I quickly snatched them up for photographs of our treasures. Blake complemented me "Good job! Now David is going to top you." He in fact, would. We headed down the road to our next stop at yet another spectacular tin site. This is where the magic would really happen. Blake once again led us to the pile of tin, however we wouldn't start digging right away. Blake turned to us, "Out of all of these pieces of tin, which do ya'll think most likely has a snake under it?" We agreed on a car hood sitting semi in the shade. We both were also wrong. When Blake said "Have at it." we started digging for more snakes. I was flipping an isolated pile, at the bottom I would uncover a rather large Chain King. We took some photos of him and released back into his tin. Less than 10' away, David came to an old car door panel. "Here is your money maker, flip it and see what ya get." Blake said. David proceeded to flip his debris, he was about to be in pure awe by uncovering his first Canebrake. It was an unbelievable moment for us novice hunters. Blake snapped a few photos of the Canebrake before we would disturb the gravid female. Blake looked at David and asked "Do you want this snake?" David replied with "Ofcourse." The three of us herpers were on cloud nine with only more to come. Blake bagged David's find and we were on our way to the next spot. We passed an abandoned barn with a single, small piece of tin laying beside the barn. We didn't think much of it, but stopped anyway. Blake was the only one to get out here considering it didn't seem very promising. "Get your a**es out here, I have a pair huge Copperheads!" we heard Blake say from the tin. We basically fell out Blake's truck when we got out. They were your typical spastic Southerns that both took off in different directions. When Blake got them under control, he bagged them and we were onward. Now that we had seen almost all of snakes we wanted to see, we had two more to encounter. We stopped at a donkey farm that had a few pieces of tin scattered about. Under one piece, David would uncover a sub-adult Black racer. This was great for me because I love Racers. We snapped a few photos and once again released him. There was one more spot to be explored. Blake told us there are Diamondbacks there, however they are very rare. We soon discovered that all of the debris that at one point had produced snakes, was now shoved into a giant hole. We proceeded back to where we camped to hunt some Moccasins. On the way, a large Coachwhip slithered right out into the road in front of us. Blake straddled the truck over the snake and quickly stopped, shoving us novice hunters out of the truck saying "Catch that snake!!!" Another car was passing us and couldn't help rubber-necking at us for chasing this Coachwhip with all that we had. One thing I have learned about Coachwhips is, when they reach grass, they disappear. That would be the last snake we encountered for this trip, however it certainly wouldn't be the last. Nothing happened after this except I almost drowned in the creek while Blake and I were searching for Cottonmouths.

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