Reptile Fight Club - Follow-up with Blaine Mazzetti

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob have a Follow-up with Blaine MazzettiBlaine's IG: Baja_blaineFollow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIG https://www.instagram.com/jgjulander/Follow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQWebsite: https://mprnetwork.transistor.fm/

Welcome to Reptile Fight Club. Got a fun episode tonight. We're going to be talking with Blaine Mazetti for the second time. So having him back on. Glad to have you back. Welcome to the show. Blaine, how's it going? Pretty good.

Thanks. Stoke to be here. Thank you guys for having me. It's an honor to be here. Yeah, excited to have you back and hear about your recent adventures. It looks like you've been doing some amazing stuff. That's pretty awesome. Yeah.

Yep. So, man, I threw out my back today. So I'm in a little pain here. But we'll muddle through the pain. But yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. I started or I tried a new lift, the Bulgarian deadlift. And yeah, I think I started out too heavy and messed up my back. So I'm like, gosh, thank you.

And I'd just gotten it better from the trip. So I, whatever, you know, just being older, or whatever, driving home from Arizona and getting a little sleep, my back was all out of whack and then get home and do this to it. So, oh, well, what do you do? Don't get old. Don't get old. Right. Right. You got two weeks to get it right, Justin. Yeah, I know. I'm like, dad going right before the trip. Yeah, I'm really trying not to get old, but whatever I'm doing isn't working. Although lifting has been nice, it's been helping me, you know, feel a little better about things until I go and mess it up like this.

But yeah. It helps. Right. Yeah. Got some new cages built. I had my little neighbor kid help me and paid him some money. But yeah, it went pretty smooth and got some new cages for some of the snakes that have needed an upgrade.

So that's always, that's always fun. Nice. I'm, yeah, things are going pretty good. looked like you had some stuff hatch out recently rob you get some or i guess not hatch out sure yeah so rhinos and then uh jamaican beaux um they came you know i know we had talked about that they're usually strictly biannial breeders uh and then she missed last year which would have been her every other year to go i thought she would go this year and that proved correct it was funny because i've been out um had uh somebody staying at the house

and all that as usual, but it was, they hadn't noticed, and I came in and she was ready to take my face off. And I thought, well, that's very odd relative to being grabbed. You know, she hadn't fed the whole time, and she was sitting there looking like she was really ready to take a feed. And it was only when the lights within the, all the cages have lights within them, and then the room fixture is a red bulb that, you know, obviously to promote, you know, visualization while allowing that nocturnal activity. And about an hour and a half after that had gone off, then two little babies crawled out from where they've been hiding during the day. And I said, oh, that's why you're ready to feed is because you actually, while I was gone, had those babies. There was no visual evidence from she must have had them within the cork tube or something.

And, yeah, there wound up being 13 of them that were hiding in there. And it was just the two that, after I've been staring at her for a while, they crawled out and said, oh, okay, I guess that explains all the pieces fit together. And, yeah, that's all good. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, what a cool species. Good stuff. Well, I don't know if you listened to the last episode we put out.

Your interview. I did. I heard the front end. And so notably, so I heard your, and Blaine for context, it was the first episode of our podcast that, well, Justin's podcast that he allowed me to join three and a half years ago or whatever, that Justin wasn't present for, and he just couldn't stand that. So he had recorded a little intro to put on the front end of it. I knew he might, but Eric didn't communicate that. And then I would note that he failed to include the Simpsons quote that I had requested to be included talking about a bloodless coup, you know, all smotherings. He was supposed to include that and failed to do that.

So I see who butters the bread in this situation. I need things, you know, notes for me to take away and all work out. Well, it was after a 17-hour drive, so my Simpsons quotes weren't coming to the brain very well. And not much was coming to the brain. You could probably hear it in the recording. But yeah, that was a bit of a drive. 17 hours is a little long for me these days. Yeah, well, yeah, he made the comment like, oh, man, you sure you want to do that?

17 hours is a long drive. I'm like, oh, wait, if you're saying that, I'm in trouble here. Yeah, it's not fun. I've done that a few times. Yeah, a couple years. Right. From San Diego to Chihuahua, Mexico. Wow.

That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like 19 hours, but same difference. Yeah. Yeah. That's a long time in the car. But I guess it's, you know, it's worth it if you can get to where you need to be right in time to Herp.

And that's kind of how it worked out in Texas. And yeah, I guess we'll hopefully hear about some of your adventures here. So, yeah, how do you want to start out, Rob? So I think we'll run through some of our haranguing the Herper's questions, specifically selected relative to Blaine haven't been on before, and then get into some of these epic adventures that have been indicated since the time we last spoke. So I guess the first one, just to establish sort of the framework that you operate on, do you keep a life list of snakes that you've seen, snakes or reptiles that you've seen? And are you using that as a motivator? or do you have a different motivator? You just want to go to a particular area.

What does that look like? No, I don't really keep a list or have anything. I mean, I'm a king snake guy, so I'm always intrigued by different king snakes and subspecies and all the lamp stuff. But, I mean, since I started herping, it was just kind of like everything in Mexico looked really cool to me.

And I was just like, I want to go find some of these king snakes. And I mean, obviously, I'm still kind of new to this. I started in 2022. So I think this is what my fifth year. So like I'm still learning and I species still pop up. I never heard of and stuff. So when certain things pop up, I'm like, oh, that sounds fun. That's cool.

So is it expanding your kind of target, you know, the things you want to see? Or is it like you just kind of see it incidentally and you're like, oh, that was cool. Or now I need to see more of the, you know, the relatives of those are like kind of like the lampropeltis. Yeah. I think for me, just like all the mountain king snakes in Mexico are super intriguing and there's just so many. I mean, and there's a lot of cool milk snakes down there too. So that's cool.

I don't know. Sometimes it could be anything that inspires me. It could be someone's Instagram post or someone texting me. Have you seen this before? and I get a little wild fire lit under me, and I'm like, let's go knock it off. Yeah. Well, that's cool. So it's still primarily lamprepelus that motivate you to get out there and do some searching.

That's cool. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Nice. So what's the toughest thing out of that list so far that you've set your mind to, chased and found? the toughest um man the the obstacle i mean that's a that's a weird question because we've we've done a few crazy things since i've talked to you guys and like the some of the toughest hiking i did was for one um access was a huge crazy issue for another and then our our lives being in danger was a crazy

obstacle for the latest one. So I mean, they've all had their obstacles. The toughest, the toughest to get to, to actually get to go look was probably the Isla Tos Santos in Baja, just because the Mexican government has that island locked down. So it took us over two years to get permission to visit. Oh, wow. What was the process for getting permission? It was, It was a lot of back and forth with the, I don't know what the acronym is, like the con amp. They run all the environmental stuff. And then we had to get Mexican sponsors from the University of Baja, California, like with reasons why we're going. We had to have proof that we weren't going to disturb any birds or bird nass and stuff.

And like we had to sign things to say anything we found, the data would be shared with Mexican biologists and stuff. And it was pretty crazy. That's cool. Are there biologists out there doing research with the Lampropeltis out there? Yeah, there's actually a couple. They even have like the radio transmitter tracker things on a few of the big adults. And we know how that works with snakes when they go super deep in the structures and stuff. Yeah, they go out and they check on them every now and then and stuff.

So like, and they're, I don't think, I don't think if you could get on that island at the right time, they're necessarily difficult to find. But I don't think the government allows big windows. I think there's a three-month window that they'll allow and it's not in a good time. Okay. Yeah, it seemed like you found them fairly well. Was that a correct assessment from your video or did it take you a bit? Um, it probably took, I mean, we weren't on the island very long. It's, it's really small. So I could see, I could see why it's protected. Like, we probably hiked, we hiked like the whole island probably in four hours. So. Oh, wow. I think it took us three hours to turn them up. Um, and it was just kind of hiking. We went down the west side of the island all the way to the south end. And then up. the east side all over the north end and kind of just hope for the best, try to stay off a bird mess

and everything and not get in trouble because, you know, the boat, our boat captain was all scared too. He's like, you guys can't do anything wrong. Like there's the guys at the house will tell on you sometimes the Mexican Navy rolls up and checks permits. And if they see you doing something dumb, they're going to arrest you. And I was like, geez, is this even worth it? Right. I know you've got a lot of people. jealous with that fine though like a lot that's probably a snake that's on a lot of herpers list that of want to see but and you know after seeing that that was that's pretty cool i i think that would be an amazing adventure like so yeah appreciate you doing the the work and you know the leg work and

and then actually getting out there and you know being careful enough to not be arrested so you could show your findings you know share that with us that's really cool stuff it was how and How far out is that island? How long did it take to get there? It's not long. 11 kilometers. So what's that? Like eight miles?

Something like that? So give or take. I can't remember exactly. It wasn't long. It was like a 40-minute boat ride or something. But yeah, I was talking to, I'm not going to mention any names, but I was talking to a famous herpetologist here in San Diego.

And he said he thinks we're the first herpers to ever do it legally and legit. Right. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah, I saw the video. I'm like, oh, man, how did that happen? So I'm glad to hear you did it the right way and you're not like facing prosecution or something for your video or something. That's cool.

Oh, yeah, I mean, I've taken some heat for the video for old heads and some of the older heads. Right. But I mean, like, it's whatever. Yeah, you made it happen. You deserve the, you know. to have that moment for sure. Like, people can't complain if they didn't try, you know?

That's really cool. How were they like to, you know, to handle and once you had them in hand and things? They were super cool, super chill. They were really big. The biggest mountain kings I've seen, they were both, they were both probably pushing four feet and very sizable. I feel like they might have been captured. before. Or they're just, or because they don't really have natural predators, they're just super chill. I'm not, because usually Mountain Kings are biting you and musking all over you. And they were just, they were kind of just like, whatever. Are they eating like seabirds out there? Is it still mostly lizards? Did you see a lot of lizards on the island? Yeah, we saw a lot of lizards. There's legless lizards and there's ringneck snakes too. I'm sure they eat those. But there's also like every rock you turn. there's just piles of rodent crap.

So there's definitely a lot of rodents out there as well, which I imagine they eat. That's cool. Yeah. Oh, nice. Wow. Yeah, definitely jealous of that one. That's really cool. But congrats again for putting in the word.

Thank you. Thank you. So we took you down one path in terms of the toughest relative to access. What about toughest hiking? Which one was that? That was probably. Sierra San Pedro Martyr. And maybe it wouldn't have been so tough if we actually trusted what the maps said and the topographical map told us and packed correctly.

But it said that it was it was an eight mile hike to get to where we needed to go. And we were like, yeah, that's probably like 3.5. Like whatever. And then we didn't pack. We packed water. We packed a lot of water. and then we packed like protein bars. We didn't even pack real food.

So we get down there. We hiked eight miles that kicked our ass because we were so excited. We were basically running there. And then we hike all day. We only have protein bars. We sleep and we wake up and we're like, oh, my God, we can barely move our legs. We hurt so bad. We don't have nutrients or anything.

We're running out of water. So we flipped half the day. And I just looked at Ronnie and the way he was walking. And I told him, I was like, dude, my knee's starting to lock up. Like, I can't. I'm not going to be able to bend my knee. And we got to go back eight miles and three thousand feet back up. Like, let's just, let's get out of here.

So within 24 hours, we did the whole 16 mile round trip. And when we got to that, when we got to the car, it was, it was bad. We barely made it. That's rough. Yeah, glad you made it back. Yeah, I think it was because we didn't have. you know, the nutrients and the protein and the carbs for the energy. We were just like, oh, it's nothing.

We'll take some protein bars. So we were going off like 300 calories in 24, 36 hours. So our bodies were like, nah. Yep. Yeah, it's not a good situation to be in. No, stupid, really stupid. Right. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I keep asking myself,

when am I going to stop learning the hard way? You know, I think we still make those mistakes. You just get excited and just go for it, you know? Like, I don't know. Totally. It is what it is. But yeah, were you able to find them on that trip or did you have to go back? Yeah.

No, we haven't. We didn't go this year because it didn't rain, but we kind of regretted that because another group went and they found a couple. But yeah, we found two. I flipped, I flipped a big adult the first afternoon and then I flipped a juvenile the next morning around noon, 11 noon. And after that, we were just like, we did it. Let's get that.

heck out of here. Yeah, some of those, some of those places, it's like, okay, we found it. Now we never need to come back again or something, you know, like, yeah, well, yeah, I want to go back, but I want to be prepared. Right, right. Do it, do it the right way. Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's always like, seems like it's always easier this, the next time, you know, at least when you're prepared or when you know what to expect, you're not. Yeah. Yeah, you found them so you're not like running to get there. you're not wasting your energy reserves or whatever. Yeah, that's cool. So I think we'll go back next year.

Well, next spring sometime when the snow melts or a month after the snow melts, we'll probably head down that way and try again. They're beautiful snakes, man. That's some good stuff. Yeah, one of the best. Yeah. All right. Well, now it's time to hear about your harrowing, life-threatening.

Herping here. Yeah. One of several, right? Yeah. But maybe most expensive this time? Yeah, probably the one, this last trip was probably the one where I really thought our lives could be over with if things. Really? Really?

It kept continued the way they were going. And it was the first time where I thought, I really thought, like, I made a mistake. I should not be here right now. Like, this is, this is getting really bad. So I guess I can get right into it. It sounds like you guys want to hear the story. Unless it's too difficult to tell, you know. We don't want to bring up any PTSD or anything.

No, it's not that bad. It's not that bad. It was just kind of a, it was like a rude awakening of you need to be more careful. But so what happened was last year we flew down to Durango, Mexico, and we're like, and we'll go look for, you know, Greer Eye, Greer's Mountain King, Snakes. and whatever. And conditions were terrible. It wouldn't stop raining.

And we're just like, you know what? Screw it. Let's drive over to Sinaloa and go in Webite habitat and see what that looks like. Yeah. And we get over there and we have lunch in El Palmito, which is like the worst town you could have lunch in. If you look at it up, it's like, do not go here. This is a cartel stronghold. And they've had to evacuate the entire town and all this.

stuff and we had no problems we hung out there for like two days had no problem so we're like screw what everyone says next year we're going to fly into masatlan and we're going to stay on the sinaloa side and we're going to hang out we're going to hang out in senaloa it's fine everyone's tripping and we get off the plane we get the rental car and we're so excited we forgot to exchange our money so we're going down the we're going down the toll road which is the safe road that's where you're safe. And we get to a toll and we're like, damn, we don't have the pesos to pay and they won't take card or dollars. We're just like, damn, so we go off and we go to the free road, which is the dangerous road. And within 15 minutes of being on that road, this lifted white

jeep runs us off the road and two kids that must have been like 19 years old and full gear, helmets, everything, you can only see in their eyes. And they got ARs and AKs. And they got A.Rs and A.Ks across their chest. And I'm like, I'm like, when I started this, whatever, like good afternoon and they just stares at me cold. And I'm like, shit, this is not good. And then two plainclothes guys come out.

One's got like a Glock on his hip and the other one's got an AR across his chest. And the one with the AR across his chest walks up to Ronnie's window. He's driving and the other guy comes to my window. And the dude's like, he speaks perfect English. He's like, do you guys speak Spanish or should we just do this in English? And I was like, well, if you speak English,

and might as well just make it easy for everyone because I speak Spanish, but it's not great. And he was just like, what are you doing here? You can't be here. And we're like our hotels right there in Concordia. And he's like, no, you're still always from Concordia. You can't be. What are you doing here? And then the other guy who I think was really in charge comes up to me.

and he keeps telling me that I work for the government. He's like, you work for the government. You work for the government. And I'm like, no, no, I'm a tourist. And he, like, wouldn't let it go. And then they went through our whole car. They met us unlock our phone, show them our text messages, our camera rolls, pulled out our cameras, looked at our photos on our cameras,

make sure we didn't take any pictures of them or their spots or whatever, any information. And then finally, like, after they realized, like, okay, they're telling the truth. They're looking for snakes. They're just idiots. They kind of chilled out. So that was like 20, that was like 20 minutes of heavy interrogation and all that. And like, and then they chill out and they start laughing and joking a little bit. And we're like, okay, cool. We're going to get out of this one. Yeah. And then like, they're like, you get off this road. And we don't want to see you guys on this road again. And I was like, well, we don't have any pace.

We can't play the toll road. And the big boss is like, give me a. hundred dollars in u.s so we give him that and he gives us a thousand pesos which is like a rip rip off but we're not going to argue he's like he's all don't come back on this road we're like all right see you guys later wow so so then the next morning we go into a little town right on the right on the border of sinoloan and durango and we start flipping rocks and we're like oh this feels good this is beautiful habitat and this truck pulls up like 50, 100 yards from us and we're like, okay, that's weird.

And then all of a sudden we see the guys and they got big assault rifles and just pop, pop, right over our heads. Oh. That ain't good. We should leave. And we started leaving quickly and they didn't keep shooting. So we were like, okay,

that's what they wanted. They wanted us to leave. So we're cool. And then we drove out and we saw their like brand new Ford Raptor all lifted and the four dudes just sitting there. making sure we left, like, on the only road out of this town. And they're just, like, watched us. And we're like, that was terrifying.

So cool. That's two cartel encounters in 24 hours. Sweet. Right. And then, uh, oh, man. And then instead of this is, I'm just admitting how stupid we are. I don't know. Maybe I should get my self-credit.

Say we have big balls or something. I don't know. It's pretty stupid. So in, in order to look for a web eye, you have to go deep into cartel country. Like, there's no, there's no options. That's it. Right.

And conditions were bad for flipping. It's hot, no rain, no clouds. So we're like, we have to cruise, which is a no-no. They tell you don't drive a night in Mexico, but like, we had to do it. Like, we're there. We're going for it. Yeah. So the third night, we cruise.

We have a fun night. Second third night. I don't know which one. And we cruise and it's fun. we find like 15 snakes, no web, I but we're like, cool, you know, snakes are moving on the road. Yeah. So we go, we just take the free road.

We're like, we'll get back on the toll road before where those guys told us we can't be. You know? They told us we can't be here. So we're going to take the free road down the mountain and we'll get on like five miles before. They definitely seem like characters that would appreciate a technicality.

Yeah. Yeah. So we're like, going down and all of a sudden like I'm kind of tired it's like midnight 1231 whatever and Ronnie starts driving like kind of erratic and fast and I'm like weird and I was like bro chill like you're gonna fly us off this mountain and then we get to the total he's like I didn't want to scare you or say anything but as soon as we passed through El Palmito a car shot out and started tailing us and I didn't want to go he's like I didn't want to go through anything and

And I was like, okay, understandable. Like, cool. Next time, just tell me. I'd rather know. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to freak out. I'm just going to what. So then we go back up the next night. We find a web eye crossing the road, which is amazing.

We can talk about that leader, but amazing. Great experience. We go back through El Palmito, go down the mountain. No issues. We're like, okay, it was, maybe Ronnie was tripping. Like, maybe they weren't falling us. It was just whatever. The last night, we're like, okay, we got one more night, let's hit it hard.

We cruise till like 1 a.m. And we find some maculosis, the Durango Rock Rattlesnake. And it's a great night. We're just like, cool, that was fun. We got a web eye. We win the trip. So we go down the road again, third time. Third time's a charm.

This time, I'm pretty sure the lookouts were like, they radio, you know, they radio. They have kids that were looking out. And they said that car is coming through again. It's our third time going through Espanito. And this time, they came for us hard because Ronnie was driving so crazy. I thought we were going to die. I thought we were just going around turns, like almost hitting the guardrail. And this big cartel truck, Jeep, whatever, I don't know if it's the same about it.

They were catching us. And we were going like 70, 70 down a mountain. You should be going 30. Oh, go. And then. And we're getting to the last little town before the toll road. And we're in our heads, we're like, they're not going to follow us on the toll road. The military has presence there and stuff.

Like, we'll just, we'll get to the toll road. We're good to go. So we're hauling ass for when he goes around this corner, almost kills us. And I'm like, if they took that corner like us, they're going to flip off this mountain. Right. So we go around and then we go around the next corner. I'm like, okay, I don't see them anywhere. I think you lost them.

And I don't know how because they were so close. And we come around the corner and someone had put a huge bull skull with horns like 18 inches up right in the middle of our lane and we hit it. Oh no. It gets stuck under our car. And I'm like, please don't, please don't pierce the oil pan. Please don't pierce the hose. Please don't pop a tire. Like we got like a mile till the toll road.

And it's the most awful, horrifying sound as we go through this little town just. and Ronnie's like, I don't know what to do. I was like, keep going, keep going. I was like, dude, if they, if they catch us at this point, like, we're done. They're disappearing us. Like, it's over. And I don't think they stopped in my head. The only thing that could have happened is they hit the guardrail, crashed, because they

were coming hard, but finally the horns broke. We made it to the toll road. We kept hauling ass. We almost got in two headons with semis that were passing. semis and we were like we were like we're never coming back to Sinaloa until all this cartel shit's over. Oh my gosh that's crazy. It was wild. Well we're glad you made it to the toll road. Yeah, me too. Oh, that's yeah that's nuts with the skull. Yeah, we were like what's I mean there's nobody's driving that road. No nobody like they had to try to radio ahead and be like

you put something in the road to some kids or something, you know, because it was just so random. Oh, man. That's nuts. Yeah. Well, the Web Eye was worth it? Yeah. Yeah. It was worth it. It's, I mean, to be among the few people that have seen those alive and like, I mean, few people that have seen them dead or alive, but the very few that have seen them alive feels pretty. good and I mean I don't know if the snakes necessarily rare but definitely rare rarely seen and definitely difficult difficult habitat like hiking and flipping is almost unaccessible completely and like obviously the cartels there and it's raining all the time there and just terrible conditions the road's terrible so I mean it was worth it it was a mission it was scary but I mean it was it was worth it. I mean, whatever. I get some ego points, I guess. I don't know.

The funny part, sorry, the story is way too long, but the funny part is we take the rental car back. We're dropping it off at the airport. And the one dude's like inspecting and he's like looking under it. And he's like, calls another dude over. And he's like, look, look, look. And I'm like, no, no, they're going to see damage from that stupid bull skull. Whatever. And the other guy like, barely. looks and he's like it's fine and then the guy signs and I was like oh thank god thank you yeah that's awesome man yeah it's uh it's nice to get away from scot-free with the rental company too yeah i know how that goes yeah i i bumped into a bus in costa rica like in my whole you know it was late night raining hard and i went to go around this bus it was just parked in the middle of the road you know and i go around it and I took it a little too close and like kind of, you know, hit the side of the rental into it and hear the scrapes. Like, oh, no. And then my mom's like trying to clean it off and like highlights it like, look here, you know. And we're just sweating bullets when we go to the rental company. And the

guy like takes a lap around. He's like, you're good. Take off. Oh, nice. Out of there. Yeah, you're like, sign the paper and bounce. Right. Oh, that's cool. So how many new forms did you knock off this last couple years as far as your Mountain Kings go? New forms. Geez, I mean, we got the March here. We got the Toto Santos. We got the WebI.

I think last time I had talked to you, I had just gone to Chihuahua. for the first time and got the obelikai for the real knob for the first time. I mean, yeah, as far as Mountain Kings, like, that's it. But those were like, after we started going to Mexico and whatever,

we were just like, the first one, we're like, we need to knock out martyres. And then that happened. That took a few trips. And then we're like, okay, it's time to get, like, serious with this Toto Santos thing. Like, I've been going back and forth

through the government for two years. Like, what do I? I got to do to make this happen. So we made that happen. And then WebI was just kind of one of those things we said. We always were like, we need to do that. That would be badass. And then we're just like, it's kind of like you talk about it, but you don't do it.

And then we had a buddy who was like, let's go to Durango. And where he wanted to go was super close to where WebI were. And like after going there, we're like, we could do this. Like, we can make this happen. Like, we're going back. Yeah. So those three. and then I think I saw some new milk snakes in the Midwest, so it's cool.

Nice. Well, yeah, talk about that, true. That's kind of a herper's mecca in a lot of ways. Like, at the right time of year, you can see so many snakes, right? Yeah, I probably would have seen a lot more if I would have just been humble and stayed in Kansas. But I wanted to go to Nebraska. I was stubborn. I was like, I want, I want to see pale milk snakes. I'm going to Nebraska. Like, I don't care if Kansas is easy. So that, um, that my cousin, um, who I grew up with,

he was like basically like, Ray, we were raised like brothers. He moved out to Iowa after we graduated high school. And I like, I've been telling him for like 15 years. Yeah, I'm going to come visit. Yeah, I'll fly to Iowa. Yeah, I'll come. Whatever. And then, and then he came out. I don't know last year or whatever and he's like you got to come you keep saying you're going to come I was like all right I'm going to come I'll even buy my plane ticket while you're here so I bought a ticket he picked me up and he's like what do you want to do I was like honestly I want to go look for snakes and he was like he's like let's go it'll be like weird kids you know around catching horn lizards on the res like I'm in and he went and he drove me and fed me and showed me around

his area took me to northeastern kansas all the way to western nebraska and he flipped drachs with me and it was a champ and i mean we we got lucky we went to we went to kansas for like an hour 45 minutes we flipped two milks a thousand ringnecks uh some other stuff i don't know a garter snake some rat snakes whatever it's cool i was like dang this place is crazy like it's rad but I was like, and then we drove to Nebraska, got a hotel, woke up the next morning. It was like misty kind of pissing rain, like 56, 57 degrees. And I was like, well, they're milk snakes. They don't care.

Like, whatever. Let's go flip. Yeah. So we're like flipping around and not finding the greatest rock, but I'm like, I know this habitat's right. Like, it's got to be right. And then I flip one big rock and there's three baby pale milks and a baby hawk. nose and I was just like what the hell it just happened right now like are you getting me right yeah yeah I got a love a flip like that that's probably the the coolest flip I've had in my herping

just far yeah that's that's pretty awesome yeah and and stuff and yeah and then that trip kind of just ended with we were just like driving further in in Nebraska and I saw a billboard with fallen pieces and I was like let's go check it out and we flipped one more pale milk under one of those boards and then and then flipped all day and did not see another snake for the entire day like we had all the pale milks banged out by like 10 30 a.m. 11 a.m. Not a single snake until dark and I was just like I guess Nebraska is hard. I don't know. Right. Well you got your challenge that you're looking for right. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I like that, you know, and you're like, this is, I don't want to take the easier out. I want the hard route. That's good stuff. Yeah, I tend to choose that quite often.

Sounds like it from, yeah, the last three, four stories. You're choosing some tough roads there. That's good stuff. Yeah. Nice. So what was the web I like, man? It looks like kind of closest to a Mex max max kind of presentation. I mean, I guess the base, yeah, being like that kind of gunmetal gray, but then the saddles are like a rich clay red. It's different. And then like, it's just different. Like the head's almost, I mean, granted, I haven't held a mex max or a greer eye in my hands. So I can't tell.

But this one seems like the head is like almost like a mix. Like it's different from both. It's kind of like an Arizona Mountain King or a knob, if you will, but kind of not. So, but I mean, it's, it's beautiful. It's different. It's not Martyr beautiful, but, like, being what it is, it's beautiful. And it's like, it's great. It's like a gunmetal gray, jet black, and then like a deep, rich red clay, clay colored reddish.

It's, it's pretty cool. I mean, I'm sure you guys saw the pictures that we posted, and it looks like the picture. Yeah. Do you think it's doing sort of habitat utilization and things? Is it similar to the other Mountain Kings? Or do you think they're doing different things? Does the habitat look substantially different? The habitat is, I don't want to swear too much, but it's like a mind, like a mind game. It doesn't feel right. Like it feels like you're still in the tropical deciduous forest, you know, like the TdF, like that you would be looking for milk snakes in and green rats. And clearly you are, because we were finding green rats up there where we found the web by. So, but we were like,

okay, there are pine trees scattered here, but it's still so tropical. Like, what the hell is this? And like, we're at, we're at 7,000 feet, 8,000 feet. And there's, it's still tropical. We're like, mountain kings here does not make sense. But I mean, there they are. yeah that's wild man yeah that's crazy yeah it really is and it like never stops raining there it's like sunny dump rain like horrendous fog where you can't see your hand if you hold it out like driving in that fog was one of like the scariest things because there's huge landslides too like when that video comes out which it will which is gonna be cool because that'll be the first ever webby video which is becoming a theme for my channel doing the first videos of things, which is cool.

But yeah, you'll see some of the boulders and landslides and stuff that are there. And you could come around to turn. And so we were, you'll see in the video. You can't see the front of the car because the fog. It was, it's just a weird place. And like I feel like they shouldn't be there, but they are. Very cool. That's wild.

As a continuation of the theme from, when we had you on two and a half years ago, I fully really appreciate that the trend continues, man, that you, more than any other content creators out there, really appreciate sort of everything that you see. And, you know, even the posting of the geophis, the cat-eyed snakes, large-nosed earth snake,

never heard of that. There you go. You got one past me. Got one in the net, man. Like, that's, you know, something I really appreciate. and that you give that the time and content. Just wanted to give you that praise again. Appreciate it.

Continuation from before. Yeah, that's cool stuff. Yeah, I appreciate it. I mean, snakes are cool. I mean, even if they're not the main target, you know, snakes are cool and a lifer is always exciting. And something you didn't expect to see, like the geophis, like super cool.

Like, you're going to laugh in that video because some people are probably like, oh, that's a geophis. We're like, what is this? my god like i've never even seen anything like this and ronnie was like i'm not picking it up what if it's venomous yeah man that's awesome it seems like have you shifted to prioritize in photography a little bit more i mean you're taking sort of the scenic shots of some of that stuff yeah i used to kind of like i still am to an extent not patient and i like am kind of of this belief of if the snake is freaking out for like 10 minutes,

it's kind of jacked up to just keep messing with it and keep holding it down and fighting it. So like in the past, I was like, whatever, get a field guide, move on. And I was just like, I was like, I could do better. Like, I could, I could buy a bowl and get them to calm down under the bowl. And like I have like $6,000 with a camera gear. Like, why am I taking a 30 second field shot when I can get some aesthetics?

and because my favorite photos when I look on Instagram or whatever I'm like I love when it shows a little bit of the habitat in the background you know you got the snake and the scenery and I was like I could do that too I got the gear like I seem to be patient then I learned if you just don't try to do everything holding the snake down with your hands your warm hands you put it under a nice dark bowl or something they actually chill out within like 90 seconds and you can get some shots yeah that's cool well and too when you're finding things like web eye and toto sus and santos uh mountain kings then yeah you're going to want to get some good vouchers some good you know it's that representation of their habitat all that kind of stuff you want to voucher that and you know document it for for others to see you know where they're living those are things that'll go into books literally right yeah yeah only to have them do that i mean that's the truth yeah 100% And if, I mean, if the web eye photo does go into a book, I'd be stoked or, you know, like, yeah. And I mean, I'm sure there's lots of totos out there.

There's not, I haven't seen one with two snakes from the same rock like ours. Right. But I mean, like, if people want to use it or, you know, use it for an article or something, like, they feel free. Reach out, hit me up. Like, I would be honored to represent that and stoked to have my name as part of, you know, contribution to the understanding those. animals more. Right. Have you ever considered writing stuff up for like a Hurt magazine or anything like that? Or like even maybe a scientific publication type thing where you could just, hey, you know, this is a big deal scientifically as well.

You know, we want to have this in the literature kind of kind of thing. I mean, Bob Hansen, I'm sure, has he reached out to you? And if he hasn't yet, then I'm sure he eventually will about that web eye because that's certainly a P. and Jerry Sam and Zalai. he hasn't um i'm sure word is going to work its way to him if it hasn't yet um but i mean yeah i would i would love to write stuff i mean i'm not uh i don't know what's say i know how to write you know i wrote a i wrote a i wrote a master's thesis and got a little praise for that from my advisor and stuff so i know how to write educational style and yeah all that i just i look ghetto but I got a little bit of education.

Yeah, I mean, and really to, well, I got a note that I'd been sitting on for probably 10 years or 15 years, and I finally published that in Herp Review, Herptological Review. That's the name. But, you know, it was just like something I could have done then, but, you know, I sat on it. Finally got it published. It's kind of a cool thing just to have it done. And it was quick. I mean, it's like only a few paragraphs long, you know, for things like, hey, we found this here.

You know, here's a picture of it. Yeah. That's cool. I would like to do stuff like that. I kind of being new in the hobby and not like super connected, I kind of don't even know how to start that stuff. I think the first, I mean, my name is going to be in a book soon. I don't know if I'm allowed to spoil it, but there's a new.

San Diego field guide being written right now by I'm sure you know who the updated version and I'm helping I'm helping him with some of the indigenous stuff so that's cool. Nice. So like I don't know. I would love to do that personally. I would love to create a book eventually like a photo book with some of like the narratives and stories like behind finding the snakes and like maybe publishing that like kind of a different approach, you know, not so much, like the how you find it, scientific,

here's the, here's the ventral count and blah, blah, blah, just kind of the, the story behind it. We got pulled over by the cartel and kept going. Yeah, yeah, we raced them down the middle. Yeah, what made that, what led to that photo you're looking at, you know? Yeah. What, let's talk about, like, maybe, I know it's a lot of people like to gate keep, but like, let's put out there, what were the conditions like? and is that good, is that bad? Did we get lucky?

Like, throw out some questions, like make people think, get people stoked, like maybe some stuff like that in the future. Yeah, that's really cool. We've talked about that as well, Rob and I and some of our buddies. And, like, it would be really cool to have our favorite photo or our favorite find and write the story behind finding it and putting that in with our best shot of the animal. and, you know, just even just for ourselves, not necessarily for anybody else, but like, you know, I read Stocking the Plum Serpent by Bruce Means, and he's just telling stories about finding snakes.

And there's some, I mean, he starts out, you know, starts out with, like, getting bit by an Eastern Diamondback and having to crawl basically to his car and then having to lift up his feet to work the pedals, you know, because he's like his nervous system is failing or something, you know, kind of crazy. So like, you know, and you're just reading it like, you know, on the edge of your seat, basically. It's so cool. So I don't know. I can't get enough of that stuff. I keep trying to talk, you know, some of my, you know, old school buddies into writing books of their adventures because once they pass on, you know, those stories are kind of lost to to a good experience. Yeah. I'd love to see those in writing. And yeah, I'd encourage you to follow through with that and write down some of your adventures and include some of your photography. That'd be really cool. I'm going to do that's like the stuff I would want to read. You know, if there was books and articles and whatever, even online articles, like, I would eat that stuff up. Like, in Brian Hubbs Mountain King book, like my favorite thing was some of those stories about him going to Arizona or San Bernardino Mountains. Like, that was my favorite part.

So, yeah, I'm definitely going to have to get my butt in gear and test, test the waters, you know, and see if people want to read that stuff. right yeah i think there's a huge appetite for it and i mean so it it is sort of the spectrum right of the instagram photo through to the podcast through to youtube where you're giving more a visualization of what it actually entails you know and i i do think that's a great part of what your channel does is that man there is no amount of likes that your web eye photo could get that actually do justice to what it takes right yeah and like whatever i mean i don't you're not in it for the likes. Yeah.

No, I get it, but it's just like, you know, people see the photo. You're going to inspire people that are going to, that don't have it. You know, don't, you know what I mean? It seems to just seeing it there, it's almost like it trivializes it, but it, I still appreciate. It's just making sure, trying to educate folks that have the right perspective to say, just because I see that photo and it looks simple, doesn't mean that it was. Yeah, and that's, that's another message, like, I'd like to kind of get across to people because people do think that.

And like, people think like, oh, these guys did it. It was just Blaine and Ronnie. They're nobody. They did it. I can do it. Or like, they did it. It's not dangerous. And like, a lot of the times when we tell people like, oh, it's actually really hard or it is actually dangerous, they think we're lying.

We're gatekeeping. We just want to keep them out of there. And like, this last trip, like, really opened our eyes. And we're like, we don't want anyone going over there because. you might not come back. Like, it's, it was, it was pretty terrifying. Like, we think we could give suggestions on ways you could look for WebI and be safer than us. And, like, but at the end of the day, like, you're deep in cartel country to road cruise them.

So, like, you're never safe, but definitely not driving down the mountain through Sinaloa is, like, 10 times safer than what the hell we did. that's great well what's what's next what are you targeting for your next adventure if you can share that i don't honestly i don't even know i want to um we i was obviously because we found the web i we were talking with the herb mx guys you know they're the only other ones to find living ones. There's some people I've talked to that have said they found him and seen them, but I'm just going by verifiable records with photos. I'm not bashing anyone.

Like, if you have, amazing. Like, hell yes, I'm stoked for you. But all the data I share, I'm not trying to discredit anyone. I'm just going by scientifically backed records with photos and the data. So anyone listening, I'm not bashing on you if you found them. Sweet. Cool. I'm only stating ours is the fourth ever living because verifiable records.

That's all. Right. So we talked to them and they were like, well, it seems like you guys are down to get out there and look for some king snakes. Like maybe we can talk next monsoon season and like see what you guys are interested in and go look for some of these weird Mexican localities that nobody's doing and just kind of see what's going to pop up there. So we might take we might take a little. five-day week trip somewhere next year we're not super sure we've bounced a couple states off of each other ronnie and i of where we would want to go and like what could be there and maybe they could integrate or not like there's an there's an area somewhere where i think

greer i mex max max alterna and i can't remember another one meet i'd have to look at my notes but they all could potentially meet in this one area. We're like, well, there could be some weird stuff happening here. And one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, X guys was telling me, he's like, they got to meet somewhere in this general area. We were like, that'd be cool. Right.

So, I mean, yeah. As of now, that's it. I got a, I got to do my best to have the money to do this stuff, though, because I went kind of crazy this year and I'm feeling it a little bit now. I know the feeling. Yeah. Right. That's a whole other part of this, right? Is the sacrificing commitment, again, that it's not as easy as it looks.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just, I mean, I know, like I said, I look ghetto and I don't look like it, but I'm just a school teacher. Like, I'm just a middle school math teacher. Like, under all this stuff, I'm just like a nerd. Like, a nerd that teaches math and likes to find snakes, you know. That's awesome. And we, as we all know, you know, teaching.

teachers are way overpaid anyway. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, I'm rolling in it, so I should be fine. Right. Just like research scientists. Yeah, comparable. Yeah.

That's good work, though. What about, so it seems like you relatively recently went down to Arizona and had pretty good success, man. What did that look like? Not probably quite as adventurous, but still turned up some cool snakes. Yeah, so originally the plan was, you know, we go to Sinaloa, we looked for a web eye. We thought we wouldn't find one, and we'd have to plan again for that next year, but I don't think we're going to go back next year. And then we come back, we regrouped for a couple weeks, and we do five days. We drive over to Sonora, Chihuahua, like we had the last couple years.

And we kind of do that again, try to knock off a few more. more things we've wanted to see. Like we really want to see that little black bandit snake. It's kind of obscure. They're becoming more and more, you know, common with people taking trips over there to a eastern Sonora. And, um, but we just want to see it because it's cool,

you know, it's obscure. And even though like 16 to 20 have been found now, it's still pretty cool, stuff like that. And it's fun. We love the air. It's beautiful.

So we were going to do that. And then we get back and Ronnie calls me and he's, He's like, dude, I got a new manager and they won't approve my time off since I just got back from a trip. And I was like, well, I don't want to go by myself. I don't want to go by myself. I'll send it. Like, I'm stupid. I've sent it to Mexico by myself. Many times. But I was like, I was like, man, that's like 18 hours of driving without relief. I got to pay for all the gas myself. I put it out there if anyone wanted to go. nobody wanted to go and I was just like and I get it it was like a week before I was going so people got jobs and kids and lives

and right whatever but I was like I'll put it out there someone's going to jump on it and no one did and I was just like shit that sucks I wanted to go to Sonora I was like well I'm not going to go spend 1,200 bucks on gas

and hotels whatever by myself like I'm not I'm not going to do it I was willing to spend five or six but I'm not going down this road Yeah. Because like I literally just got back from the Sinaloa trip, super expensive. Then I took my kids for a week to New Orleans. That was super expensive because my kids wanted everything and anything.

I was like, I don't, I don't even, I don't even think I have 1200 bucks in my name right now. So no. And that was way too many details for this to go to Arizona. But anyways, my friend Ryan's like, well, I'll meet you in southeast or, you know, southern Arizona. to south of Tucson and let's run it for three days. And I was like, all right, cool, I could swing that. That'll be cool. I'll sleep in the car and, you know, eat sandwiches and hot dogs out of the back of my car. I can do that. So ran out there, met up with my buddy Ryan and kind of, he set a goal where he wanted to see a Willard eye in three different mountain ranges. So I was like, yeah,

I'll help. Like, cool. And so we did that. We did Madeira, which is very, Rita's. We got one there. And then we did Patagonia's. Got one there. And then we saved easiest, uh, Wachucas for last. And we got, yeah, we got like four, four over there. Because they're just, it's like finding a snake. Yeah, that's the easy one, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's like, yeah, the Rita's in Patagonas especially, man, that's, uh, you're doing some work. That was cool. I mean, for rattlesnakes, I was putting in work to help the homie beat his goal. And I I told him, I was like, just so you know when I'm hiking and flipping, whatever, I'm looking for Mountain Kings. But I will, I will stumble across rattlesnakes because that's what happens when you look for Mountain Kings.

Right. We found, we found a lot of rattlesnakes. Do you see any Mountain Kings? We did, actually. We got one. We went to the Wachukas. It was hot. We hiked a club in the morning.

It got too hot. Couldn't do anything. Then we waited until like 6 p.m. 630, almost seven, and we did one more hike, got a couple clubs, two Willard Ice, so we're like, cool. Brian met his goal. Now we can just go road cruise and chill, and we rode cruised. And the first snake was the Wachuka Mountain King.

So we were like, sweet. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it was good. It's fun trip. I mean, it's probably the last time I do Southern Arizona for a while, just because, I don't know. It's just not really. my thing, but I'm not going to lie.

I had a good time, and there's really cool stuff to see. So, like, I would encourage people that haven't been, like, go, experience that. It's fun. It's a good time. There's easy. If you want to see Willard Eye and Claude Rye to watch you because they're super easy, just respect the place, you know, try to put the rocks and logs back and be a good person because they get hammered.

Right. Yeah, that's definitely something we like to promote on the show. is ethical herping and, you know, just being cool about the landscape and nature. And what good behavior looks like, really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, I get it. Sometimes you flip a rock that was too big or you can't put it back just right, but just do your best.

We're humans. All we can do is our best, you know? Just try. We all blow it. We all blow it here and there. Right. Yeah, the most unethical herpers are bears. And they're flipping rocks and logs.

They don't replace them. And then they're eating all the herps they find. So, jerks. Yeah. We've seen that, seen that and had that thought process of like, who would come up here, come all this way? Like, you know, like the way that we just did and not put a rock back and then we're like, oh, it was actually a bear. Yeah. That's funny.

Yeah, it makes you feel a little better about the herpers if you make that realization. Yeah, for sure. I guess just, and we've hit on it a little bit, but what does bad behavior look like? Bad behavior versus good behavior, right? So the things that you see, and I think part of it, man, is being out where you are and being interested in Mountain Kings, you're probably, you see a lot of the worst of it, but just sort of, you know, as a platform to give your message on it. I mean, the part that, like, blows my mind is, like, people, like a lot of people want to go to these spots. and they want to hit them all the time, but then they don't respect them. And it's like, you want to keep going there, but you're ruining your chances of seeing

Mountain Kings. Like, what are you doing? Like, just sit back, chill. Like, take your time. Like, I know you guys want to see Mountain Kings. I know they're beautiful. But like, come on, it's, it's Mount Laguna. Like, you're going to see them.

They're everywhere. Like, go, go have lunch, chill out, wait until it starts cooling. down, give yourself an hour, you don't need all day, flip for an hour, hour, hour, and you're going to see four to ten, like, just wait for the right window and put the rocks back. Like, it's not that hard. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess that's my, just, just, like, do your best. Like, be, be a good person, do your best to put stuff back. Yeah, absolutely. We're the, I don't know, it just seemed like this year, based on your videos and stuff, And I know there's a bit of a lag.

You can talk about that if you want to, the lag between when you're doing stuff and when you're putting it out. And if that's a conscious choice to try and mitigate, maybe people just copying what you're doing or not. But were the Zanata late this year up by you? No. They were very early. I'll say they were super early. They were about a month early. We had no snow.

There was no snowpack. It never stuck. It never held a couple. Did you have a pretty mild winter as well? Yeah. Super, super mild, super dry.

I thought we weren't even going to find Mountain King. So I was like this year's going to be a bust. But I mean, they turned up. But like, yeah, the video thing and the photos on Instagram, like,

I don't care. Like, my message is do you. You're stoked. I get it. You found a Mountain King. You want to put it out there. You're stoked.

like do you that's cool people will bash you people are going to talk trash there's going to be the guys in your inbox being like well the pros and oh geez don't post in season blah like whatever like you do you just do your best don't we need to be hammering the people that are jacking up the rocks that are taking all the snakes out of the piles right you know that are that are ruining the habit those are the people we should be not the people posting a picture because they're stoked, you know, 19, 20 year old kid, 60 year old dude, I don't care. You're stoked. We're excited, you know, like, like whatever.

Like, we need to be hammering, like, catching people flipping the rocks and jacking him up, like, hey, let's have a conversation or maybe you need a headlock. I don't know. Like, whatever. But, like, I don't, I don't care. Like, post when you want to post. We're all adults. Like, we all get it.

There's a book, Mountain Kings for Dummies that Brian Hubbs wrote. Like, you can't tell me. Any post is telling anyone to do anything that's not published or common knowledge. Everyone knows when April hits go to the mountains. Every kid is flying to the mountains as soon as April 1st hits. We know this. Like, just be respectful. And let's start calling out the people that are jacking up Habitat,

not the kids stoked posting their photos. Yeah, totally fair. How is the channel evolved since we last talked to you? It seems a little bit different. How has it changed from your perspective? Yeah, sorry. I just went on a rant. I don't even know if I answered your last question.

But yeah, I consciously kind of delay everything. I'll come back to this new question. So I delay the videos a little bit, and I stack them when they get in the spring. I'll try to, like, if two days are amazing, I'll try to make two or three videos and stack them. So I got time when it's bad. You know, like right now is bad. If I'm not in Arizona or Mexico and monsoons, like, July, August are just terrible.

You don't see anything in California. If we don't get a rain here, a monsoonle rain, you see nothing. Like, it sucks. Yeah. You could. There's places you could, but I'm almost 40 years old. I'm not trying to go hike a canyon for seven hours to maybe get a mountain king snake in July. You know, like, I'm sorry, I'm not doing it.

But, yeah. But anyways, yeah, so like, I stack videos for. that and then I delay the Mountain King ones. I usually save them for summer. So that way the hype's kind of died down and maybe people are more stoked to like, oh yeah, it was fun finding Mountain Kings and they can have nostalgia or whatever. But I don't even know how the channel's grown in two years. I feel like it's getting better. I was able to like have people sign up for memberships now by meeting a follower, subscriber requirement and maybe like hours watched or something.

So that was cool. So it's nothing. I'm not making money or anything, but it's cool. Like I can now do like special videos for people that sign up for like a $3 monthly fee, which is nothing. And I'll release all the really cool videos a week before they come out for those people and even try to do a couple exclusive just for them. So, but I mean, it's slowly growing.

And I mean, it's not, I do it because I love, like making videos i always have i did it when i rode bmx um i do it now because i enjoy it um i like going back and watching my own videos that sounds kind of lame but like some of the watching the trips just like brings back the memories and it's it's cool after a couple years have gone by so i love it and it's growing and i don't care if it does if if if it does sweet i'm the one thing i can brag about is it's unlike any other channel you're ever going to see that's for sure Right. Yeah, I think that's the best part of posting videos is reliving those adventures and those times, you know, and you get a, my memory is not the best. Like, as far as, you know, names of people and things like that, but I can remember certain experiences like they happened yesterday, you know, like you just don't forget some of those interactions with cool animals. And to have that on video, even just, you know, enhances that because you can go back and watch it. it means a lot more to you because you actually witnessed it.

And, you know, video often doesn't really convey the real moment, you know. So and the feelings you have and all that good stuff that goes along with seeing the animal. So, yeah, I think a lot of times, you know, the videos I put up are more for me than anybody else. I don't care if anybody watches them. I just want to relive those moments sometimes. Yeah, totally. And that's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But it is nice to, you know, to share that experience and kind of show, you know, how things can be done and show the proper way to do things, you know, that's all, you know, in your videos. That's part of the benefit of them as well. So, yeah, keep up the good work, man. Thank you. I try. Yeah. And it is neat, too. There has to be some level of feeling associated with having a subscriber. that are actually paying money and saying, hey, I'm, um, is, even if marginally I'm invested in what you're doing, I think it's cool. Yeah. It is cool.

I mean, it's, it's cool because then like, I mean, I think there's maybe like three of them right now, which is nothing. But I mean, like, I think I've offered it for like two months. So I was just like, all right, people are stoked on the channel. They want to see videos early. Like, they're pumped. Like, you know, I appreciate it. Like, it means a lot to me.

And obviously, like, it's not changing my financial. security or anything, but like it does mean something to me. And like, maybe eventually it will help us take trips and do even cooler videos that we can't afford right now. You know, like, if that happens, I'd be not opposed to it. Right. That would be nice to, I mean, I keep thinking, you know, some of these guys that started really early on and they're making money from their channels, like how cool would that be to basically get paid to her, you know? That's pretty sweet. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure there's a couple of guys that are getting pain to hurt pretty much.

Right, right. Yeah, it's getting harder these days, though, for sure. Yeah, so many people want to do it, you know, like, you'll see little kids. Like, what do you want to be a job? YouTuber? Like, oh, okay. Right. Yeah, you probably run into that a lot being a teacher. Yeah, totally. So how much, you certainly have the adventurous spirit with a lot of this stuff, and a lot of it obviously just is being reactive between you or Ronnie. But how much are you planning your trips extensively? Are you trying to really narrow down specific spots?

Are you studying topographic maps? Are you really digging into it, or is it more of a feel within the habitat where you're saying, okay, I know generally I want to be here and then I want to feel what feels right? It's a mix of both. Ronnie's got a lot of knowledge from, like, he was raised doing this. His dad's a herper, and he brought him up, like, reading all the Hurt magazines and teaching him, like, look at all these species. Like, wouldn't it be amazing to find? So Ronnie knew about all these.

Like, he was telling me about being, like, a 12-year-old kid or whatever when, you know, he learned about Web-I, and he's like, one day I want to do that. And, of course, everyone's, like, yeah, right kid, whatever. But yeah, so he's got a ton of knowledge, and he's really good at finding Mountain Kings. He kind of showed me the ropes, and I built off of that. So that helps. But, and then, like, I'm the one who, like, dives in to, like, you know, the data and the papers that are out there and whatever, the information I can find and the habitat and where should we go and what's the elevation?

I kind of do that. Right. Then we just feed off each other and go for it. It's kind of, so it's a mix. That's cool. It's nice to have a partner in crime to, you know, help manage those and plan those trips out and look, you know, you know, four eyes are better than two. A lot of times to find more stuff. Yeah, Ronnie, he helps look.

That's for sure. I think I think I'm so OCD, maybe I don't let him help. Like I do I buy all the plane tickets. I rent the car. I do the hotels. Like I don't know. I just, I play trip dad. Yeah.

I don't know. He doesn't seem to mind. So we kind of just, we can just roll with it. Well, you're in good company. I think Rob and myself for the same way. It's like just love planning the trip. It's a lot of fun that way. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. It's good stuff. Until you got to tell them how much they owe you. Yeah. Yeah, that's a bit tough. Still navigating how to work that. Well, while we're in that planning space, when you're planning a trip,

do you account for lunar cycles? Do you think the moon matters for final reptiles? Oh, man, this question. I go back and forth on this stupid question so much and hanging out with Ronnie for, I mean, four years now. Wow. It seems, it feels like longer. It feels like we've been friends.

forever, but it's only been four years. It's weird to think. It's weird to think that I've only been herping for this is my fifth year doing this. It's, it feels like a lifetime with how much I've been able to do. Well, yeah, he's, he's, when I first started, I was like, ah, it don't matter. Just keep, keep pounding it. Keep pounding the pavement. Snakes come out. They don't care. Like, whatever. And I would see snakes under the moon. I wouldn't see snakes in perfect conditions, vice versa. And hanging out with, him more and more and just when we're cruising and we don't see anything for an hour and he's like this goddamn moon it's like in my head I'm like yeah god damn moon and it starts wearing all me and now I'm like a

believer so now I check it and whatever but at the same time like I have kids um and I go when I can you know what I mean like if I got like when we went to Baja this year terrible conditions but I had four days I'm going to Baja we got lucky we saw boa and a couple swataka like it was cool terrible conditions full moon rising at 4 p.m. like dog you know what I'm trying not to swear but yeah so like I I also go when I can go yeah you don't find anything you're not you know if you're not out looking that's for sure yeah and like we did find stuff I mean we got a boa we got a Baja rattlesnake we got three three barefoot geckos so like stuff was out but it was

It was a grind. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, the barefoot geckos, that's one that I'd love to see at some point. I hear they're a little easier to find in Mexico than Southern California. I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely way easier. I don't really look here. You're not targeting them, yeah.

No, and I never really looked in Baja. Like, I always was like, I want to see them. but we road crews way too fast to see them and we really we really learned we really learned that this trip because Ronnie and I were just like oh we saw that one gecko in whatever 2023 or we never see them like what the hell like they're supposed to be easier in Baja and then like this this trip because we weren't seeing snakes we were like was that a gecko and we'd stop and run back and it was and Ronnie and I had like this epiphany where we're like dude we've probably seen like 20 geckos and we go.

was that a gecko and just keep going so right yeah and we and we drive in baha we're stupid we go like 60 70 miles an hour like to road crews which is don't if kids kids kids if you're listening go like 45 i don't know well that road is interesting right it certainly seems like it from your videos yeah i mean it's it allows you to all last if you want but there are crazy semis and stuff too So, but I mean, we're just trying to cover ground. We're king snake guys and they don't sit in the road. You know, they're going straight across the road. And when we're down there, we're looking for rat snakes and they don't really sit in the road.

Like, they're not slow like boa. So we're just trying to catch them as they cross. Yeah. Hey, you've got to do what works for you, right? Yeah. And what you're targeting. Yeah. Well, this is awesome, man.

I mean, even more epic than you alluded to. I appreciate you. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate you guys for having me. This is fun, and it's cool to talk about stuff that I really wouldn't get to say out loud to people. You know, it's just in my head, so it's cool. Right. Well, you got any, I guess maybe we already asked this, but, you know, any big, like, what's your ideal trip, or is there a place you really want?

to go and you're just kind of saving up for it and waiting to get there yeah there's a lot of places i want to go in mexico um i would like i would like to go to durango again i'd like to get greer eye checked off i know it's not it's kind of weird to think i've done web eye before grerey but i mean when when you target one you're not going to find the other augs so i'd like to do that i'd maybe like to go see some mex max max um uh ruth Ruth Venn's Mountain King would be cool. Maybe some Mexican alterna in Durango, like northern Durango would be cool.

I've seen pictures and those look cool. I'm not a huge alterna guy, but I saw some pictures and I was like, all right, like, I'm not going to go to West Texas and stay up until 4 in the morning, but I'll go road cruise in Mexico. Like, yeah, but, well, yeah, there's a couple trips.

I'm not going to, that are, lined up that I'm not going to spoil because I don't want to I don't want to jinx it if you will and I just rather I'd rather have a little bit of shock factor but sure it'll be cool yeah yeah more just general ideations of where you where you're looking to hit in the future but yeah that's that sounds like a good list man yeah we're gonna we're gonna try some we're gonna try some interesting stuff Hopefully if fall allows this fall, if not I might have to wait. But if conditions look good, we might send a couple little trips in fall.

Very cool. All right. Well, yeah, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing your great stories with us. And where can people see your amazing photographs? Remind them what your handle is on Instagram or YouTube. Oh, yeah. On YouTube, it's Mazetti's Fine Snakes. Just my last name is and Fine Snakes.

And then my Instagram handle is, oh man, at Baja underscore Blaine, I think. I think there's an underscore. You could just look at my name. Blaine Mazetti, it should pop up and you might see some stuff you haven't seen before. Definitely, yeah. I know I have. That's very cool. Do you still get out much with your daughters?

They still like it, this is the question. Do they still want to go out? They like snakes and they can see their little rosy boa enclosures behind me. I bought them rosy boas and they like them. They'll go road cruising maybe like two, three times a year just here locally. Yeah. Yeah. If we don't see, if we don't see a rosy in like two hours, they're like, dad, we need to go home. Yeah. Not not as hardcore then as you.

No. When they were little, when they were little, they were like, when I first started, my older one was seven and my little one was five. And they wanted to see a mountain king so bad. Yeah. That I was like, I was like, I've never seen a five-year-old hike like this. Like, how is, like, why does this kid care? And then after they got a Mount King, they were like, oh, road crews. Yeah, they got their target and they're good. Yeah, exactly.

That's tricky with kids, especially the, you know, I don't know, I guess I wouldn't say especially girls. But yeah, I guess all my kids kind of phased out once they got close to teenage years, you know. It's, yeah, interest shift. But they'll still go out with me once in a while. Yeah. Yeah, same. I mean, mine are all the other right there. I got a 12 year old and a 10 year old. So they're right there. To those fun teenage years. Good luck, man. I'm very lucky. I have I have cool, super chill kids. Nice.

They're getting old enough where they can stay home and I can go cruise around the res for 30 minutes and stuff. And then as they get older, I can extend that, you know? Right. And they're cool. They'll be like, dad, you're pace. the house, go road crews. They recognize it in you. Yeah. Dad needs your road crews. Get him out of here. Like in spring, they're like, dad, just go flip your boards on the hill.

It's like five minutes away. We're fine. Right. Yeah. And I'm like, are you guys sure you're okay to be home by yourself? And they're like, dad, we're like, we're fine. Yeah. That's awesome.

Well, speak of which, Rob got to go on a little trip with his daughter dropping her off at school and did you get out and hurt much? Did you find anything cool? So the weird bit. So Oak Creek is obviously, and when you're in northern Arizona, that's a great place to be. But they had some fires up there in late, over the late summer, or I'm sorry, late spring and early summer. And accordingly, they closed access to Oak Creek and all the all the stuff that's in that area it was a five grand find to be within a hundred feet of the water and ostensibly that's too because of you know loose vegged ed trees those sorts of things discoloration of the water associated with leech in the um you know i being a skeptic i have to

assume some of it is just sort of you know we can tell you know and so we will um and i think there's something of that to it but um so yeah my wife and i got up and some of that habitat got it into some stuff um close much closer to flagstaff that was uh good time out didn't really it was all uh all the squamate stuff was lizards and that's you know as you know i i'm into boutique lizards in terms of herping so uh nothing that fell into that category um no snakes but uh was great to be out was great to be in arizona in the low 70s you know that's something of a surprise. It's a beautiful area, too.

The landscape was fantastic up there. But yeah, gave it a go, but it was where then I was able to go. It was substantially hotter. It was dry. It's an area I actually think at the right time of year could turn up. I still, Blaine, need to find the northern,

well, below the Grand Canyon, Pyro. So that's still wanting. And that certainly felt like an area, you know, when it had water flowing. Where I was able to go was ephemeral and dry. Save a couple stagnant pools and I got the clear impression, oh, this could turn out of Pyro in May, early June, something like that. So I got to try and make that work in Oak Creek itself would

probably be a great place to do that if you could go there without, you know, losing an arm and a leg. I've heard about people finding them in that, Jen. area so you've been up there to look for him or what's that you went and turned up that form of pyro up that that way right earlier in the year or end elapsie this hurts me to say but me personally no i didn't flip jack shit i i i i i'm adventure you found yeah Aaron and Ryan both flipped the pyro and i found a freaking serb like i said i'm looking for mount kings i find the damn crotes and they so i've seen them yes found no we know how he does his list now yeah the list that doesn't exist is is very specific but i like it oh don't if we i'll go another hour if we get into all this

i'm going to start hurting people's feelings well give us a little taste anyway Yeah. All right. If, for example, if you're counting lifers, you've got to find the snake. I'm sorry. You got to be either you got to be like you and the homie flipping together and one of you flips it. That's fine if the other guy does. If you're in your little group.

But if like I flip it and you run into me and when I'm taking a picture or something like that's not a lifer. If we're road cruising and I held on to a snake because I wanted to take pictures and you take can I see it? Like, that doesn't count. Like, you got to find it yourself. That's within, when you're road cruising, it's got to be your car. I don't care if you got six dudes in the car. You can all claim it. You've got to be in that car. The other cars don't count. They don't get to help you. When you're flipping, you've got to be within, yo, I got one to count, you know, like, whatever. Same with hiking and, and all that. And if you got 30 dudes covering a hillside and you bag everything, up and meet at the end. I don't know if I count it. Like, I don't know. Like, there's got to be a little bit

of pride and like, I did this, you know, like, yeah, I want to flip, I want to flip the snake. I want to cruise the snake. I want to hike the snake. Like, I don't, I don't want to someone to open a little cloth bag and be like, yo, check out this. And be like, I'm not even going to take pictures of that. Like, cool. Like, sweet. I didn't do it. I think we're aligned on this stuff, man. Yeah. Well, And that was, yeah, that's the challenge too when you're in like, well, for example, I was driving home from, uh, southeastern Arizona and, and heard that everybody's finding thorns scrub hook-nose snakes down on Ruby. So I went down there to take a look myself and there's just a line of cars, you know, there's, you know, 20 other herpers on the road. And I mean, that, that's kind of a tricky situation because you might be, you know, a 30 seconds behind another vehicle and they spot it and you're right there with us. them, but yeah, you don't get accounted because it wasn't in, you know, your headlights.

And, you know, there were some cool finds down there, but, like, somebody found a nice tiger, but I'm just like, no, I'll take a voucher shot, but I'm not going to sit in photograph it because it's not my find, you know? Yeah. I don't want to, like, say, hey, let me take my time with the snake when, you know, it's there, and that was the crazy part is I just passed that area, you know, 15 seconds before they found it. And then came back, you know, right to that area, right as they see it on the road. I'm like, you know, I just missed it. But, you know, that is, it's how it goes, you know. If, if for any listeners out there, if you want to avoid this and you have anyuevos,

there's this place called Sonora, you can go down there. And you can, you can cruise Thornscrub Hooknose and not see another car all night. And if you do, it might be the cartel. But you're not going to see many cars. So, and if you're scared of that, there's this guy named Ian who runs expeditions now to Sonora. He's doing two a monsoon season. I don't work for him and I'm not advertising for him. But if you're scared and you got money, you can pay Ian and he's got guys that know the air and you can see a lot of cool stuff.

So yeah, just saying, just saying. No, I agree. Well, I guess that brings up another question. If you're on a tour, do you count as a lifer? Because it's kind of the same thing, right? You got 12 guys in a van and you're spread out over the countryside and you're radioing each other. Or even just paying someone, right? Because you'll go to places, right?

And you'll meet up with your local buddies or, you know, have been there to you. How do you know? They didn't just like let one go along the trail. Hey, look, guys. There's one right here. I mean, I would probably never do a tour unless it was like absolutely necessary. like I heard, I don't know if it's true, but I heard like the Serenam stuff is, it's absolutely necessary. Maybe if you want to go somewhere crazy, like Yemen or Afghanistan or something, you probably need a guide.

I don't know, but I wouldn't do a tour and I wouldn't, I wouldn't count them unless I was in the car. Like I said, if I'm in the car, I count it. If the other car does, you can take pictures because you're on a tour. Like, that's cool, but I just think label it, you know, hey, the other car found. this and we got to see it. I think there's a difference between life or found and seen. Yeah, and it's like kind of the same thing. Like if you're all hiking together, even as 12 of you, if you're close enough, I'm going

to give it to you. Yeah. You're putting, you're putting in work. You're not miles apart. You're not, you're not just following somebody waiting for them to find it. Yeah, you've got to be, you got to be putting an effort. Yeah, if you're all looking and one of the, you're 12, I mean, 12 people, sounds terrible to me, but if that's how you do it, like, cool, but you got to be, you got to be

working together, you know, common goal and stuff. You can't be like, we're going to this canyon, you go to that one, we'll meet back later, and we're going to count everything. Like, I don't know. Right. That's, that's the way I see it. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, I like that. How about any up-and-coming or, like, Herb channels you've been paying attention to that are finding cool stuff. Anything got you excited on what you've been seeing on social media or YouTube or anything? I mean, anytime the HRPMX guys post or add to their website, I'm always super excited. Yeah.

If kids, if you're going to start a YouTube channel, just please wear a GoPro because I want to see the flip clips. I'm sorry. If I love watching Hurt videos. if I'm not seeing flip clips in spring videos, I'm like, nope, skip. Where's the flip clips? So, I guess. And like, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say this, but like, don't try to teach me like you're a scientist. Just let me live through vicariously through your trip. I don't need to know the damn ventral scale count.

Why it has the rostral scale? Like, just maybe some people do so I should shut up. But, like, for me, like, I just want to get stoked. I want to watch you herb and I want to see you find cool stuff. And I want to see you be excited about it. Yeah. So, yeah. There's a kid, like, I haven't watched a lot of his videos, but I watched his little Kansas trip.

I think his channel is called, like, Ohio herping or something. Super young looking kid. I've talked to him. I think maybe we'll have him and his buddy he herps with on the show. Well, yeah, like, I was, I'm like, I like that kid. He's getting after it. He's getting in his crappy old car and driving across the country and breaking down and fixing it and making stuff happen and flipping milks and going to Arizona and kicking ass. So, like, I like it.

Obviously, I think anyone who watches her videos watches Noah, you can't avoid that. Right. And he sprinkles in some good ones, you know. Like, I'm not a huge East Coast guy, but. Right. Or, like, whatever. whatever south. I don't know what Georgia is considered the south.

Like, I'm not huge into that, but he does, he has the perfect format. I think he does it just right. Enough talking, enough, enough showing the animals.

I think he's got that down. So I'll give him that. But aside from those two guys, I don't know. I think the guys that get me stoked or the guys that go to Mexico and post what they find, you know, Pat, Pat's cool.

He does cool stuff. Pat May. Uh-huh. Yeah. He's got some awesome. Kyle. Kyle Vargas, like every photo he posts, I love. I know he's mostly posting like rattlesnakes, but love, love his work. His photography is great. Like, his trips are always good. Rob, who, I mean, those three go together a lot, too. Rob doesn't post, but I know he does cool stuff.

We talk, so he tells me what he's doing, gets me excited. Just people doing stuff that not everyone's doing. You know, when I see something that's, like, oh, cool, I didn't even think about doing that or, oh, wow, people are doing that. Then I'm like, oh, that's what's up. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, good, good stuff.

All right. Well, any other things you want to add? Any other cool stuff you've seen going on? I'm trying to think I got, I ordered that book. I really enjoyed listening to Phil and Nipper on Venom Exchange Radio talking to Ron Whitaker. Ron Whitaker. My brain is not work with names.

Ron Whitaker was, yeah, it was a great interview. And I went ahead and ordered his book, Snakes, Drugs, and Rock and Roller. So I'm excited to peruse through that one and hear some of his stories. Pretty crazy. He read one of his stories on the podcast. So that was really cool. Good job, guys. Nice.

Looking forward to herping with you guys in a couple weeks as well. So, yeah. Sweet. All right. Well, if nothing else want to say, we'll go ahead and thank Eric and Owen and the NPR team. And thank you guys for listening. And we'll catch you next time for Reptile Fight Club.