Reptile Fight Club - Haranguing the Herpers w/ Austin Bohannon

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob have amother installment of Haranguing the Herpers w/ Austin BohannonFollow 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. Another Marine Herper edition. Tonight we've got Austin Bowhanging on. Did I pronounce that right? Yes, sir. Yeah, that's it. We're welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to chat some herping with you.

So I appreciate you spending your time here with us tonight and looking forward to it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah. I guess, I don't know, I guess we just did record. So it feels like we're, I don't know, if I have my. much to talk about since we recorded last, but you got anything big news, anything, Rob? No, I guess we can put a timestamp on it today is the day that the preview for the reptile Tiger King equivalent or whatever was released.

So everyone is expressing feelings around that, which is probably valid. I don't know. I have mixed feelings. it almost certainly won't be good for our interests and things. Nevertheless, I think it probably won't. It's unlikely to have that sort of cultural singularity that we saw with Tiger King because that was front-end COVID. I think that was one of one.

There's enough content. Nobody's going to really watch it like they were with Tiger King. Overwhelming torrents of content. And people even more are, see, I think it's, the social media thing, the TikTokification of things, where they're seeing the content that they want to see. So, sure, to the extent that this will fit into a box of people who don't like snakes or think people who like snakes are weird or whatever, sure, they'll see it.

But I don't think it'll become, it'll get the ubiquity of that singular moment, right? Right. Even that wasn't the same way a couple weeks in. It was like the March, you know, fourth week of March 2020, was that its mat is apex, right? Yeah. And then even even that two weeks later wasn't the same deal. Right. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how things go,

see what laws are enacted because of these guys. But yeah, they pick some interesting things for the preview. I mean, the first guy talking about how he longs to be with his king cobra or whatever. Yeah, I don't know who that is. Yeah,

a little sketchy. Or at least I don't recognize them. Yeah. But of course, that's, but of course, that's what they would put in there, right? Right. So if in some ways what we heard on the preview is the worst stuff that's there, then...

Yeah. And, I mean, I guess the other aspect of this, right, relative to, you know, Ron had a post about the dinosaurs seeing the meteor coming to, is, which I appreciate it, is the idea that, like, we already have no enemies to the hobby. and they already don't like it and they're already coming for us and there are so to the extent that most of the stuff that's being talked about is stuff from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, you know that that's a lot of the characters and crew, right?

It's the same folks from stolen world and Lizard King and stuff like that. The people that don't share our interests already have access to that content. Maybe not the same visual presentation, but they definitely already have it. some news.

Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. And, yeah, I think you're right. I think it's going to be much to do about nothing. But we'll see. Fingers crossed. Yeah. I just, yeah, I don't think it's going to be another Tiger King. I think you're right there too.

So, yep, much better programming to watch, I'm sure. But, yeah. The Kimberly program. This is your opportunity. Exactly. There we go. I've watched it several times. But yeah, really good stuff, aside from the obvious things.

But, yeah. Yeah. So let's get to Austin. He doesn't even. All right. I haven't even heard of that. I'm kind of just stuck in a hole out here in West Texas by choice. I didn't even know there was anything coming out.

Yeah, it sounds like a good position to be in. Yeah, man. Yeah. It's not the worst. So what are you doing out there? Yeah. So, um, I work for Texas Parks and Wildlife.

I'm a senior biologist in the Transpicus region. So I kind of cover on the private land side of stuff, cover from Sanderson to Midland to El Paso, all of Big Band. Nice. That's my area. Kind of head nuts. Yeah. Pronghorn surveys, Big Horn surveys, Muleer surveys, anything, any private landowner needs help with. That's kind of what we do.

A lot of habitat work. helping landowners get millions of dollars for habitat restoration. So we do a lot of that. Interesting. Dealing with bears. Everything is different. Yeah. What kind of habitat restoration type project are there?

A lot of it's grassland restoration. So just degraded grasslands out in the west. Out towards like Hudspith, Culberston County. we've done tens of thousands of acres of habitat restoration there just because pronghorn grass and birds there's a bunch of hog noses out there yeah and uh you've seen him as the saga no i know where they are but they're kind of just on where they're pretty pretty well known is tied to a soil type and that soil type is almost completely within private land and I don't have access to, I've never asked to go out there.

But, yeah, I mean, I know that there's a decent population, but no, I've never seen one. Yeah. Okay. So grasslands, is that, is that just like diversion of water or what's degrading or is it agriculture? No, it's mainly creosote. It's a type of bush. it secretes toxins through its roots that suppress the growth of grasses around the plant, and you just get seas of it.

Like, I don't know if you drove maybe like from Fort Stockton down to alpine, like all the green brush that's knee high, that's creosope brush. And there's a chemical that works really well that we drop from the, from airplanes. We don't. We pay people to do it. But yeah, it's pretty cost-effective. and you can cover lots of, lots of ground for much cheaper than like grubbing or something like that. So we do, we do a lot of that.

Interesting. Okay. That's cool. Yeah. So, I mean, is it, is it pretty, pretty effective? I mean, are you seeing kind of? Yeah. Yeah, super effective.

I mean, we're doing, it runs about $58 an acre. So usually we're doing two, three thousand acres at a time. Some more. There was a ranch last year. that did, there was two ranches. I think they did 12,000 acres apiece. So 24,000 acres wiped out at a, at the one pound rate. It's a tiny little bitty pellet.

It kind of looks like probably half the size of an eraser on the back of a pencil. And they drop it out of an airplane or out of a helicopter. They spread it out and it's rain activated. And it stays active in the soil for like up to seven years. And so it's rain based. Sometimes we don't get much rain here. but it's nice because this chemical you can put it out. And even if it doesn't rain this year, if it rains next year, it'll still work.

But yeah, it's usually that first year after the rain, it's 90 day. It goes from it goes from shrubland to grassland and usually two to five years. Wow, that's impressive. Very cool. It's rare to find those kind of simple solutions like that, you know, that actually work and don't take out some unintended target. Yeah. parks finding the money for it. Right. Yeah. And what's the incentive for the landowners? Usually the grants that we write, they're getting 50% reimbursement. So they get essentially double the acreage of what they could pay for themselves.

And I mean, they can graze it. So it's a cattle benefit. Most of them are in it for the wildlife, though. They want to see their native grassland birds come back. They want to see pronghorn. Pronghorn's a big one. There was a pretty big dive from pronghorn back in 2011, and we're still just kind of crawling our way back population-wise. So usually every landowner I work with wants to see more prongorn. And that's one of the best ways to do it. Are you just kind of letting nature take its course and let them rebound naturally, or are you bringing in from like Wyoming and other places? So usually where we bring them in from is North Texas and the panhandle,

but there hasn't been a surplus population. I started in this job in 2021, and we haven't done a translocation since then. I think 20, I might have my years wrong, but I think it was 2019, was the last one. There's a unit over there in Marathon where everybody cruises for hog noses on 385. If you look at the right side of the road, that's one of our restoration areas, and there's pronghorn everywhere. Like, that's one of the best success stories. I think, so we're flying, we fly that unit.

for our yearly pronghorn survey next Monday. So I don't know what the estimate is yet, but we're seeing about 50% fond crop. And I think the estimates, about 600 to 650 was last year. So this year should put us higher. One of the densest areas in the state for pronghorn. Wow.

Very cool. Yeah. And what's kind of increased did you see there? I mean, so it was pretty dead before the restoration. And then afterwards it's, yeah. Yeah. I think they dropped about 80. They're going to begin with 60 to 80.

I don't remember the exact number. But we're seeing, so that part of marathon kind of gets bimodal rainfall, which is more central Texas, like rains in the spring, rains in the fall. Out here in Alpine, just 45 miles west, we get the monsoons, so middle of summer. Marathon kind of gets all of it. Sometimes they get spring, summer, and fall. And the past four years have just been great there. And so the numbers are exploding.

Very cool. That's good. It's always good to hear those success stories. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool stuff. It's fun to be part of. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. And how are the big horn populations out there? Are they doing pretty well? Big horn's okay. Seems like their habitats a little more secure or not necessarily? Yeah, well, have you heard of the Audet? You know what Audet is? Barberry sheep from Africa.

So they compete pretty good. There's a ton of Audet, tens of thousands. And then the Audet are carrying a disease called Imobi. It's a pneumonia, and it wipes the Bighorn pretty badly. Suppresses Lamb recruitment for a while. But we did a translocation into the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, so now people can go hike Franklin Mountain State Park and see Bighorn. Okay.

That seems to be doing pretty good. We've got a good area south of Alpine. We've got the metipopulation up in the Sierra Diablo's. Last year's estimate was about 750, which is roughly half of the historic estimate of about 1,500. So we went down after MOV hit first. And it's slowly coming back up, but we're still kind of in the first years of it, trying to figure out what's going on. Right.

Yeah. That's crazy. So is that, is part of it going out and hunting Audad then and get thinning those populations? Yep. So on state land that the state owns, they're controlled. And then, but there's also a huge hunting market for Audet. And they're bringing a ton of money. And so some landowners don't want to see them gone because they say, well, I may never get a big horn tag, but I can hunt Audet now.

Right. And I've seen some huge, there's some huge ranches out here that, like, the only way that they can afford to keep the ranch in the family is odd ed hunting. So you can't, you can't tell those guys, oh, you need to go shoot all your odd ad. Right. It's a hard, it's a hard situation. And there's probably not a single right answer for it. Right. Yeah.

Man, it's so fun to go through West Texas and just see all the different animals that you can see out there. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. Elk are blowing up. There's elk everywhere. Okay. Yeah, we saw some odd ad last time I was out there hunting the cuts. We saw some run through a field or something on the other side of a fence. Yeah, north of Sanderson sometimes when you're on that big cut, you'll see them up there. Olympia Canyon up in Fort Davis.

You'll see them at night. You shine the top of the cut, and there's just a hundred eyes looking down at you. Yeah. I just got a thermal camera. I'm wondering you guys utilize those in your surveys or your work? No, we were actually, we're talking about it today, but most of the surveys are done just with just with your eyes. Yeah. During the day. Yeah, they're all during the day. Yeah.

And then we work with all the private landowners too, like in all the private landowners do all their own surveys. And people have been starting to use thermal drones to do surveys. and it's an approved method, but I haven't had a landowner use it yet, so I don't know a whole lot about it. Okay. I had an Australian friend that used it for koala surveys. They fly the drones up into the trees and find koalas. He said it was pretty effective at locating them better than staring up in a tree, you know, trying to pick them out. Yeah.

Especially with trees. Right. Yeah, I got into this mammal watching podcast, so I've been listening to that a little bit. It's, I mean, man, there's some guy on there. I think he's seen close to half the mammal species in the world. Like, his list is, I think he has the longest, you know, or the biggest list of anybody in the world. So it's kind of crazy. But it's fun to hear, you know, that kind of side of things.

You don't think about it, I guess. But it's, yeah, mammal watching and bird watching or in some ways maybe bigger than herping. Yeah. Yeah, birding, especially out here. I mean, you see a lot of birders. Oh, yeah. Coming out, buying going down a big band. Right.

And they seem to be more willing to spend money than the herpers do, you know. They always have better binoculars than I do. Right. Yeah. They were talking about the, I was listening to the gear episode, and that was what kind of prompted the purchase of the thermal camera. Yeah. In an upcoming trip, I just want to try it out, you know, see how, see how helpful it can be.

But, yeah, they swear by them, like, finding stuff and, you know, seeing stuff. But I guess it's going to have to, I'm going to have to remember to turn off my headlamp and scope around with the thermal camera once in a while to make sure I get some use of it. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, all that stuff is part of my day job. I don't, I don't do much herping or herp related stuff through parks for work. Yeah. This is, this side of it's more just, it's been a hobby forever.

Right. How did you get into that? Just kind of always been interested? I mean, I like snakes in high school and stuff. My mom hated them. Didn't really get into them that much until college, and I realized that I have free will, and I make my own money. Right.

Didn't have to worry about what mom said anymore. Yeah. Yeah, so I got into them then. I took a herpetology class here at Texas State, and that really kind of kick-started it. And then I did a study abroad down in Ecuador. Oh, cool. That was Hurt Base.

We spent about two months down there. Oh, nice. And that was about it and got back, started working with my undergrad advisor. He ended up being my master's advisor too, but in undergrad at the time. And working on dune sagebrush lizards out in the sand dunes. And that's when they were like, well, you should go down. down in the Davis Mountains. I never even heard of that.

I had, but they're like, people walk the side of the roads at night and look at the rods. I'm like, that sounds pretty stupid. And then one night I came down and Cruz Boy Scout Road and found a milk snake. And I was like, this is going to take up a lot of my time from here on out. And it has. That's a good find for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Got you hooked after that then. Yeah, ended up doing my master's on turtles. Okay. Which turtles? Rio Grande Coutre. Uh-huh.

Soomies Gorsugi. Okay. I did the reproductive study in Texas on them. Oh, very cool. Yeah. Nice. What were some of the main findings? Uh, I got the maximum clutch size.

It was either 17 or 19. Mm-hmm. I kind of found that they built follicles year round. because everywhere I was, I would catch them by hand every other week for two years. And so I just snorkeled, made myself never want to get back in the water. How were the waterways, were they pretty gross or they are right? It's all spring fed, clear, 72 degrees, as nice as it gets. That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, even through December. I found double clutching. I reported the first double clutching in the species. And that's just through recapture. I mean, how are you assessing if they were?

Through recap. There was a pool in Brackettville called Fort Clark Springs. And it's a concrete pool that they couldn't get out of. Oh, wow. And I got access to go in it. And I don't know how they laid their eggs or if they even got out to lamb. but I was able to track a handful of females and catch the same ones almost every other week.

Okay. And really get a good grasp of it. And then so I had a portable ultrasound that I would use. Okay. And whenever I would find shield eggs, we'd take them to the vet in Del Rio. They would x-ray them and then we could get the clutch size off that. Oh, cool. Yeah.

Huh. Very nice. That's what I remember. It's been a little while since I graduated almost 10 years. good. Okay. Nice. So you finished your, that was your master's or? Yes, sir. Yeah, that was my master's. And then you got the job with the, no, so, so I was a, I was a toad biologist for a little bit. There's an endangered toad over in Bastrop, a couple of Houston Toad. And so I worked for the Lost Pines Habitat Conservation Plan as one of their federally permitted internal toad biologists as their first one. And my wife and I moved out there. and it was great.

I was like, the only way I'm leaving this job is if a job opens up in Alpine. About a year later, a job opened up in Alpine. Really? Nice. So we moved out, after about a year and a half in Bastrop, we moved out here to Alpine. Okay. And I was the Brewster County biologists up until about, up until March of this year. Okay.

That was when I moved up to senior. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. Well, that sounds like you're living the dream out. there. Yeah, it's, it's pretty nice. Not very many people. It was 58 degrees when I woke up this morning. That's hard to beat. Yeah. Nice. How often do you get out herping these days? Man, it's this year not a whole lot just with the new job. And I got two kids that are two and four.

And so it's a little harder to slip away in the afternoons where they go to bed and and all that. I've just been a handful of times this year. I was averaging about 80 to 120 nights a year there for a little bit. And most of that was before I lived here. Yeah. Just a lot of driving.

Yeah. But yeah, it's, I'm going out with some buddies tonight the next three nights. And we're going to hit it pretty hard. And then next week, I imagine, is going to be pretty good. but we're flying pronghorn surveys all the week. So unless I'm puking, I want to be puking in an airplane. You kind of have to sleep pretty decent the nights before.

Right. Why do you say it's looking good for the next couple weeks? Oh, just odd weather. Super odd weather. They're saying hill country, this is a one in a thousand year set of storms. Really? We were supposed to get 12 inches at my house and we got point two. So I don't know.

I imagine it's just different. Yeah. It's not the same hot every day. Right. So it makes you intrigued to get out and go start looking for stuff. Check it out. Yeah. I ask because I'm going to try to get down there before the IHS meeting to get West Texas a couple nights before we head over to Arizona and New Mexico.

Well, don't quote me. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's going to be good. It could suck. Right, right. Yeah. Not next week, right, but the front end of the week after. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, who knows? That's one. The biggest thing I've learned about herping out here is the more I know, the less I know. Like, I don't, if anybody tells you, they got it down, I don't believe them. Yeah. There's still a lot of luck involved. I've heard of some pretty successful folks down there, and they kind of keep to themselves. So I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, you know.

I guess if everybody knew their secrets, maybe there'd be more people out and be a little more busy. So maybe it's clear to keep it to themselves. The people who live there, who live here always appreciate the people who keep to themselves. Yeah. Because it means there's less people. Right, right. Yeah, I was curious about that because my buddy Jordan said that he drove like four hours round trip to go out to a cut and it was occupied. so they just turned around and came back.

I'm like, I think if I'm driving two hours to a cut, I'm going to say, hey, do you care if I join you on the cut? You know what I mean? Well, and they absolutely will say that they do. But then what, Austin? Yeah. That they do mind? I'm sure they will say they do. It just depends on the people.

Some of the best friends I've ended up making were because I stopped and said hi. And I'm a pretty personable person. I like stopping and talking to people. even though some people hate me doing it. But yeah, some of my best friends, I've got a buddy down here from Pennsylvania that I met on a cut. Same thing. There was 50 other cuts, but I stopped and told him, hey,

I've been doing this for like 80 nights and I have no idea what I'm doing. Can you help me? And he was cool. And he had driven all the way from Pennsylvania and he let me walk with him. Right. I figure more eyes is better, right? I mean, then you're in common venture with whoever is joining you on the cut, you know, you can... It really comes down to the argument on if you find something who's going to keep it.

Yeah. I guess that's the thing is the thing. We talked about this a little bit in the context of lepidus. Right. And I think it's probably even exponentially worse with alternative. That it changes the dynamic of herping when most... at least amongst the target things are coming things are coming home if they're found

which is odd because Austin just for context it's generally not what we're doing or about although we've never found an alternative to be honest I did turn up a mating pair of pyros in Utah yeah in Utah and we left him you know so I think that speaks to kind of where our heads are out

or whatever but on a couple occasions where then we've joined up you know put into the common venture some folks that are into hyper-specific locality keeping communities, the dynamic just felt very different to our sort of normal dynamic. And I guess maybe I mentioned, hey, if I find anything, it's yours, you know? I don't know. Yeah, that's, get me in on the cut. That's the way, I mean, that's kind of the way I approached it is like if I rolled up to

somewhere where somebody already is and even if it's a buddy, like me and most of my buddies worked together a lot. Like if I catch something from somewhere, they need something. It's just going to go to them anyway, even if they weren't there. Right. But back then, the way I had thought about it was, like, I'm walking this. They were here first. Even if I see something next to them, it's going to be theirs.

Like, I'm just here to kind of try to learn because I was the new kid that knew nothing. And I still feel like I'd know nothing. But that's the way I approached it. But then there's been like, I had a buddy. Somebody asked if they could come walk the cut with them. He said, yeah, that's fine. They got 10 feet in front of him. They walked 45 yards and caught a grape in, grabbed it, hop in their car, and left.

He's like, dude, I've been walking this. It's 3 a.m. I've been walking this place since sundown. You come up, take it right in front of me. Yeah, that's not cool. So there's, I mean, there's all types of people out here. Right. That's for sure.

And not all personalities mix very well. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah, I mean, I guess that speaks to the just luck and timing that it takes to find a lot of stuff out there, I guess. You know, you just have to be looking in the right place at the right time. It took me 123 nights to find my first one. Right. Yeah, it's a common thing I've heard.

Is it, yeah. Unless you're Chris Payne shop. That dude stepped out of the car, put the battery in his flashlight, because he didn't even have batteries in his flashlight. Screwed the cap on, turned the flashlight on, and there's one in his beam. First night, first cut. No way. Like, dude, you're not invited back. That's lottery stuff right there.

You can go buy your ticket. But, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I guess that happens. I mean, yeah, people get super lucky. You know how many first time? They say it's the first timers. Like, you know how many first timers I brought out? here just to try to feed off their luck to catch one.

They never worked when they were with me. Yeah. So do you have some locality projects you're working with? How, kind of. Muskees, I've got a few from there. I've got some pandales. What else?

I got, 277s, nine miles. I've kind of condensed down to like where everything's either F1 or Wildcaught for what I have. Yeah. Just because I was getting to have a lot. Yeah. I got some black gaps. But I've also kind of been like my kids, they love snakes and they love hog noses. So I've been getting into all the different morphs of hog noses and leopard geckos and stuff.

I told myself I'd never have. Right. Kids make you do funny things, don't they? Yeah. Yeah, those and then all the different gophers, a bunch of, a lot of the rare, rare gopher snakes and pine snakes. Okay. Locality stuff, not locality, but kind of locality of those different subspecies and stuff. And then I do a lot of education through my job where I go to a lot of schools and do a lot of events.

Okay. So I keep a native collection for that. Yeah. Just one-offs of everything. Bairds, I need to get a sub-aug. Try to do all three rat snakes. Kids love seeing that there's different types of rat snakes. Hog noses.

But, yeah, that's, most of locality stuff is, my big ones, my big ones, muskies. I've got, I've got a few from there that are really nice. I just can't seem to make them make babies. What's your favorite phenotype? I guess. You say they're really nice. What do they look like? The Davis Mountain look with a lot of orange.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. That is a nice look. Are they like the stuff that Brian has for Muskees' teeth? Yeah. Brian Box. Yeah. I mean, I may be a little biased, but I think they're nicer.

A lot of orange. In that, yeah, sort of. Yeah. He's got some super nice ones. And I've got some, I have a Brian Box F1 female in my room right now. Well, that's what a natural question, right, is, are you only working with stuff at least, well, let me take half a step back even. I did want to get into, since I'll turn as one of your principal interests from a captive and even Herping perspective. What do you consider to be a locality?

Certainly all the ones you've named fit into sort of known. instances, right? But is a copulating pair in the wild? That's a locality. Is it cut a locality? Is a county a locality? Either in Alterna or in everything. That's hard. I think the way I would like to look at it is if that's a locality. That's going to differ for species because some of the flatland stuff that moves a ton. even like Desert Kings, the area that that is is going to be a lot greater for those. Alterna, I don't think they move a whole lot. I think they move some. But there's a reason you find stuff 10 miles apart and they look different. I'm seeing that with lips too.

And I've kind of proven it south of Alpine a little bit. bit with a locale, there's a small vein of limestone that runs that's surrounded by igneous everywhere. In that limestone, the leps are white. And it's eight miles long and about half a mile wide and surrounded by igneous. And everywhere around it, there's pink leaps. So in that limestone, I'm counting that as a locality. But, yeah, people count River Road as a locality. And it's, you're you're catching them from lehitas to 30 miles west of the hittis is not a pepper seal you know is not uh yeah but does anybody even catch them in lehitas or peppers pepers heel anymore right that's another question

certainly not that i know of not that i know of but there there was a publication that um desantis and Medasilva, that group published about their spatial ecology. And it looks like they move like, yeah, maybe 22 meters a day. Yeah. Yeah. And I was kind of surprised by that paper on how much they did move. Right. And they have the home rage around 37 hectares.

Yeah, which is huge. Up to 48 hectares, yeah. Which is giant for what I thought. And I wonder, so you know where they caught those? Kind of, it's kind of between, it's going towards El Paso out in that area without being too specific. I wonder how much, I know they cruised one of them on a dirt road that was in the flats. Talking to DeSantis. I wonder if those that they found were because they were already in French habitat and those snakes already

had the propensity or whatever to move a little more. I don't know. For example. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's awesome data. That's the only data like that that's ever been collected. Yeah. I wish we could do a huge study on it.

That's the question everybody always has. But you also find a gray band. Somebody finds one. Let's it go. Somebody comes back the next week, finds it again on the same cut. somebody comes back the next year and finds it again on the same cut right yeah i mean and who knows how uh in planning the transmitter in them affects their you know desire to move and find a new place or something so you know you could artificially uh manipulate that a little bit by just by

putting you might be prompting movement transmitter in yeah based on your interaction yeah um did you have something just i was just going to say one one first one friend has a kind of a pet wild lepidus that he finds under the same rock pretty much year and year. You know, it's always there kind of thing. And in the same area, you know, the, you know, 10 feet away from where he saw it last time or under the same rock a lot of times. Same with black tails. I mean, like whenever I was walking the same set of rocks every night, there would be blacktails that I would see every night. And I'd smack a mouse for him and feed.

them. Oh, nice. But, yeah. I don't know. And it's hard. And then you get different weather patterns. And so you're only studying them during different. Right.

Like a certain set of weather patterns, even if it's a year or two, that what they do, the next two or three years may be different. Oh, for sure. Yeah. They're probably highly variable based on the condition. Yeah. So back to your question, I guess what I'm considering the locality, probably five miles, those five to six mile east

Anderson cuts, I'm going to consider that one. Once you get to eight, I'm probably going to count that as a different one, even though they probably could breed there. North Sanderson is going to be different, nine miles different, three miles west, 13 miles west. I'm considering all those different. But at River Road, everybody's just calling them River Roads, even though they could be a long way away. And that's because River Roads are freaking hard to find.

And so the two that you might be able to find and pair up over 15 years, maybe the only two you ever find now. Right. Unless you spend a lot. Yeah. Do I? You think that's the function of the ban on cruising? It's reflected in a change in that. Do you think that that was a principal collecting spot

when it became illegal in the 80s? And so there was a huge focus on that area combined with the fact that now it's sort of disfavored within the community in terms of... Everybody still cruises it. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean that's not what everybody's doing on there. I mean, there's people walking cuts too,

but I usually walk the big hill a little bit. until it sucks and then I go to the Christmases and then go home. But yeah, there's a lot of people cruising it, even though it's not legal. And I'm good friends with the Game Wardens here, and they've been trying to crack down on it, writing tickets and stuff. But, yeah. What'll get you a ticket in that are you just driving slow? I mean, because people are driving the road or not really? It's kind of a, isn't it a dead end?

No, it goes all the way to Presidio. Okay. So is it just driving slow, get you caught? Driving slow, they'll watch you turn around. They'll watch you get out and get a snake. Yeah. Giant light bars. Giant light bars in 30 miles an hour is a pretty good clue.

Yeah, right? Yeah, that's, I haven't ever ridden along with them to know that for sure. But, yeah, that's. That'd be my guess. I mean, it's a ways down there. So people are, and it, one of the interesting things that sort of our lived experience from much less time than you out there is just you're trying, and you alluded to it earlier, making choices of where you're going, where you think it's going to be good,

because you're kind of stuck with it in some sense. If you go down to River Road, and that doesn't work, then like you said, it's a haulback, even to your house, let alone to go further afield any other way. Yep, it is. And that's, I mean, that you could get down there and there could be 30 other cars already there. And then you've got to make a decision. Either stay. But when you talk to the old timers that were doing it back then, they said,

oh, that's not a problem. It takes a gray man, two seconds to crawl out on the road. You can see headlights in front of you and, or tail lights in front of you and cruise one. So they didn't care at all talking to them back then when they could actually do it. Now that it's walking a lot, unless I'm really good friends with somebody, I probably don't want to be walking a cut with them. But that's just me. So walking the cuts is still legal down there.

You just have to. That's the only legal way to do it. Yeah, anywhere, right? Anywhere in West Texas? Anywhere in the state. Yeah. Yeah. Why is that?

I've always been curious about why that decision was made. I don't know. They say public safety. I wasn't around when they were making the decision. It's all I've ever known. I don't know the exact reasons. But they call it hunting from a road, from public roadway.

Same as shooting a deer off the other. road, which isn't the same, in my opinion. No. Either a good explanation or a convenient excuse. Yeah. And I could definitely see the public safety part of it. People, like, Highway 277 is now is not what it used to be. Like there's 18 wheelers flying by every three seconds.

Yeah. That's probably not a pretty safe road to do it. River Road, back to there. And only other people you see are herpers. So it may be a little safer there, but that's just, I don't know, not something. Herpers or boulders falling off if you get some rain. Yeah, that's actually when I found the first ever, those big bing geckos, the reticulatus, it had been raining and a boulder fell out into the road.

and there was a big Bingeko on the boulder that fell out. That's how I found my first one. No way. That's crazy. It was nuts. Yeah. Wow. That was,

I was with crazy weather down there and had one bigger than the car. You know, they'd come down between our, between passes when we've gone out in the afternoon, when it really started coming down. And when we came back, and we said, well,

we're glad we weren't here. Yeah. Yeah, big boulder right in the middle of the road. Yeah, That was just sitting blocking traffic, right? It's crashed into it. Yeah.

It's crazy. Yeah, that weather can be something else down there. Yeah. Yeah, they've been getting just, it's been thawdy, but our black gap got five inches the other day in a night. And last year, they got 3.4 all year. Yeah. They got five inches in a night.

So it's pretty unpassed. I was talking to our guys down there that live there. And they're like, no, you don't want to go to Black Gap right now. Right. Well, what's your experience with, like, yeah, herping and rain and in West Texas. How does that help or hinder things? Everybody always says it's like finding stuff's correlated. I bet half the gray bands I've found hasn't been anywhere tied to rain at all.

I really think it's just how many miles you put in walking. It's the biggest correlating factor. Because, I mean, I've been out on nights that are perfect textbook. They say, oh, after the rain, whatever. And he walked the same spot for four nights in a row and never see a snake. And then you go out. It hadn't rained in two months. We're in a drought.

And you can go out and there's a gray man just chilling on a rock. Right. So I, man, that's the more I've found them, the less I know about them. It feels like I still go out after rains. But there's probably just an excuse to make me get out of the house and go do it more than you're actually going to see something more. Right. When you're saying textbook perfect conditions, what are you considering textbook perfect conditions? Oh, I mean, what they what they've said is?

It depends who you ask. I've asked every person who will tell me. Yeah. I don't know what a textbook perfect condition is. But I mean, a little higher temperatures, upper 70s, day after rain. That's about as far as I get into it. Right. Okay.

Some people get in the barometric pressure and wind direction and humidity and DuPoint and paralysis by analysis. Yeah. Right. The best thing you can put some dates down on the calendar and just go do it. Yeah. Yeah. Just put in the time.

Yep. It seems like if somebody puts in 10 days down here, they find one. Mm-hmm. Not with me. Don't hit me up if you want that. But, I mean, looking at Facebook and stuff, like John Fray. you found 12 in two weeks. Wow.

Earlier this year. Yeah. Right. Across a common effort of folks. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know the details of it. I didn't know if it was him or if there was a group of people or I just know they found a bunch. A handful.

But yeah, it's really wild, right? And that's presumably further eastern stuff. Just before we get too far away from it, you had mentioned Black Gap a couple times. And a thought that I've had, and I'm curious your take on it, is that for out-of-towners like us, that the popularity of some, or success of some specific animals that have come from specific localities has led out-of-towners to think that maybe mislead them as to how easy it is to turn up an animal at a particular place. Blackcap comes to mind because, you know, it's one of, if not the most popular or most successful localities within captivity. but I know when I talked to Brian several years ago, the feedback was I think he found two or three total over a really long extended period of trying to get it done.

So we think, oh, Black Gap, that must be where you go find them because that's where within the locality community, that's what's accessible in captivity. But actually, they're not easy to turn up there. Yeah, I've got two pair of Black Gaps. They are nowhere near Wildcott because Black Gap is extremely hard.

all the Western localities are. I mean, every locality is hard. It can be because it comes down to luck. I've been like, is what it comes down to. But places like Black Gap, I would never take somebody there that wants to see a gray band. Yeah. If you want to see a Sub-Ock, yeah, for sure. Sub-Ox, Gopher Snakes, Black-Tails.

Right. But yeah, places like Black Gap, River Road, if people are wanting to see a gray band, they don't even make the list. Just because, I mean, just like you said, the people who caught those Black Gap animals spent hundreds of nights. And from what I understand, a lot of that, like the Dan Johnson stuff, didn't come from the public. Like, he was in with the landowners. So he was herping the private stuff. From what I understand, John Laster might listen to this and kick me in the teeth for being wrong. That's a risk that we're always running and we just have to accept it.

Yeah. But that's like the hypo stuff and like the crazy, all the Dan Johnson line of Black Gaps. I thought, I'm pretty sure that all came from off the road. Interesting. Yeah, and it's, it's a, it's a, black gap's one of the prettiest places in Texas, same with the river road. Like, it's, it's awesome just to be there. And that's kind of the mindset I try to tell people when we go there, like, just enjoy the mountains and the Rio and we can go swim in the river. And it's some joy being here, but don't come here expecting a great man.

Right. Go up French areas west when it's 100 degrees of midnight and, you know, just type around a bit. That's my wife about that. There was one night, I think we had just got married. We were down here on top of the big hill right at midnight. She was sick, running a fever. I left her in the car and it was 102 at midnight. When was blowing about 100 miles an hour.

I didn't know if we were going to stay married after that trip. Conduction oven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, Justin. I was, what was I going to say? Oh, while we're on it, I guess maybe your thoughts on herping public land versus private property. And you had a pretty good experience with private land and finding stuff.

And what were the conditions that you found them in? Oh, the conditions were as random as they got. Okay. So her hunting the private stuff. Because you're not tied to a cut or anything. Are you looking at like rocky cliffs or you just, yeah. It depends where I'm at. In one of the places there's no roads, I always find myself hiking to the top

and walking like the top of the rims. Right. And I found a gray band doing that. And I found lefts, black tails, hook noses, tons of snakes. right at the tops. And then one of the other places I go, there's a road up. And I think it's probably about 800 foot elevation

from the bottom to the top. And so we just get in buggies, like UTVs and drives and shine cuts, essentially. Okay. Even though it's not really cuts, it's just the road. And we found them doing that too, found everything. Got a milksnake doing it.

a few weeks ago. Okay. At the top of the mountain, which is crazy. Yeah. But yeah, I think I don't do it a ton. I don't like bothering the landowners with it mainly because they're all just buddies and I don't want to be overstepping. I think I'm at 11 nights now in five gray bands.

So my average is going down. I'm starting to suck a little more. They'll do pretty well overall relative to your starting ratio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you find it got easier after you found your first one because you kind of locked in on what you're looking for and how you're finding them? I don't know.

I found that it seems like when I find the first one, then the other ones come a little, maybe it's because you don't, you're not putting pressure. The pressure's up. Maybe you're a little more relaxed. I found, so I found my first one. after forever. And then the next night I found two. But yeah, it has gotten a little easier. Last year, I only did 16 nights and I found three gray bands.

Okay. But I'm not doing anything different. I definitely, there's nothing I can credit to be, like, why did it take me so much back then versus just a handful now. I don't know. but it's easier. And I mean, it's not like they were hidden. They're just stuck on the side of a road cut as obvious as they can get.

Right. I'm not going out like you were missing them before, right? So that's always sort of been our lived experience of when we're on these cuts and not seeing anything. And then we're seeing these bright millipedes. And it's like, well, I don't think I'm missing a three foot snake if I'm seeing that three inch millipede. Yep. And that's, I remember, I was in Langtree. and I kind of stopped and met Troy, Troy Hibbitts.

And I knew Troy a little bit because I had bought some stuff from him, but I was walking with Troy. And I'm like, dude, am I not seeing these things? Like, are they invisible? What's going on? Like, I can see the tiniest spider in the deepest crack. And he's like, can you see a night snake? I'm like, yeah, I've seen night snakes all the time.

He's like, if you're missing a night snake, you're not missing a gray band. or if you're not missing a night snake, you're not missing a gray band. Right. But just drive yourself crazy thinking about everything. And you're like, I'm not running them over in the road. People say that they're hard to see them in the road. Man, finding the snake is the hardest thing I've ever done.

I'm a big hunter also, a hunt, deer, elk, archery, all that stuff. I've killed multiple public land bulls in much less time. I got a master's degree. I got married all in less time and less effort than it took to find one of these freaking snakes. That was all downhill from there, it seems.

Yeah. Quite a few. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to agree. It's just downhill from there. Just got to find that first. The private land issue,

do you find that you find more other things as well? So you're turning out of alterna at a higher rate than you are on public land. Are you also seeing? more other reptiles. Absolutely. More of everything. More lizards, more insects. There's just more of everything.

And you still go out some nights and I haven't been skunked yet, but I've had like some two snake nights. What, Nazi and a snake of any variety? Yes. Yeah. That's usually. Blacktails are everywhere. Usually you can find a black tail pretty easy. But yeah, band of geckos, there's a little band of geckos running around everywhere.

You'll see sometimes like 5, 10 a night. And my nights are not what they used to be either. I'm more of a, let's go out until 11 o'clock and go home. Where before I was staying out until 4 or 5 a.m. every night. Right. Do you think that makes a difference? Seems like if you're going to do a West Texas trip, you might as well become nocturn. and just sleep in a hotel room during the day with the AC on because, you know, I don't know.

On our first trip, we just did both. We just hike during the day and then. Burn the candles at both ends, man. For the people coming here, definitely. Like, don't go to sleep until the sun comes up. I'm usually going to work the next day. Yeah. So I think I've got to balance that a little bit.

Right. And the pressure's off. You found them. You don't need to, you know, beat yourself up. to try to find something. Yeah, my biggest thing I want to find now is a blonde sub-arch. But I spend hardly any time where the blonde sub-archs are, so I don't beat myself up too much over it. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's an interesting area, right? Those cuts are pretty different, which is to say they're much less, they're certainly not a nine-mile north. Yeah, yeah. I don't hear many of them found on the cuts. I wouldn't think so, right? I mean, that's, so people just, yeah, they magic. Okay. Yeah, they disappear.

Fair enough. Do you think there's a relationship then in that public versus private land dichotomy that you're seeing in terms of just the abundance of everything? On our first trip, we definitely, we just wound up going to a lot of the same places, certainly not common venture, with a group that had come over from East. Texas and was held bent on putting everything with a pulse into a plastic container. Do you think that's kind of what's causing that discrepancy? I don't think it's the only cause.

I'm not the biggest fan of people who do that. I mean, you see some people who come out here and if it has a pulse, it goes home. But some of the people who have been doing that are the same guys who have been doing it since the 80s. and I don't think there's really any more of those people out there that are doing that. What there is a whole lot more of now than there ever has been is traffic. And so I'm not really for the guys doing that just personally. I keep something here and there, but I don't keep very much. But I don't think those guys, even with as much as they're keeping,

do near the damage is traffic. Traffic's there every night. Herpers are there a week out of the year. That's my opinion. I don't know if it's true. There's nothing science backed on it. But that's kind of how I see it. Yeah, sorry now.

Some of the time, I think I've come to believe that it's the proliferation of ease in accessibility to GPS that is totally destroyed some of our cruising roads, cruising roads or animal encounter roads or having implications on populations. Because it's back in the paper map days, people wouldn't have trusted 277 to get them where they were going. A random person would not have trusted that to be true. Yeah. I think

for us specifically out here, it's more tourist rather than herb-related. Like, I mean, how many nights a week is the observatory doing star parties? And then it's just lines of cars. You know how many times you go after that line of cars and there's just dead

lepidus everywhere? And then Big Ben National Park, like the attendance of Big Pan National Park is through the roof. And I remember when I first started coming down here, you could leave Alpine, drive all the way down to Tarlingua and not see another car. And now, like, there's a lot of people. going back and forth. Is that the rediscovery of the wild after COVID or more people getting out? Yep.

Yep. Social media, which isn't a bad thing. Like, I'm all for people coming out. Yeah. I'm not against it at all. It's just it does have an impact. Yeah. For sure.

Yeah. And I think, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think that impact is bigger than the collectors. Because the collectors are finding less nowadays too. Right. What locality name, or how did you define it, would you put on your private land stuff when a name would be meaningless to the folks? This is always an interesting question, right? If it's not, okay, a specific cut that has a meaning that's tied to geography or whatever.

I don't. Okay. And I don't know. Project X? That's Austin's Special Project X? I don't even have them. Yeah. Yeah, it's the landowners don't want anybody to know type deal.

It's more of, and that's the thing. Like, I don't even, I don't have the desire really to even make it a thing because I don't want somebody to trespass and go over there and ruin the relationship between me and the guy. Oh, absolutely. That's where I'm trying to figure out how, like, to me, it's a bind. So, like, yeah, I'm not going there to collect stuff. I'm not going there to collect stuff. I'm going there to have a good time with buddies and see more animals than I probably would

on the public stuff. There you go. Good on you, man. Oh, it's fun. Yeah, but it's, I mean, it's not a lucrative business. Anybody who's actually bred and sold them and all this stuff, like you're not making a living on it. It's more so just to,

The main reason I like to produce and have babies is just to see the different phenotypes without having to spend a million nights trying to catch them all. Yeah. Maybe it'll help pay for the mice that year. Right. But I still have a day job and multiple other side jobs. When you are in that space, are you doing kind of what Brian's doing, where he's selling unfeaters to people that should be sort of,

should know what the heck they're doing and can work their way around that? Are you trying to go for the market? No, I'm kind of doing the same as him. Most of my stuff, I work with Frank. Frank and John Lasseter. And like I want to have the babies and I want to see them. And then I want to give them to somebody else to deal with. Yeah.

I mean, if I had more time without kids and stuff, I would do it all. But this is kind of the best of both worlds for all of us because they get to deal with them too. Well, and honestly, the price difference probably doesn't make up for the effort and all that that goes into it. And most of the people that are going to want to get them from you either don't mind putting in that effort or would rather do it themselves. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not real good at raising baby alterna. It takes somebody with a lot of patience and a lot of time to sit there, especially if you've got a bunch of them. I'm only doing maybe like two or three clutches a year, maybe sometimes up to five.

But that's possibly up to 50 babies that you're sitting there and catching lizards and cutting little lizard skin hats off of and boiling pinkies. It's a lot. Yeah. Well, Justin works with a lot of antiregia, so he feels pain. Yeah. I'll send you some alternas. I don't need any more problematic feeders.

That's another reason for getting into the hog noses and gopher and pines is they just eat. Yeah. It's so easy. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, with that said, it's like when you have five, you might as well have 20, you know. Like if I'm sticking a leg into five of them, it's not that much more work. That's a perspective. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, that's not my perspective. I'm glad you've got that one. Yeah. Unfortunately, the snakes I like require that sometimes. So at least some of them do. Yeah. Yeah.

But it is what it is. If someone an out-of-towners was coming and wanted to find an alternative, we talked about the places you would not send them. In general, right? We talk about field herping a lot, and it's always difficult to sort of navigate. Specifics of locations. We also simultaneously have talked about locations that get published, whether it's Dallin in his Pyrrower book, talking about specific places he went a couple years ago, or it's Carl Koffel, talking about specific places 70 years ago that then became the book that promoted field herping,

all those things. And there's actually their pros and cons to those things happening. Within the locality, specific gray band context, I tend to think we can be a little more flippant with this stuff in terms of public access on known localities, because all someone has had to do is look at Brian's website and work it out, right? So you're not really saying that much. And I would assume the answer that you're going to say is going to be a lying tree or dried And something like that is probably what I would guess, but I just wanted to validate that.

Probably not Dryden. Langtree. I mean, talking to Jerry Salmon when I'm getting into it, Jerry helped me a lot. He's like, dude, Langtree is like the grocery store for Alternate. You just go there and pick one up. Here I am 60 nights later at Langtree. I'm like, Jerry, what the hell's going on? Like you said they were everywhere.

I haven't. I found copperheads. I found Langtree Leppittes. I found everything else. but one. But that being said, like, I'm at one end of the cut, and my buddy found one at the other end. There was a lot found there while I was there.

I just never found one. Right. Langtree, 277's hard. Juno's hard. Usually, if somebody's coming, I tell him Langtree. I would think so. That seems like a safest choice, all kind of with multiple considerations going into mind.

Yeah. And that's just based off of advice people have told me. I've been to every easiest spot that anybody's ever told me, and I've never found one in any of those places. The only ones I've ever found are in, like, the hardest places, just because it all comes down to luck. Well, I can get into those spots. That's, I think, the component of that as well, right?

like muskies when you're talking about that very tough but also not a place that most people are super committed to yeah and and that's and that that also brings out some of that animosity we were talking about when you're you're looking at an area and somebody comes up and starts walking with you um like a lot of those guys are because like four years ago we caught a male here and we've been hunting this cut 30, 40 nights a year trying to find a female and then somebody comes up in front of them and finds one. That's where a lot of that comes from too. But yeah, and it's, I mean, with a locality game, it's great finding one, but it also sucks because it kind of ties you to that spot. Right. And it could take years to find another one.

Right. In general, are you looking to have your collection be comprised of animals that you found yourself or are you in that context willing to you know yeah muskies get an f1 from brian something like that that solves that pair and then you move on to something different um my ultimate goal forever like a hundred years down the road is would be to have stuff just while caught that i found but i'm also probably not interested in putting in the effort that takes to make that happen And that's why I kind of have the hodgepodge that I do of stuff I've caught. Plus, F1's from Colin Smith, F1's from Brian, Frank Portillo.

He's got one of the best collections probably in the world. I get some stuff from him. And I give him stuff too. We trade a lot. He's not as known, and he likes it that way. He doesn't like people knowing about him. But yeah, we were out there. I went out in 24.

We got to wonder about with him and the dog for a bit. So that was good. Really? Yeah. Him, Stephen and Nimbus. Yeah. Stephen's got good stuff too. But yeah, it's, I don't know.

I'm not as hardcore as I used to be. Mm-hmm. And I'm not as strict as I used to be either. I do want to keep it Wildcotter F-1. places like Black Gapper River Road. I've got F2s, F3s, just because they're so hard. But yeah, and I'm not really wanting to make my collection much bigger than it is.

I've probably got about a hundred snakes total between all species, and that's enough. What other things are you keeping besides the alternative? So I've got Greerai. I've got MaxMex, I've got Leonis. My buddy Chris is actually here right now, and I'm sending all of my Leonis with him.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Just because they seem to be breeding better at lower elevation for some reason. So he's going to give them a shot for a couple of years. Yeah. I've got hog noses. Chris brought me some corn snakes. Just some stuff for the kids.

Right. Jay and I, Pichuofus, Mexican Pituofus. I've got Depi, J&I, I've got vertebrales, I've got Bimeris, some of the more rare stuff. Nice.

What else? San Diego Gophers, local gophers. I'm probably missing something, but that's what I can think of, bairds, all the native stuff too. Mine are rattlesnakes. I don't keep anything venomous because of the kids.

Yeah. Yeah. I made that agreement with my wife as well. It's more with her than for the kids. Yeah. I used to keep lepidus, and I had a really nice cage that with like a key lock on it, like an in cap from Petco. Yeah.

And I had two lepidus that I would keep together. And they did. They were awesome. And we had them for years. And they were on her dresser. Yeah. This was back when we lived in San Marcos. and I was out in Alpine, Herpin.

Yeah. Sleeping in Muske's Canyon, no service. Wake up the next morning. Tons of missed calls and texts, but I couldn't. Like, she just kept sending SOS in the text. Like, she never told me what happened. And I didn't have enough service to listen to the voicemails. Right.

Get out to service by Alpine and listen to the voicemail. And I guess my rattlesnakes had gotten out in the middle of the, the night. She woke up to rattles in the kitchen. And she called my master's advisor at 2 a.m. And he's a pretty hardcore dude. And, yeah, it wasn't the best situation. But those. That one for a little while.

Yeah, those were wild caught. So they went back to the wild that weekend. Yeah. I said, now that we have kids, I wouldn't, I'm not going to get anymore until they're old enough to know better. Right. Yeah, I lived in Germany for a couple of years. My parents watched, I had two rattlesnakes. I had a midget faded and a great basin. And they watched them while I was gone. But my mom came in and, you know, the midget faded rattlesnake never settled down. I got that one when I had a button. And this is all before I knew it was illegal. And so, you know, hopefully the statute of limitations is worn out on that. But Rob, you'll have to advise me. I believe it has. Okay. So, yeah, I was a kid, you know, in high school and my dad let me take them home from trips and stuff. And so, yeah, I brought this little button midget faded rattlesnake and had it for many years. But yeah, every time I'd come in my room, that thing would buzz and tell it, until I held still long enough that it forgot I was there. And then as soon as I moved, it would buzz again. So my mom came in my room and she was looking, you know, she heard it buzzing, but she couldn't see it in the cage. And she's looking around. and then she looks up and it's on top of the cage like five inches from her face.

And so she, of course, runs back and puts a towel under the door and calls my dad, you got to get home to put this thing away. And he's like, oh, take care of it after work. And so he came home and it was just sunning itself in the windowsill. And so he got to look and put it back in its cage. And that was the last time it escaped. I think they just forgot to put the lid back on after feeding it or something. Yeah.

These were wild caught. From Madeira. Super chill. I mean, never, you probably could have held these things. I'm not, I don't even touch them. I don't even use a hook. I don't, I don't much of that at all. But somebody probably could have, not me.

But they were as calm as you ever could imagine. And that was, they just rattled at our dog. Our dog had gone over there. And she got them with tongs and put them back in. They never struck, never, no problems. But still, what if she had woken up and stepped on it or something? Yeah. Yeah.

There's always that risk, right? Yeah. That was, when I got home from Germany, I gave him away to somebody else. And then the Great Basin would never rattle. Like, it was the opposite, you know, you couldn't get that thing to rattle. It was so calm. And then the guy I gave him to, I found that he was free handling that Great Basin. I'm just like, oh, my gosh.

That was a, I was on a date when I found that. one. And it was on this major, like, trail. And so, like, there were all sorts of people over there. And I'm like, somebody's going to kill this thing. So I better take it home. You know, that's the justification you needed to. And so I asked my date if I could borrow her sweater. And she's like, what do you need it for? I'm like, I tied off the arm and put a belt around the waist and threw it in. I made a temporary snake bag out of her sweatshirt and brought it home. I don't think she was very happy. I don't know if we went out. Not again after that.

But the snake was really cool, so it worked out. Yeah. Have you found, I love the cuts just south of you and even the ones to the west. And I think my favorite alterna are those buckskin, those alpine buckskin snakes. Have you found any alterna on the. south or west of alpine cuts? South. I got one last summer.

Does that look to it? Ish, yeah. It was, those are up there with like river road and black gap difficulty. But I live 14 miles south of alpine. And so my four-year-old's really into snake hunting. And we'll just run down there 10 minutes from the house and just one night got lucky.

It took an hour for this thing to crawl out of the cut. I just saw his head coming out of crack, coming straight down. I was like, holy crap. And so I turned my light off. He's like a long chair for that situation? Yeah. I just sat on a boulder. And I sat there and every few minutes, I was putting my light through my fingers

and just shine the tiniest bit of light. And he would come out about six inches and then go back. in and then go come out and then a car would drive by and he'd go back in and I waited for about an hour and then one of the times I shine my light and all three and a half foot of him is out and it turns out he was he didn't care about me at all he was eating a lizard it was a huge lizard it was a giant crevice spiny yeah and he was just swallowing it that's why he was going in and out and he was just It took him forever. Yeah.

He wasn't super buckskin, though. He was gray, kind of diamond saddles. Not the most attractive. Probably the least attractive one I've ever caught. But he's pretty special just from where he's... Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

And there's... There's the potential to make some, you know, who knows what's in the mix, right? It's going to take me 20 years to find a female. Well, that's my question. And the funny thing is, right, so that's... a locality that used to be, Colin Smith in particular, right, used to produce a fair few of those.

But I don't, you don't see him anymore. At least I don't see, I'm taking a step back from it. I don't see him anymore, but am I wrong about that or is that still kind of... No, you're right about that.

I mean, it's, they're so hard to find, nobody can get a pair. And I don't even know of a female. I know of one other male in, that's probably still alive, probably from 10 years ago maybe. But that's, like, I haven't even been back there to look this year because I know the effort

that it's going to take and I'm not committed in 2026, maybe 2027. So despite being a beautiful cut, that is also not a place you would recommend out of towners to go. No. Unless they're like at my house, unless it's buddies at my house, I'm like, let's just throw down here because it's 10 minutes away. But no, like, Night Snakes. It is a good place to see night snakes. One of the biggest night snakes I've ever seen was there. Yeah. Those cuts are beautiful, though. I don't think you can find nicer looking rocks to stare at. Yeah. Yeah, they're cool.

And it's, I found one milk snake there. I found one desert. king snakes. So I think it's cool. I found all three. Yeah. What's the proportion of like milk snakes to Alterna? For me personally, I found more milk snakes. Okay. I'm probably at 15 or 20 milk snakes. I think I'm only at like 13 Alterna. Okay. Then I've personally been the one laying eyes on touching it. Right, right. Not a buddy four steps to my left finding one.

those are respectable numbers still yeah yeah yeah but it's nothing compared to some of these guys some of these guys hundreds yeah always somebody with more uh i don't know what drive or yeah yeah we've got a few of those in utah where they just like have found you know hundreds of milk snakes or you know mountain kings or whatever like they just they know how to find them and they spend a lot of time looking for them. Yeah. Yeah, much more than myself, that's for sure. How about bairds out that way?

So I had always understood, we have never seen one. I understood them to not be that bad, but then when I've been asking folks, they've been like, oh, yeah, actually, I find those relatively difficult. It's probably a function of places folks are looking, but open new thoughts. Bears, rat snakes or bear mammal bears? No, no, bear's rat. There's freaking bears everywhere. Oh, yeah.

We ran into some bears as well. Yeah, with the National Park, we got into some bears. Yeah. They're here in Alpine, too. They're in my neighborhood. I'm the one everyone calls to yell at when there's a bear in their trash can. No, bear and I, where they're found, they're pretty common. But they're not found everywhere.

And that's the thing. Like up in the mountains. fairly common it's never been the thing I'm looking for but it seems like I always find them if you go look for an alterna you're going to find a baby bears that looks just like an alterna that's just how it works

yeah I don't know I'd never really had a problem finding them interesting between I know I found quite a few on 277 back in the day it's been a while since I've been to 277 um I found one on top of elephant down during the day which is the first record we were doing a big horn population survey the foot survey where we walked the top of the mountain and count sheep and there was a bairds up there one day so that was cool yeah I got to love that incidental herping while you're working.

Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. That's cool. A locality that I think was comprised of very few animals and I actually was seeing maybe issues with it and I don't know that they're even still around to some extent. But they fit into a look that I really liked. Brian had these state park cut alterna. Right on the backside of the, have you seen or seen an alternative there?

I've seen any alternate on sort of 118 as it goes through the park who comes out of the park. My first night ever herping back to when I was driving down from doing sagebrush lizard stuff. I don't know what was going on. I didn't even know anything. I didn't know Fort Davis was a town there hardly. I mean, it was there because the maps. But I was coming down 17. There wasn't a cut to stop on that there wasn't a person.

So I was like, oh, this road looks like it goes to the mountains. went and pulled off and I was walking and somebody pulled up next to me with a dead gray band that they found right next to me as I was walking the cut. People find them there. In the past recent years, I haven't heard of any. Had a buddy missed one a couple years ago. Got away from him.

But there, I mean, that was. You can get into that. Are you one of these poll guys, or are you only looking at cuts that you are confident you can get to the top of? What does that look like for you? There's only been one that I've found that I've needed a poll for. The guys who do it religiously, you don't see them walking without their poll. But the one, I've thought about this so many times as I'm walking a cut and looking way up there. I'm like, what am I going to do?

Am I going to call Stephen to come help me? I actually just bought my first poll at this last snake days when it was in the silent auction. So I'll have a poll from now on. But yeah, the one that I needed a pole for, I climbed the cut, got on the top of it. Turns out the top wasn't very flat. And so I laid on my stomach and like slid down and was just kind of. catching my feet on brush as I slid down and looked over the edge of the cut and grabbed it. That was real dumb.

I wouldn't advise it. Would not recommend? No. That's what I did. I wish I had a bowl. I do ask folks, because not that it's coming from someplace other than having looked at it and understood it as a very, popular place over the long period of time and just it seems like

it would have happened. Are you aware of anyone? It seems like you'd die if you fell off 9 mile, particularly the east side. You know, if anyone's... Yeah. You're asking if anybody's ever falling off? One of my buddies fell off a couple years ago.

Oh, man. 13 miles west of Sanderson from almost the top. He got banged up pretty good. He He landed in a cedar tree, so that helped. One of my other buddies jumped off of a cut, hit the ground towards ACL. Just for fun or what was that?

He was up there getting a cut. He was up there getting a cut. And he thought, like, just depth perception at night. He didn't think he was that high and he was a lot higher than he thought he was. Oh, go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he may listen to this and text me and not be happy.

happy I'm sharing that. Well, you didn't name him, right? I didn't name him, but he's going to know. Yeah. Nobody else will. It's all right. Yeah. Those are the only two I know of.

If I would have fallen off head first off that one, that would have been bad. Yeah. Yeah, that's the only two I know. Like, I mean, there's some huge cuts. Like, look at the Christmas mountain cuts. Those are giant. There's no, there's no messing with those. Yeah, those are the only two.

Those are the only two I know. Yeah, fair enough. Well, just based on the beer cans, you know, that always messes with the depth perception as well. That's... Yeah. Yeah. Well, fair enough. Is there anything from our standard question?

Well, this will come from the standard questions. Do you think the moon makes a difference, Austin? I don't know. I think minor split about 50-50. I know at least two or three of them have been on full moons. Like, if I feel like I want to go out looking and it's a full moon, I'm still going to go. I think at 100% does not matter for rattlesnakes. They don't care.

Yeah. If you're looking for atrocks. Right. That doesn't matter. You can't help but find those guys. guys. Yeah. It does seem like when there's a super bright moon, you find less animals.

I haven't. I don't know. Because you definitely still find stuff in the full moon. So like it's not like it's not worth going out, but it may be just give, have the expectation that you may not see as much. Right. And then you always like, there's the famous story of people, oh, I'm at the hotel anyway. I'm going to go drive Juno Road and they find a. find one back when they could cruise.

Yeah. They'd find one stretched out in the middle of Juneau in a full moon. I guess maybe the question is if you're planning a trip out there and you were driving across the country, would you plan to go on a non-moonlit night? Um, probably. Yeah. I mean, back to elk hunting. I plan my elk hunting trips around a full moon.

Not being there during a full moon. Yeah, if I'm if I'm traveling a long way, I'd probably account for it. Okay. Just because on average, you're going to see a couple more maybe on moonless nights. Right, right. And if I've got one trip to do it, I'd probably take that into consideration. Yeah. Yeah.

So when you're herping the cuts, do you generally kind of make a quick? quick pass, are you studying every nook and cranny? Are you taking your time? How do you hurt the cuts? This is one of the things that I've overanalyzed to every point that you can imagine. Yeah. I used to walk. I used to walk slow and look in every crack. And then I met Troy Hibbitts and walked with Troy Hibbitts and he's a marathon runner and he moves and he moves. And he moves. And then I meet up with another buddy who catches a lot and he just walks normal and he finds a bunch and I don't rush. I don't rush past it.

Right. The only thing that I kind of do that others don't as much is I usually walk the cuts, cut once and leave. Okay. I don't have, I mean, like right now that's what I do because I don't, there's nothing out there that I really need to pair up. Right, right. Like if I've got something from this one spot that I want to pair up from this one spot, then that's all I'm going to walk.

Right. But now it's, so almost all of my gray bands have come from the first pass, where I've walked it down, like found it, come back, or walked down, come back and find it on the way back. Okay. I think there's only been two or three that have been on multiple passes. But even on cuts, like these ones I was putting this group together for, like I was walking it every night, all night, and then not seeing anything. Then I'm running, my kids are throwing a fit one night. It takes a while to get them to bed.

I'm running late. Yeah. Get out there 30 minutes. after what I'd been getting out, and there's one on the first pass. I've walked this cut so much. Yeah. So I don't know. That's one thing I do is I just get tired of looking at rocks.

Right. But. Especially the same rocks. Yeah. Yeah. One of them I did find, though, because I had walked it so much and seen the rocks so much. I just saw one little squiggly line from behind a rock. And that was on the first pass, too.

Right. And so I get a little closer. I'm like, that's a tail. Get a little closer. I'm like, that's a freaking alternative. Just the tail sticking out. Uh-huh. Yeah.

So that's what I usually do. And now, herping with people are kind of just wanting to show them around. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. What kind of light are you using for?

Phoenix. Pretty much everything, Phoenix. I'm kind of a Phoenix fan boy. Yeah. I run, all my stuff runs 18650 batteries because I bought everything with that before they came out with the new like 2300 or whatever. Yeah. If I was starting over, I'd just, I would have gone with the bigger one. But I got a bag full of 18650s that I run through.

Oh, Parks and Wildlife got me a light. They got us all lights. I can't remember the name of it. It's just a little black tactical. It's like tack light or something. And that thing's, I really like that. I'm doing a lot. What do you think about the concept of like having, you know,

too bright of light is going to scare stuff off? Like they'll be more, they'll notice it more versus a dimmer light. Definitely one of those things that I've overanalyzed. And I've tried it every single way. Where I'm stuck at now is I use the, as bright light as my battery can sustain for the whole night. Okay. Usually running on high.

I do think when I was putting that group together, I feel like my light was making them not come down. That's just how I felt. I don't know. But if they're there, I want to see them. Right, right. So, yeah, I shine as bright as I can now. Okay.

Hit the cut once, go to the next one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You got to find that rhythm that works for you and, you know, that increases your enjoyment of it. Yeah, and I've got buddies who run bright lights too, and they are the type of people who like walking the cut, same one all night. And they'll be walking it all night.

And at 2 a.m. one pops out of crack. Right. And they've been doing it. And then you talk to some guys that they think the light makes them come out because they're like, oh, I like being second in line. Like, if you're hunting with buddies, like, you go first because they've seen where people have shine their light on the cut. And then as soon as they move their light away, one comes shooting out of a crack. Right. So.

That's cool. What's the toughest thing you found that you've targeted and found? Is it been Altena or is there another one that tops that? I found every snake in West Texas looking for Altona before I found an alterno. Okay. That's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life is finally. What's your favorite non-Alternah to find? I like milks.

I like Subox. I like bards. I really like everything. There's not much that I don't like to see. Right. Yeah, I mean, any snakes makes it for a good night. Yeah. I like cuckolotta.

Man, I've had so many cuckulata. I need to see one of those. We saw one, but it had been hit by a car. Really? Those are cool snakes. Yeah, I found a bunch of those. And it just depends. Like I found a melanistic black tail one night.

Oh, cool. That was really cool. And I saw him multiple nights in a row. Those eastern black tails are gorgeous. Yeah. They're really beautiful snakes. Yeah. I've only seen one.

But yeah, that's been a, that was a good find. I was very happy about that. Yeah. It was on the wrong side of the fence. So I reached over the fence with my hook and, and hooked it and brought it over to the right side of the fence. And in the process, I got the barbed wire in my bicep, like, talking through. So I had to.

It was totally worth it for my life. Yeah. It was much easier when Phil and I went. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Should shoulder season? I don't know.

Yeah. Did you guys see a bunch, Rob? You saw a few of them? I think so. Certainly a couple. So a little, you know, not Austin's. you know, you see them all the time or whatever. I haven't found, in our experience, other than the night snakes,

I don't think anything would really fit into that box of you just sort of ubiquitously will see it. Really? They're pretty good, though. We've seen plenty of atrocks out there. I've got some spots where... Yeah, but that was about the only snake we saw on the first tree. Exactly right.

There were no other snakes. Yeah. It was the a trox. No one gopher. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were a couple.

There's some spots where like black tails and copperheads. I can almost guarantee we're going to see some every night. Yeah, that's cool. That's when I need to is the copperheads. Yeah, that copperheads is on my need to do list for all the U.S. venomous forms for sure. Really? One crazy bit of information that I just thought about was when I was putting my group together.

I was walking it every night. I was seeing black tails and copperheads every night. I found five alterna and probably 200 nights of looking. And alterna was the most common collubrid I found. As sucky as that sounds. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like it's difficult to find calubrids to some extent. At least, I mean, in my limited. It was just that one spot.

You got onto the river road. You're going to find subbox. Okay. Gotcha. Black gap, you're going to find cell box. you're going to find some other Kluberds moving. Desert Kings. Yeah.

Okay. Got another question for him, Rob? I don't think so. This has been great. So, as we said, we talked to Stephen. A couple, Stephen came on a couple years ago, and then we just had him back on. Trying to get the diversity here. I would highlight you were on flipping tin in December last year.

It was a really good episode. I know Phil helped out with questions, and then I thought the guys did a really good job chatting with you, just trying to get into a little bit of different things here with the additional context that we've been a handful of times. So you kind of can dig into things a little differently. Yeah, and coming from an alternative perspective, I don't keep them now, but there was a time where I probably had 65 or 70 with the vast majority having come from Brian or Stu Tennyson and that whole crowd. So, and Troy as well. So, yeah, definitely awesome snakes, man. They're the best and the worst snakes.

It's, they're hard to describe. Yeah. Great to look at, hard to breed, hard to feed, hard to find. Right. But that's what makes them as awesome as they are. They're by far. I had some of those muskies from Brian that first year that he made him available.

Yeah. If that tells you anything. Maybe I'll send you some if I can never get this pair to breed. They're really just now getting old enough. They were pretty small when I found them. That's cool, man. Next few years, next few years we should be getting a few out of them. Nice.

Well, where can people find, I mean, do you post stuff you find out walking the cuts? I need to. I've got an Instagram. It's called Double Diamond Reptiles. Okay. I honestly kind of forgot I even had it. Don't post too often. No, I was doing pretty good there for a minute.

And then my mom kicked the bucket and I just kind of forgot about it. Oh, yeah. But no, I pulled it up the other day and I was like, man, I really need to get back into this. So that's going to happen. And it's just got some random stuff on it right now, like some leopard geckos and I think maybe some subbox or something. Maybe some guruirai. But yeah, I'm going to get that. I'm going to get that moving a little bit better.

And same with Facebook. I've got a double diamond repals Facebook page that I don't post nearly enough on. Are you taking cell phone shots of the stuff that you find? Are you not taking photos at all? What does that look like? Yeah, yeah, mainly cell phone pictures. I really like, especially with gray bands, me and all my buddies that find them, I like getting the in situ videos, kind of us find them,

and we just kind of share those between each other. Yeah. I don't know if those will be posted on Instagram, maybe, because there's usually a lot of expletives. Right, maybe I'm mute. Yeah, maybe on me with some background video. Yeah. Yeah.

But no, usually cell phone pictures. I usually kind of try to keep up with the latest iPhone to get good pictures. And they really do take pretty good pictures. Yeah. Had a DSLR and I've got some good pictures with those, but it broke and I never bought a new one. But yeah. And now that you bring it up, I'll probably start posting more. There you go.

Well, it's always good to have a reason. right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, thanks again for coming on, Austin. We appreciate your knowledge and talking to you about Herp and West Texas. Cool.

Thanks for having me. Yeah. With that, we'll thank Morelli Python Radio and we'll catch you next time for Rept Off Eye Club.