Reptile Fight Club - Haranguing the Herpers w/ Chris Siderius and Nathan Choquette

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob have another installment of Haranguing the Herpers w/ Chris Siderius and Nathan ChoquetteFollow 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/

All right, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. We've got a good show tonight. We've got a couple, a conversation with them. What's going on in their herping world there? Welcome to the show, Chris Darius, Nathan Choket. Yep, that is good. Very cool. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for being here. We appreciate it. Looking forward to chatting some herping here. Where do we find you guys tonight? Where are you from? I live in Manifee, California. Nobody knows where that is. So about 30 miles off the coast, just northeast of Temecula, kind of in a nice little middle area.

You got desert to the east. You got mountains pretty much everywhere around and then ocean about an hour to the west. Yeah, you're kind of close to Borago then, right? That's not too far. Give or take an hour, depending on when you're going, maybe a little longer. You know, California traffic. Right. I love that area, though.

That's such a great spot to be. Yeah. Good herping. Yeah. How about you, Nathan? I am currently living out of Las Vegas right now. So good, good area as well. Plenty of desert, plenty of open space for me to go around and explore and find snakes in.

Nice. Yeah. Another great spot to herp. Yeah. I'm a desert rat, so anywhere close to desert spots is good for me. But Rob's making me appreciate the mountains a little bit more these days. So that's been good. We're both from Colorado. So mountains is, you know, kind of where we started. So I definitely still love the mountains. I love to get up there whenever I can. But desert has its own beauty. Right. Yeah, I think growing up, I just never thought cool herps were in. the mountains for some reason. I was always like wanting to go to the desert. And I just like the desert. But yeah, again, getting to appreciate the mountains and the cool reptiles there as well.

Further south you go, the better the reptiles are in the mountains. Right. Yep. All right. And how do you guys know each other? Did you know each other growing up or met each other in Colorado? Met in Colorado. I was working at a reptile store at the time. Chris came into the shop. He was buying probably some rodents for his green tree pythons or something. And he showed me a picture of a milk snake and a prairie rattlesnake. And I saw those pictures and I was like, I want to go do that with you. And it was a few weekends later, he gave me a call and was like, I'm going out this. weekend are you in and the rest is history as they say. Very cool. Lots of history. And funny enough, that was 10 years ago. And here we are. That's awesome. It's nice how those things work out, right?

Found a rider die homie and we've been doing some crazy stuff for 10 years now. It's kind of crazy to think back on, but he definitely was a good, a good homie to go do it with. And we started quick and never stopped. It's always good to find your people, you know, find people you mesh well with and can hurt well with. That's always a good thing. So, yeah, I'll be excited. No one better to do it with. Right on for sure.

I'll be excited to hear about what you guys have found and stuff. So, yeah. So you mentioned you kept or do you still keep? You got reptiles at home as well? I keep a handful of things right now. I just have a couple of rattlesnakes and a couple of calubrids as well. But I'm not keeping anything, you know, too crazy or too many numbers. You used to have more stuff back when I met Chris and I was working at a reptile shop. you know had all sorts of fun stuff have kind of have kind of gotten more out of the keeping in the recent years and more just into going and finding stuff in the wild so it's a lot more rewarding in a lot of ways to see it in the wild versus keeping it in a box but for sure yeah i i'm

definitely with you yeah how about you chris sort of in the same boat. I've always had at least a snake ever since I can remember since I was like five or six. Funny enough, Nate, you may not know this, but Justin is somewhat of a Morilia guy. He wrote the book on a couple different species of Morilia. So green tree pythons have always been like that one snake for me. And I still have a handful of them, dabbled in breeding, minimal success. You know how that goes with green tree pythons. It's a lot easier to try than succeed when it comes to breeding. But slowed it down a little bit over the last five or so years.

years. I still have a handful. I'm in the room right now, but moving to California, coming from Colorado, one of the things for me was, I can keep rattlesnakes now. And I came out here with big eyes and wanted to have all the rattlesnakes and have all the cool setups and all that. And ever since I got out here, I've slowly built a nice little handful of rattlesnakes as well. That shine wore off quick. We can put it that way. Changing waters and feeding your pets when you're literally risking your life to do it is a different ballgame than going out and hike in the desert to see them.

So still pick and choose, but got some cool snakes. And I think I will always have snakes in a box. But the older I get, the more holistic it becomes. And it turned down a lot of snakes in the last three or four years that my 20-year-old self would have taken in an instant. Yeah. Well, I find, too, that when I see something in the water, that makes me appreciate it more in the box. And so I try to make it a better box, you know,

and try to keep them a little happier and that kind of thing. So I think it kind of feeds itself. And definitely having a smaller collection is helpful if you're getting out very often. But, I mean, snakes are pretty good about letting you go away for a couple weeks. So, yeah, it's not too bad. It's not a bearded dragon. Right, right. Yeah.

And that's when kids come in handy too. when I leave town and I can have my daughter feed my, you know, lizards that need to eat a little more frequently. That's really nice. Can't wait for that day. Yeah. All right. And so, Chris, how long were you herping before you met, Nate? Herping as a term, you know, it's come a long way in years and my lifetime.

I mean, I've been trying to find snakes ever since I can remember. I think as I got older, as funds and lifestyle allowed, it certainly turned into a lot more than what I ever thought it could be. So, you know, a little kid running around flipping rocks and logs and stuff. I've been doing that my whole life. I would say this herping, uh, for a little kid running around flipping rocks and logs and stuff. I've been doing that my whole life. I would say this herping phase or herping craze that has really come on since the last five or ten years. Meeting Nate was where really turned it up into something else. I met someone who was down to do crazy stuff, go crazy places.

do crazy hours and that's been going on now for about 10 years. So I would say herping, that's probably the line. But as far as frogs and snakes and lizards and critters, that's been my whole life. Yeah. Yeah. I guess thinking back, most of my early days were like incidental herping. My dad was really good to take me out, you know, backpacking and stuff. And so he'd asked me where I'd want to go and I'd always pick somewhere, you know, where I thought coolest herps were. And, and he usually let me bring stuff home. My parents were really cool about that. Like, I had, you know, a midget fader rattlesnake in my bedroom when I was a, you know, teenager. That's awesome. We got it. It had a button when we found it. And then, you know,

I kept it for probably, no, close to 10 years. And then I found out it was illegal in Utah, so I gave it to my to a friend and you know but uh that was a adventure and my parents actually looked after him for a couple years while i lived in germany and and they uh were uh one day my mom was looking in the cage she could hear it rattling because this thing never settled that it would always rattle and she's looking in the cage you can't see it and she looks on top of the cage and it's like four inches from her face and she's like whoa you know she'd called my dad you got to get home take care of the snake you know put it back and he's like oh I'll get it after work and came home and it was just sunny itself on the window seal.

And he just put it back in its tang. But man, am I glad that snake did not strike? That would have been bad. That's one that gets told about at Thanksgiving, but got a lot different. But my parents were, yeah, beyond cool, letting me bring stuff home. So, yeah, good times. That's funny. Yeah, I was thinking about that just prior to this.

and my parents, it was full support ever since I could remember. And that's a huge difference maker. Right. You know, my mom. You don't hear that as often either. It's like usually one or the other parent is afraid or, you know, it says no snakes in the house, that kind of thing. So it's good to hear people that had that same experience as I have. Yeah, I was allergic to cats and dogs growing up.

So our family pets were snakes and geckos growing up. So that was, you know, pretty cool. And pretty much have always had them around as well. Yeah. That's cool. Well, I know Rob's got a list. I don't know if I can't remember if this is one of the questions, but kind of maybe what's your favorite area to Herp or what's your main type?

Do you have like a main group or, you know, so kind of starting. what areas of focus are running through in broad strokes where you've been and then maybe we'll pick some of those that sounds super fun yeah Nate you say that one brother yeah hey go for it you go first okay generally um generally my favorite areas are um like southeast Arizona southwest new mexico kind of the sky island region um I just think that that area is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The snakes there are amazing, especially if you get there during a good monsoon season. Everything is green. Creeks are flowing. There's just nothing, nothing better in my opinion. Right. Yeah, it's a good spot. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. And then,

you know, I really enjoy desert herping as well. Chris and I have spent quite a lot of time looking for speckled rattlesnakes. kind of everywhere that they're found. Just, you know, trying to see all the different variations and color phases, which we all know there's a million of and too many to find. But we've made pretty good progress on that over the last 10 years. Nice. And, yeah, jungles are also always a favorite.

Anytime I can get on an airplane and go to a jungle. gotta love that right everybody thinks the desert is like you know desolate and no life but man

it's hard to find stuff in jungles yeah it is there's a lot of places to hide I mean there's there's almost like too much habitat

to look at in a jungle because you know you're looking tree tops you're looking on the ground whereas most of the time with rattlesnakes

you're kind of just looking in on the ground so it narrows it down a little bit yeah what what jungles or what areas have you herped in my...

I've done Costa Rica. I've done Borneo. I've done Thailand and then Peru and Belize as well. Oh, very cool. So quite a few different jungles. Yep. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I hope to get back to many more in my lifetime.

Nice. How about you, Chris? Yeah, I think grown up in Colorado and doing the half mountain, half plains thing, Colorado has a touch of desert or what would appear to be desert. And that was always the thing when I was younger. And so real deserts were always what I would look forward to. I would try to do. And then when I got old enough to do it myself, it was any and everything desert. I would say pretty much anywhere in the southwest region, California, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada.

ever since we were capable and able, that was really where we found ourselves gravitating towards. Obviously, the sky islands and the southern mountains of the United States, those have really captured my love. And all in all, anything where there's snakes, we can usually... try to find something that we want to go look for. But as Nate said, with speckled rattlesnakes, you know, if there's a spec there, we've got a reason to be there. Yeah. Lepidus as well with clobbari.

We've really gone crazy in trying to find just different locales and clobbs in all of the mountain ranges that they live in. And I don't think quite all. I don't think we've got that feather in our hat yet. Not quite. We've gotten a lot, though. We've knocked out a lot of them. I think most is a good accolade we can hold.

We've found a ton of clobbs in a ton of mountain ranges. But between specks and clubs, those are typically the two that we're going to look for. If we're looking for snakes, it's most likely going to be a speckled rattlesnake or a clobber eye. That's awesome. Yeah. It's nice to have that kind of focus when, you know, it really helps sort things out. You know, you're like, well, where are we going? You know, what haven't we seen yet?

So it makes it nice that way. That's it. And from Denver, that was also part of it. that was the closest cool rattlesnake that we could go look for was something in central New Mexico where banded rock rattlesnakes live and it became a ritual for us for a little while when the season started probably a little earlier than we should have gone we'd end up driving south down into New Mexico and looking for clubs March and then it turned into March, April, May, because they were on.

There was one year when we were driving down and there was snow on the mountaintops where we were going to be looking for clubs. And that morning, we all kind of woke up and we were wondering if we jumped the gun and maybe went too early. But sure enough, we ended up finding three, clobs on the weekend and we were looking at a clob here and we were looking right up the hill and there was snow on the mountaintops and we were in heaven. That's awesome.

Makes for a good picture to have snow on the background of a clob shot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I love those tough, tough snakes that are, you know, rubber boas, things like that where you can just find them just about any time. Yeah. If you do it enough, they become not the tough.

ones. Right. Right. You know, maybe flexing a little bit of the ego here, but you put us somewhere where there's clubs. If me and Nate and any of the other guys that have gone out there doing it with us, we feel pretty confident. And they were not easy for a long time, which is where it feels good to say, you put us in a mountain range with clubs. We're probably going to find one. Oh, I find fun. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.

It's nice to, I mean, that's kind of the, when you figure something out like that, and you can kind of like know, you know, if I'm in this, if I'm in this type of habitat, I'm going to look at this type of, you know, rock structure or whatever. And I'll probably find what I'm looking for here. You know, you get to know their habits and when they're out and what they're doing. That's really cool thing. And you guys were on the front end, if not the innovators for the big tweezer approach, right? right? Not innovators. I don't even know if towards the front line, to be honest with you. There's a lot of people that have been doing it that way for a while. We might have helped make it more public. But I definitely don't know if we were the forerunners of it.

It was shown to us. And, you know, that's something where, You go out 10 times and you struggle or snake gets away and you feel like you're doing it wrong. And then you see someone doing it right. The first time is one of those things where, you know, with Clubs, we know the right way. Let's put it that way. And we were shown it. Let's let's say that if that was something that we were. able to think of on our own, we probably would have seen a lot more, a lot faster.

Speaking of which, who are your like mentors or who are the folks that kind of helped you out along the way? There's a couple and, you know, I think mentors. A lot of it, you could say, was self-learned. I would agree. I'll speak just with Nate because we really had no idea what we were doing early on. We're just driving out into the middle of nowhere where we know snakes live. Kyle Vargas was one guy that when it comes to Clubs and Montaigne specifically, he showed us a lot and just going out to hike with him a couple of times was a unique perspective.

that we definitely hadn't had the experience. But yeah, I think for, and for me, this is going way back. And some of it good, some of it bad. The Steve Irwin's, the Jeff Corwin's, Offsen Stevens, you know, all the guys on TV, that was something that I was able to really watch and say, oh, man, you can just go out. and find snakes.

And those are the guys that, you know, really young and early on planted seeds in my head. And, you know, that's where everyone has their opinions. I definitely won't shy away from that. But also just being able to see people out in the natural world finding the animals that we all think are the coolest animals. Those were people that I most certainly looked up to. And, you know, even going back to my parents, both dad and mom, they'd take me out. They would support the itch and help me scratch it.

And they could have cared less about the snakes. But just getting me into a place where I could find snakes and enjoying seeing me do it. Thinking back, that's where you take things for granted when you're young, but didn't realize it at the time. But the older I've gotten, the more appreciative I've grown to be about the support that my parents gave me. And that's something, too, that as a parent, I would just hope that I support whatever it is that my kids want to do. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, my first trip to Australia, I went with my dad. He came along with me.

I don't know how how thrilled he was about road cruising at night, but he put up with it, you know. He was with you, man. He was with me. It was great. Yeah. We had some great experiences there. So, you know, good stuff. It's nice to kind of repay the favor, you know, invite him out instead of vice versa.

So I don't do that as much as I probably should with my kids as well, although I might have traumatized them a few times with that. poorly planned trips or things that happen you know that's that's good for them though builds character oh yeah that's for sure we built a lot of character they're good kids though and they they still enjoy you know going out looking with me and stuff so it's it's fun that way so chris and Nate do you guys keep lifeless are you herping to that list then or you just you know you have you're going to a play a place inspires you is it kind of the inverse of that While I think about this one, Nate, if you've got an answer.

Yeah. So I don't really keep a life list. I'm not super concerned with seeing every and everything. I more like looking for what I like to look for. So pit vipers are really a huge one for me. Um, anywhere there's cool pit vipers. Uh, I'm down to go to that place. Um, and, you know, obviously anything else along the way is great.

Love seeing it. Um, but pit vipers are usually the targets. Um, but I wouldn't say, you know, that I keep a life list and, you know, and trying to check off, uh, all the vipers, which, you know, obviously I'd love to do someday. But it's pretty far-fetched, so we'll see if I get there. Right. We need Mexico to get a little safer in some areas. That would be helpful. Speaking of which, have you been down to Mexico, done anything out there? We've done a little bit of work in Mexico. Basically just the very northern part of Chihuahua is where we've been. and beyond that, haven't really touched Mexico.

Well, we've gone back in a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. There's some cool specs on islands out there. There is. It'd be pretty cool to see. Yes, there are. Yeah, one of the best nights of my life.

I won't speak for Nate, but I know it's got me up there. We went out to Angel Island, took a boat, probably ended up being, what, hour, hour and a half. boat ride, and we marooned ourselves on an island for a night, got to see a pretty substantial Angel Island Rattlesnake, and just everything about that was one of, if not, the best nights ever. Yeah. Had some of the bio-algae in the waves. Oh, cool.

We're cooling off in the tide, swimming through blue water, looking for rattlesnakes, had a cooler full of beer. Just everything about that place was amazing. And itching to get back. Right. That's cool. Yeah. It's hard to beat those experiences where it just sticks with you for forever. It's good stuff.

We've had a lot of those out doing what we do, so it's definitely a blessing. And something that I don't take for granted, you know, is spending those times with your friends. It's good. Yeah. In regards to the pit vipers in the U.S., have you seen them all? Or do you still have any white whales? I don't think either of them or either of us have seen all of them. I have seen less on the East Coast.

Pretty much everything west of Colorado, I think I've seen now. Which is most of them, right? Which is a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I still need to see pygmy rattlesnakes. Surprisingly enough, I have never seen a cotton mouth, which most people are shocked to learn that. but it's just been one that I've either, you know, not been in range for or has avoided me when I have been in range for it. And then like, you know, Eastern Diamondback still would love to see one of those.

I've seen timbers. I've seen Eastern copperheads. There's still a couple subspecies of copperheads that I'd like to get. But we've done pretty good with the United States vipers so far. Yeah, that's awesome. So what about you, Chris? Where are you at? What's your decision about keeping a life list and herping to that list?

Officially, I don't have a list. I, you know, think that that's something that still strikes me and talking about the east-west thing. Like, there's some Eastern stuff that I would like to check off. just to say I've seen it. I did have a period where and God bless Nate, he got me back because growing up,

all I ever cared about was finding a rattlesnake. And in my area, it was a prairie rattlesnake. I didn't know any better. I didn't care any better. If I saw a rattlesnake, I was happy. Through the,

the, the Colorado herping times got caught up in trying to check all the boxes. I want to see all the snakes in Colorado and really was straining myself. And we strained ourselves looking for king snakes in Colorado for a fair bit of time, which can be a wild goose chase. They're there. Somewhere between luck and effort. We put in a lot of effort.

We didn't have any of the luck, though. But the more we tried, the more we realized, like, let's go look for cool rattlesnakes. So going out west for concholors, going for sagas, going out of state, looking for the other cool rattlesnakes. That took priority after enough failed dismal efforts looking for those stupid king snakes. But, yeah, I think I sit kind of in the middle. I don't push for my life list. But when it's all said and done, I hope a lot of those boxes are checked. Right.

And I haven't seen an abysses. I love to still get that. Other than that, anything in the western half of the United States, I think I got that locked down. And then just spending some time out east, love to see more subspecies of copperheads, all the pygmies. I think the Carolina pygmies would be my top desire.

I love to see some of those cherry and brick-red pygmy rattlesnakes that are out there. So a lot of game to play. and hopefully we can check a few boxes before it's all said and done. But I think being resolved and happy with what we do and how we do it, I could go look for speckled rattlesnakes 10 out of 10 times, and I'm good with that. Well, part of that, right, is such an inherent natural variability when you're talking about specks, squabs.

They go to lots of different places, and they're all different. Right, even within the same spot, they're different. Now, Chris, just to have you on the record for it, when you say looking for the king snakes that barely come to the state, are you talking about the Western, the Cow Kings in Montezuma County? You're talking about the stuff down in the southeast, the speckled? Southeast. So I've only looked for Cow Kings in Colorado one time.

Obviously, didn't find any. But the speckled king snakes in sakes in southeastern Colorado So we went crazy for those for a couple of years. And, I mean, it got two points. Yeah, from Denver down to their habitat, it's minimum three hours, sometimes four, depending on traffic and stuff and getting out of town and gas and food and the road life. But there were times where we'd go out on a Wednesday night. We both had work the next day.

We'd get off at five. We'd load up and we'd head south and we'd go out cruising and hike in. And we wouldn't even start driving home until one or two in the morning. Empty-handed, of course, or on the work nights, dead one on the road. But yeah, we looked hard for those king snakes for a few years. And at some point, we both. made it very clear, like, we'd rather look for rattlesnakes. Let's go, let's go look for rattlesnakes. And, you know, that's, it's easy to say this on the other side, because I've never found

one, but I think the rattlesnakes that we enjoy tend to be a little bit more rewarding than Calubrids that are cool, but, you know, we deep down know we'd rather find a con-colour. or a club or a saga or something like that. Right. Yeah. Justin just wrote a field guide of the Herpsie, Utah that just came out with our friend Nipper. And Nipper is from the UK and is as very particular lifeless goals and ambitions. And so as part of the conversation, he was asking me, said, hey, are you interested in trying

to find all the Herps in your state? And because of all the conversion ecosystems that come in and all these things, I said, no, absolutely not. I have no interest in southeast Colorado just to find it in the Colorado side. So, yeah, fortunately, avoided that bear trap that you guys. It's a tricky one. But, you know, we saw a lot of cool stuff and had a lot of good times out doing it. And even, you know, with being unsuccessful in the Kingsnake, you get down into southeastern Colorado at the right. time of year. You're just pulling snakes out of your pockets left and right.

They're everywhere. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do. It was just never a king snake. Speaking of way, I keep saying speaking which, but do you, do you, when you're, you know, getting skunked by other stuff, what else do you like to look at? I mean, are you checking out the lizards, birds, anything like that? Is it so focus on? Chris doesn't like to look at anything else.

Guilty. Yeah, that's kind of robbed too a little bit. Yeah. There's other things that I appreciate, but I'm not a big bird guy. I'm not a big insect guy. I can appreciate them, but I'm not going to go out of my way to look for them or look at them. Incidental. Yeah.

Just like... Yeah. Yeah. I like seeing, you know, some of the mammals. Like, you know, kit foxes are always cool. See Kuwatties every now and then. Mountain lion encounters are always cool. Coyotes are cool.

So, you know, there's other cool stuff that you can see. But you're not always finding that stuff either. So sometimes you just see nothing. Which at that point, you know, you're in nature and we're usually surrounded by some pretty killer views. So even at that point, it's hard to be upset usually about where we are. Right. Yeah, and that's where I've grown substantially in the last, I don't know, five years or so. it used to be if I'm out looking for a snake and I don't find it

it would get under my skin not even ashamed to say it would make me angry now being able to just stop at the top of a mountain or the ridge of a hill or the bottom of a canyon and take it in and appreciate the view appreciate the billions of years that it took to create what I'm standing in the middle of. That's really what's grown on me.

Bugs, birds, amphibians, mammals. Yeah, they're cool. But I can see those things from my TV. And that's where appreciating their place in the ecosystem. I can understand that. I can appreciate the evolution that's got them to where they are. Could really care less if I see them or not. Give me the snake I'm looking for.

If I can't find the snake I'm looking for, I'll take some other snakes. But that's where I do get somewhat of a laser focus on the target. And it helps me find them, but also there's certain cases where driving home without finding it, it's like, man, maybe I should have stopped and looked at that lizard for a little longer. Or maybe I should have taken some photos of that crazy beetle with all the colors. So both edges of the sword. Yeah.

It's always like in the back of your mind, like, if I'm wasting time, you know, wasting time, looking at this, am I missing out on what I'm. I'm actually here for the main reason I'm here. But I don't know, I find a lot of times, like you said, you're more thinking about, well, maybe I should have looked at that a little longer or, you know, I should have appreciated this. And I think that goes for the targets too. Like, you know, you find something you've been looking for for a long time, take a few shots. And okay, let's go find another one. And then you're like, don't find another one.

I wish I would have spent more time watching that one that we did find. It's always hard to know. I mean, you can't know what you are. I mean, you did that with your first WOMA, right, Justin? Right. Yeah. I thought, oh, these are easy. You know, I'm going to find a bunch of blackheads of WOMA.

Yeah, I was up on the 80-mile beach coast there in North W. And, yeah, we didn't see anything else that whole night. And I have a couple kind of semi-crapy shots of this WOMA. Yeah. I did the same thing with a Maloney. and Pit Viper in Thailand. You know, they're supposed to be one of the most dirt common stakes that you can find around. We found one our first night.

I got, you know, three or four not great photos of it thinking we'd see ten more and didn't see another one for two weeks. Yeah, it's funny how that works out, right? But I guess the reasons to go back and, you know, look in or find another one. Yeah. And we got the opportunity with the WOMA. Oh, it was a central Australian WOMA, but still, you know, seeing another woman and we spent a lot more time with that one.

That was a great experience. One topic, I kind of, oh, go ahead, Chris. I was just going to say, I even think a huge thing with me is the spending time aspect. You know,

we all get caught up in front of our cameras and we got to have the best picture. I still carry my camera. I'll snap some shots, but just being in the moment. And spending time, with the animal, with the people that you're with, enjoying the accomplishment of finding whatever the hell it is that you found, that's something that, again, 10 years ago, if it was a snake, I was taking pictures of it.

Now, I just want to enjoy the time that it was and really, really be a part of the situation, not trying to look through the lens the whole time. And I think that's gone a long way with my enjoyment out there. You know, I'm not writing a catalog, and I'm happy to just spend the time out there doing it. And the more I do it, the more it's about the places I'm in, the animals I'm seeing, the people I'm doing it with, as opposed to the picture I get. Right. Yeah.

living in the moment can be a make a good trip into a great one i love that scene in walter the life of walter middy have you seen that show or he's this uh guys photographing a snow leopard right and and you know back then nobody had seen snow leopards or whatever and so he's like got it in his range finder of his camera and he doesn't click the shutter and he the walter middy's like well aren't you going to take the picture he's like nope that one's just for me yeah i was like sometimes i never do I think I've seen that. Yeah. Without seeing it, I saw a clip of it on Instagram or Facebook or something.

And I know, it was Matthew McConaughey, right? It was somebody like that. Yeah, it was. Who's the guy who's married to Madonna? What's his name? The fighter. Sean Penn. I think that's who the photographer was.

Yeah. No, that's it. Like, you know, photos are cool and everything, but nothing beats being. Right. Nothing beats seeing it through your own lenses. And I find that, yeah, the photos more remind me of the experience rather than there's some great photo that, you know, somebody's going to want to buy or something. It's like I look at the photos and it could be the crappiest photo in the world, but I remember that, you know, experience.

Yeah. Yeah, the first, first time I saw Kimberly Rock Monitor, my camera had gotten fried in the car in Darwin. And so I see one and I'm looking through binoculars at it and just going, holy, you know, this is, and it was just for me because the only picture I got was like my holding my iPhone up to the lens of the binoculars and getting, you know, just to prove to myself that I saw it, you know, because it was like one of those magical events where you're just like staring at it going, yeah, that's one. That's awesome. It was really far away on a cliff face and just really a cool thing. So, yeah, the pictures definitely don't do it justice, but I can remember that moment. And then watching a freshwater crocodile swim out right below it. You know, like it's just a perfect morning, you know, of herping. Yeah, picture it or not, nobody will ever take that from you.

Right. Yeah. That's cool. That'll stay with me forever. So even if I didn't have a picture, you know, it would be. Yeah, that's good stuff. One topic that jumped to mind while we're talking about the idea of always going to try and find the next one, right, rather than really living in that moment with the first one or what might be the only one is kind of the question of pursuing volume versus quality. Are you usually out there looking for a thing or are you just looking to kind of run into as many snakes or rattle snakes or whatever as you can find?

A bit of both, I think. Like we are generally targeting a certain rattlesnake or a certain couple of rattlesnakes, and we want to see as many of those as we can. Yeah, it's kind of, it's an interesting question. That's a loaded question. Yeah. Because the way I think about it, and of course my brain goes right. to specs.

Depends where you are and it depends which spec you're looking for. But if you find the one you're looking for immediately and locale type, phenotype that matches what you went there for,

I'll walk away happy with one. But you might find the brown one that doesn't fit the bill and that that one can go right back down its hole and you keep looking. Keep looking. It's so hit and miss and sometimes even in the field, you get out early and you find one quick.

Like Justin said, oh, they're on. We're going to be finding snakes left and right. Let's get back out. Let's see how many we can find. you're out there for however many of hours, however many miles hiked, and you finally land on one. Well, I might be happy to drink the warm beer

that's in my backpack and put my feet up and spend a half an hour with it. But situational is how I will answer that question. Sometimes it's quantity. Sometimes it's quality. But situationally, that will determine how you respond in any given moment to that. What about you, Nate?

That's tough. Kind of the same. Like there's definitely times where I want to find as many snakes as possible. But, you know, sometimes it takes you. you three hours to find that snake. Sometimes it takes you three days to find that snake. So it is definitely a situational thing. And I guess

kind of just depends on, you know, overall conditions as well. Sometimes there's lots of snakes moving. Sometimes there's not. But I I generally would say I'd probably prefer to see one really good snake of what I'm looking for than 10 other snakes of maybe what I'm not looking for,

bycatch or three brown specks versus one red one or one pink one. So definitely a bit of situational dependence for me as well. If you guys can't tell, we'd rather find any spec other than a problem. Yeah, so Justin had hit on this a little bit, but I don't know that went quite the way that he was hoping. Other than rattlesnakes, right? So the thing that I found with, you know, when I've talked to people on people listening,

we'll be tired of hearing about it, but came to life listing specific things. based on basically trying to ideate where to go next, what to do, and started in 2020 with trying to find all the U.S. crope forms, turned into all the U.S. rattlesnakes, turned into all U.S. Venomous reptiles. But that also begot, finding all the heterodon forms, all the Pichuophis forms, and then it turns into milk snakes, king snakes, all these different things, right? So rather than saying all of the reptiles of Colorado, that didn't really hold appeal to me ever, it was, I want to, like you guys, right, I like these different things. and then as I'm out in the field, I'm finding I really enjoy, you know, all hognows and pituitophos, especially pine snakes on the East Coast, those sorts of things. What are the things other than rattlesnakes that when you're out in the field are really the top tier items for you to find? I mean, so Justin has seen at least one, if not to use, Seneca Coles. I have spent a lot of time looking unsuccessfully for Senecaholas, so that's a big item on my list.

What, like, what would be that thing for you guys? Rosie Boa, which that's landed pretty hard since I moved to California, which is still somewhat recent. Moved out here. Sheesh, we're just about four years. It was September, 2022. And before that, like, I'd seen enough pet rosyboas. You see them in the pet stores and, you know, people have them. And they're cool.

didn't quite appreciate what it meant to find a rosy boa until I lived out here and I had been out looking for snakes so many times and just thought they'd be everywhere. Well, maybe some places, but for the most part, they're randomly scattered

and if you see one, kind of lucky. And some people, they can find more than others, but in the time, that I've spent in rosy boa habitat versus the amount of rosy boas that I've seen, now it feels like a treat. And certain desert locales that I've gone looking for specs and I know there's cool rosyboas that I would like to see, that's definitely the one for me where if I'm not going to find the rattlesnake I'm looking for.

I really hope I run into a rosy boa. Right. I also very much like rosybos. They're just a cool snake to find. And I don't think I ever really, because I, like I said, I used to work in a pet store so we'd get rosy boas in all the time. For whatever reason, the captive ones would always bite the shit out of you.

And I wasn't really a fan of them. and then I found one in the wild and I was like, whoa, these things are really cool. Rosie Boas are up there for me. I also like Mastikophis a lot. So like Wipsnakes, Coach Wips. Always enjoy finding those. I like the attitude on them.

It's fun for me to chase them up a tree and, you know, try to dodge and biting you the whole time. And then I like, I like Mountain King snakes as well, particularly southeast Arizona, the Madrean Mountain Kings. And that's kind of one of those same things as I've, you know, spent so much time, you know, down looking for Willard Eye, Price Eye, Klobrii, you know, Melosis, all those snakes. and would only usually see one to two mountain kings a year. So any time that it happened, it was usually a treat. And over time, I ended up very much enjoying seeing them whenever they came.

Special shout out to a horned lizard too. Right. Yeah. If I'm going to chase a lizard, it's definitely going to be, we call them horny boys. If there's a horned lizard running around, I'm going to go after it. That's probably the only lizard I'm chasing, but that's just childhood nostalgia. You see the horned lizards and they're so strange compared to so many other lizards out there. These days, the horned lizard, never going to go looking for them, but if I see one, I'll enjoy it.

Yeah. Those Slevens, bunch grass lizards were really cool up there, too, you know, looking for some of the montane rattlesnakes. And you see those guys. I was pretty geeked out to see those and experience those. They're neat. Yeah, a lot of the sphinies up there can be really cool and colorful. and I can be pretty cool to see sometimes too. Yeah.

One of the points that you hit on there, well, both you, Chris and Nate, but, you know, Chris, you mentioned it first. The idea of sometimes I think things being normalized in the pet trade, almost devalues or undervalues them relative to then go on and see him in the wild, right? Rosie Bow certainly would fit into that box. There are several different things. It is weird how all the captive red Rosy Bowes, Blighton, what, the wild ones don't, right? Never.

Yeah, so strange. But yeah, I am curious on, if you guys have thoughts on that in general, just in terms of really, I think it speaks to the value of seeing things in the wild. But we talk about it whenever we're talking to gray band people that they think, oh, you know, based on the common nature of Black Gap Alterna in the Reptaxia in the Reptoe hobby, people assume, oh, I guess if I want to see an alterna, I should go to Black Gap. And in reality, that was from very few, you know, half dozen to 10 founder animals found by people out there for hundreds of nights over, you know, years and years to make those six to ten animals. But they're one of the ubiquitous animals in the hobby. So there's a disconnect between our hobby comment, Rosie Bella, or the Black Appalterna, and what it's actually like to try and go see one in the wild. Yeah, I think for me, it might be a bit. facetious of me, but I have a very hard line in the sand between what I call a keeper and a herper.

Some people jump on both sides of the line. On the keeper side, that's where it's very easy to underappreciate things that you see a lot of. Where on the herper side, if the keepers only knew what it took for that animal over however many years to end up in that box is only mind-blowing once you're out there. And, you know, that's where with the Rosie Bow, I thought I'd just be tripping over them. And I might see a handful in any given year, but coming out here and thinking that they were going to be everywhere and just because of that mindset of seeing so many in captivity, that's something that right, wrong, or indifferent, it certainly has a level of appreciation that frankly thought someone who has only frequented pet stores or only had snakes in

cages and hasn't spent the time out there looking. for them, you just don't get a grasp of it. And even common stuff. Go out into Arizona, not knowing what you're doing and try to find an atrox. You might, but you still got to have somewhat of a lay of a land and you got to have your feet under you and at least have a sense of what you're doing or you're rolling the dice. And that's the part that I think gets lost in translation between herping and keeping is these animals have been in the pet trade for, you know, some of them going on a hundred years or more. And it took a lot for these things to be common in the pet trade.

And that's something that I think gets blurred between the lines of keeping and herping. In some ways, right, everything is hard. I feel like even social media kind of does the same. same thing where people see a picture and think, you know, it devalues the effort that it takes to find anything, basically, as you're saying, the effort and experience and the work that you're putting in, I do feel like the social media experience, people that are only seeing it that way and never doing it to know, oh, actually, I know what this is, sure, anyone could get lucky on anything, but I actually know what that entails and, you know, it's worth a lot more

than 30 legs. Yep. Yeah. So it sounds like, you know, looking for specs and those sorts, you're probably mostly walking. I mean, how much time do you say split between hiking out stuff and like road cruising? We definitely do more hiking, I would say. Yeah, especially for the rattlesnakes. Right. I will say that's probably one place where we get lucky of not being, you know, Lampropeltus people is they do spend a lot more of their time on the surface,

which makes it easy to go look in canyons and find them with success. Where, you know, as some of these lampra pelthus or rat snakes or some of these other snakes, it's much easier to find them on roads, typically speaking. But since we're generally looking for rattlesnakes, I would say we're hiking more. Back when we lived in Colorado, we did a lot more cruising. But since we've both been in the desert, I think both of us prefer to be walking over sitting in a car doing lapsing. on a road. I'd agree. Yeah, it's much more rewarding to hike one up versus a cruise one up. Yeah, and you know, you see different things in the canyon, you see other animals. You're not just, you know,

staring at the lines on the roads for hours and hours on end while your eyes bleed and maybe you see a snake on the road. Maybe you don't. Right. Yeah, at least if you're hiking, you get good scenery in the, in the mix, you know. Yeah. You hiking a lot at night as well? Definitely a good amount, especially, you know, the low desert stuff. Once it hits mid-April, it's too hot to do things after, you know, 9 a.m. or so. So, yeah, a lot of hiking time after dark, which is pretty cool as well, you know. there's a whole other side of life that comes out at night than you see at the daytime. So it's cool to see that side of, you know, nature and the places that you visit as well.

Right. Yeah, it's harder to appreciate the landscape and the view, but yeah. Yeah, for sure. A lot different kinds of animals out at night versus the day. Well, one thing I think that ties those two questions together is in the summer, in the desert, you might run into something that's moving across a road, short distance, but the snakes are conserving energy. And, you know, you can go out in the desert in June or July and you're going up and down a road, up and down a road. you don't see nothing.

You get out and hike and the snake that comes out of its hole and posts up an ambush right in front of the hole that it's spending its entire summer in is hunting there. And the variance between summer cruising and summer hiking is, in my opinion, significant. Just due to how high. hot it is and the lack of resources through the summer in the desert. And that's where I think for me, the monotony of cruising. And there's nothing like being on a road when it's popping. Yeah, it is fun. You hit the road at the right time. It's hard to beat. But also on the other end of that spectrum, you're on the road on a dead night. You can almost feel it. It's palpitable somewhat early. Yeah. And that's typically where I'd rather go hike a few miles and I know I've got a

shot versus drive for three or four hours and see the one random snake that happens to be in front of you. also the dead snakes or the one snake that someone else ran over yeah yeah that that was something that you know sure it comes with the territory but i would rather see nothing hiking than see the target dead on the road on the road yeah for sure yeah well put and the physicality to it it it feels like you're actually working in a way, I get it. You're driving three or four hours that you are working, but it's not, it doesn't feel the same, right, in terms of the effort you're kind of putting into the positivity bucket for it.

Yeah. I love those, those instances, too, where you're thinking, man, am I doing this right? You know, we were, we were in northwestern Arizona just across the border from Utah and looking for specs in the hills. And, you know, it was morning, but getting a little warm. And I was up on the side of the, you know, this cliff face, basically. And right as I thought, man, there's not going to be a spec up here. I get buzzed.

And there's a speck right there. You know, it's like just, I love those kind of things where you learn something that you maybe didn't anticipate or have that luck where you're thinking, I'm out of luck here. But, yeah, I don't know if you have any fun experiences like that where you find something that, yeah, it was just kind of like a surprise almost. I do feel like there's generally more to be learned from going out and hiking something than cruising it on a road. You know, you can sometimes get a better idea of what they like to do, you know, the kind of places they're. like to be. So that's that's another benefit to the whole hiking side of things. As I feel like you start to learn the animal a little bit better after you know seeing so many of them doing what they do.

Right. And with with that in mind like are you pushing the boundaries? Are you looking at places where you haven't seen them or nobody's seen them and you think they might be there or, you know, are you extending it to different mountain ranges that are kind of a question mark or things like that? I have before. I have not been successful yet. I still think that there is success to be had in some of these places. But, you know, there's like a handful of mountain ranges in southeast Arizona that have never had Klobri. vouchered in them. And, you know, they sit between other ranges that have, you know, like these mountain ranges that don't have vouchers, they have records in all the ranges, north, south, east, and west.

And, like, you know, the habitat is right, the elevation is right. So I still think that there is success to be had in some of these places. But I have not successfully, I don't think, gotten like any things in new ranges or crazy range extensions or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah, I even think that to that same sentiment, maybe not definitely range. but when you're out and you're doing it, there's always that line. And you say, all right, we haven't found anything. Not much is out.

We're tired. We're hungry. We're ready to call it. And the amount of times that just to that rock pile over there or just a little further down the wash, just keep going a little bit more. has come through for me has been crazy where if I would have subdued to the first thought or even the second or third thought of let's throw in the towel I wouldn't have found what I was looking for there's one situation that comes to mind and of course Nate will

remember this, but we were out at the end of an amazing weekend. We had found Obscurous in the United States. Willard I, Willard I found a good handful of clobber eye, and we told ourselves, like, hey, let's get all the montains. And we went up looking for price eye on what, on paper. you would tell yourself, this is the perfect day to be looking for price eye at 9,000 feet. And we went looking for two and a half, three hours and turned up empty. And just when all hope was lost, flipped a rock.

And there's a price eye. And we were able to fulfill. I don't think I should say what we call it. it, but I will. You can edit it out if you want. We call it the Boner Slam, which is all four of the Montaigne's. And it was really like where when we thought all hope was lost. And it literally was, hey, this is going to be the only time in our lives that we will ever have a chance to do this. And it was almost gone. But just before that deadline of zero, Kept on going just a little bit more.

I was walking down the hill with my dog, so Chris really came through on that one. Nice. He said, Nate, you better turn around. Never forget that one. Yeah, that's awesome. Our last price I experienced, it had just hailed, and then we were thinking, you know,

if the sun comes out, we might have some luck or whatever. And then we're like, yeah, it's not coming. coming out, let's go somewhere sunny and like, okay, let's leave. And we start walking, this little faint rattle comes under the log we're standing on having this conversation. And there's a price I under the log. It was crazy. That's awesome.

Yeah. Well, in speaking to the synchronicity, you know, this goes back to our conversation of are you supposed to, do you have the perspective that you are where you're supposed to be in a given moment? Whatever that looks like, right? okay, I'm not failing to turn around when I have had four, four thoughts to do so, that sort of thing. My most recent price I experience was, you know, kind of within that vein in the sense that as we're driving up, there's what it obviously was a lightning strike fire that it started the night before in this tree.

And just within the 10 minutes before we got there, it actually burst flames out. So we were at I, down at IHS, and we're able to put 15 gallons of water on and put it out so that IHS wasn't, marked by, you know, the cheer cow was being on fire. And it fits into that box. It's just like, well, I'm glad we ate lunch, down at the store, did those things. And then, you know, we just were right on it. If we were 10 minutes earlier, well, there's no spark going up. We didn't get the smoke to notice it.

And it said there was just tiny two, three inch flames coming out the front of it. So a perfect spot to just be able to put it out and say, okay, no big deal, bro. Save the forest. Yeah. Yeah. And as we know, those trees are important to a lot of different species, you know. Yeah. I mean, fire is obviously important, right?

But not at the wrong time of year. Not when it's super dried out. Not when it's done working. Right. So then our payment for that, our carmic payment was turning a couple price out within 20 minutes or whatever, you know, and say, turn around and say, okay, good deed done. Good deed recognized. Let's move on. The forest rewarded.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's good stuff. So let's jump into that area a little bit more, since it has been so much of a focus, not necessarily specifically, but I guess changes over time. So southeast Arizona, southwest New Mexico, it's a place that you guys have spent a lot of time. Justin and I am coming to realize have been adding more and more and more and more time. I'm becoming a home away from home, an area where a lot of trips and times I'm going places, you know, I put a lot of thought into it, a lot of detail and say, oh, I'm going to really plan out

where it is that I'm going. And then as it become more and more comfortable with it, I don't do that at all. And instead, I have this Rolodex of flexibility to say, okay, what does it exactly look like? What do I want to do? What have you guys seen change over there over the last 10 years? years. Is it, are the conditions better or worse? Does a monsoon seem better or worse? Weirdly, this will be the first time that I'm going probably in proper monsoon. I've always gone earlier or later, which has been interesting. I'm curious, any of your thoughts around that area?

Well, this year has started off pretty good. I was actually just over there recently. Monsoons are doing pretty good this year. It's nice and green over there. So you'll have a good time. That'll be great. I guess as far as the big picture, it varies a lot year to year. Some years are good monsoons. Some years are bad.

Some years it's really dry. And conditions are not great. It's hard to find snakes. And then, you know, some years everything falls into place and you get perfect conditions. The snakes are out doing things. I guess the only maybe one of the other notable things I've noticed in the past 10 years, which I'm sure everyone has noticed, is just how many more herpers there are now. And, you know, a lot of these places that you didn't used to see many people at 10 years ago. You know, there's groups that come through there now.

So I think that's changed a bit. There's just more people doing it, which, you know, can obviously be a good and a bad thing. But it's good that there's more people into snakes. It's not always the best for the snakes, but we do what we can. And other than that, no huge significant changes that I've noticed, I guess. Yeah, it has a lot more to do with conditions down there, I guess. and you know if it's if it's a good year you'll probably see a lot if it's not it's going to be tougher yeah i even think the the bigger picture of it because 10 years like there's people that have

been going down there for 50 years those would be the right ones to ask that question but you can see the systematic change and the big easy answer is the fires. Right. There are places where you go and you see a fire that went through a canyon or multiple canyons 10, 20, 30 years ago and understanding the animals and how they need the forest and they need the oak and pine coverage for the habitat to remain, to retain moisture, to retain the shade that keeps the moisture in, keeps the temps down. It's very easy to see what used to be before we ever got there and see now how it's not the same.

It's degraded a bit for sure. Right. The devil's advocate to that, though, is also snakes and reptiles, they're pretty resilient. So finding a way, Jurassic Park quote, life finds away. That's where I'm not quite as pessimistic about the overall effects, but I also understand locally and in an eye. isolated fashions, it changes things and it makes things harder where an entire oak forest is wiped out and any animal that's there either has a harder life or has to go two canyons down to thrive in the habitat that it is accustomed to. So it's a bit of a give and take, but in my experience, especially southeast, Arizona, southwest, New Mexico, sky islands. Very hit and miss, I can say, when we first started going down there, hot and dry pretty

consistently, seems like over the last five or six years, the monsoons have been picking up. Well, it depends on the year. just overall a little bit more ideal for the long term and hopefully it can come back and whether it does or not we'll all be dead to answer that question but just just seeing seeing somewhat of a glimmer of hope in more years than not of decent rains, long grasses, wet grounds, hoping some saplings can get a good root hold and grow into another forest, a new forest, where the previous one was burned down. I think that's an optimistic view, but only time will tell. Right.

Yeah, you say, you know, life will find a way, but it didn't for the dinosaurs. they're all dead. Duchey, Justin. We're hoping that doesn't happen to our favorite animals here. Yeah. It is hard to see those negative changes over time. But like you said, there's always something to look on the positive side. And, you know, it's not completely out of hope yet.

You know, yeah. Other than obscura's, what's the toughest thing you guys have chased and found? Or you can feel free to talk about your obscurest. Yeah, as it is such a one, feel free to go on that. Or at least maybe quantify the effort that it took to do that, right? You know? Well, that effort has been quantified by significant study. And either, depending how you look at it, ironically or not so ironically,

Nate and I's obscurest effort was pretty much on the nose with Holy Cross's average estimated time searching. At the time, I'm pretty sure it was 32 days of eight hour per day, man hours of searching. and between Nate and I, I was at 33 days and Nate was at 31, and the obscures ended up in front of us. So, you know, call that ironic or call it not. I know some people have gone out there and found them the first try. I know some people have gone for much longer than 32 days of looking. and either found them or not. That was an effort that full disclosure started, for me at least, as check in a box.

Want to find all the rattlesnakes? Well, if you want to find that one, that's where you've got to go to do it. After a few trips, it really turned into something else. and that's where some people they'll fall in love. Some people, they will fall in hate and never go back. They'll both for us. Yeah, I find one I don't have to look ever again and they're, yeah, they're dead to be. Yeah, but overall, wild ride and, and,

you know, it took pretty much everything we had to come out and find it. And even touching on the change in landscape and global warming and the conditions and habitat evolving, the snake that we found out there was on death's doorstep. Amaciated, lethargic, came out after a very heavy rain, which was one of the only heavy rains of the entire season. And, you know, it's just one of those animals you look at and you know this thing's not doing good. But still left some questions. Was this just an old animal that was on its way out? Geriatric lived a full healthy life and it's at the end of it?

or is this an animal that's affected by previous seasons and this extremely dry season? And that's a question that nobody will ever get answered. But it still leaves that question in your head of, is this evidence or is this just a... Old snake that lived its life? Yeah. And that's the way she got. goes. You spend such an effort and you pray for that moment after so many miles and so many days

and you finally get it, but this snake's on its way out. And all you can do is be sad and happy at the same time. Right. Yeah. So it didn't like motivate you to, okay, we found one. Now we can find more or you know you didn't turn that into your focus is that um just the way it goes sometimes right didn't uh haven't haven't put full forth the effort prior to finding that snake um i will say the the desire is there um we both got blessed i'll say um by being involved in Project Obscures and being able to go into Mexico and that fulfilled some of the itch. Because you get into Sierra San Luis, they are much more plentiful there than in the areas in the United States. But with that said, I still would really love to.

happen upon a healthy obscures in the United States before it's all said and done. And I most certainly am not done hiking out there. Right. Yeah. I guess that's the question is, you know, how much effort are you putting forth now? Are you still making it out there to have a look and to try to get lucky again or try to find one again? Personally, and I know, I think Nate's been out there more than I have recently. I've been out there a couple times since.

For me, it was only once. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's not the most easily accessed area, and it's a little hard herping for sure. Yeah, it was, I'm glad I found it before I moved away from Tucson because it was much, much easier to get there from Tucson. Chris was coming down from Colorado, basically, the entire time. So props to him on that one, he put even some extra effort in on top of the already large effort. But yeah, I mean, as far as anything else that I've looked for, there's nothing that even comes close to the amount of effort that we put into that snake.

So I wouldn't even know what else to compare to it, honestly. Right. Well, what makes the palencio's hard? I have my own ideas, not meaning even relative to finding the snake, but Chris, the first time I talked to you about saying, hey, I'm going to go down there trying. I think it was on 24 or 27 crotes or 23 or 27, something like that. And you said, you'll either love it or hate it, dude. What is it to you guys that makes it hard? Well, there's really only, I guess one aspect is there's basically one, you know, accessible road through the mountain range.

And it does go through good habitat. But, you know, if you want to get any further than that, it's a long hike, takes a lot of effort. It is, you know, historically one of the drier sky islands. I think some of that probably has to do just with its lower elevation than all of the other sky islands that surround it. So I think, you know, the storm systems just kind of dodge the palencios. And Chris and I watched this happen so many times as, you know, it'd be. 9,500 degrees middle of the day and we'd be watching a storm system come in from down south in the Sierra San Luis

and right about when it would hit, you know, the south point of the palencios, it would just seem to break apart and start to go around us. And all the other ranges that we could see would have clouds and look very nice and we would still just be getting blasted by sun. So I think the historically drier just, you know, makes it tougher living conditions for snakes, which makes them tougher to find just because they don't have, you know, access to as much food, as much water. Those are probably some of the main things for me that make it hard. And the terrain too. It's just, you know, it's rough terrain.

None of the hiking is easy. It's a lot of up and down. A lot of... You can't take, what, if you get three or four even steps in a row, you're praising more than that. Yep, exactly. And, you know, a lot of... There was definitely a good portion of hikes that we did out there

that were hard and we didn't see anything at all. So that makes it even harder just to motivate yourself to go back out. It's like, dang, we just spent six hours out there and couldn't even find a gopher snake or a molosis or, you know, any of the more common stuff. So you got to get through those battles mentally as well. Yeah. Couldn't agree more with all of that. And I'm just sitting here thinking, that's when times are hard. And then when it's good, you've got one to two feet of grass that's going up to your knees. And the animals that you're hoping to run into are tiny little snakes that are going to be either up embedded in rocks that are covered by this grass or slithering through the grass.

and in the best conditions, it's harder to find anything that you're looking for. So that is a blessing in a curse situation where if you go out there and conditions aren't good, not much is going to be out at the surface. But if you go out there and conditions are good, nothing is detectable. and that's where it really just boils down to how much effort you're willing to put in. And who knows, you know, that's where the one that we saw happened to be out in front of its perfect little home after a rain the previous day. If we didn't see that, snake, we'd probably still be going after it. It's just one of those things where somewhere between effort and luck.

I'm a guy who likes to think that to a point we earn our luck, but also, you know, luck is luck. And you got to be out there to get lucky. Yeah, you can't get lucky if you're sitting at home. Exactly. It's just a crazy place. Right. When you're planning trips in general, are you watching the weather? Are you looking for, you know, to maximize your luck or, you know, success by capitalizing on weather conditions in the area?

Or are you planning it, you know, six months in advance? So you just go when you go. I'd say we go when we go most of the time. Like, we'll, you know, we'll plan it with or without good weather most of the time. Right. Yeah. Having good weather helps. So, you know, if it's not a far planned out trip and it's like, hey, weather looks really good here this weekend, let's bounce over here.

That's happened, you know, a handful of times. But going back on the you can't get lucky if you're not out there, you know, like even if it's not good conditions, for me it still beats sitting on the couch and there's a chance that I still might get lucky and see something. Right. So got to be out there. Yeah. Imagine it's a little easier when you're living in Tucson. You could look at the weather and say, oh, it's good.

I'm going to drive the couple hours out there and check it out. For your international trips and things, presumably those are booked well in advance. Are you planning extensively or are you going with other folks? What does that look like, name? Usually going with friends and then a good portion of the places that we've gone. We've hired like a guide to take us out to areas that they've seen our targets. So it is generally kind of extensively planned like we usually have in mind. like we usually have in mind, you know, the top targets, the areas that we're going to,

and the amount of days that will be in those certain areas. Yeah, the international trips are, for me, certainly have been more, you know, kind of planned out. but the guides also do a lot of helping with that. So that's the nice thing about going with locals, people that live there or people that have herped those areas extensively in the past. How does going with a guide change your experience of it or how it counts or any of that from your perspective? For me, it doesn't change any, you know, whether anything counts.

I have pretty good confidence in my ability to find snakes, but the jungle is quite different than herping the desert. And it's definitely nice to have a set of local eyes. It helps quite a lot. And there's definitely things that and targets that I would not have seen if it weren't for the local knowledge and for, you know, the guides having that search image previously from finding one before. I think it goes a long way. So it doesn't, for me, it doesn't devalue the experience in any way. You know, other people have different opinions and everyone's entitled to that. But if I'm spending, you know, a bunch of money to go to another country and see a snake and I see that snake, that's a win for me.

Yeah. And I'm sure you're not just like following the guide and letting them find everything. You're out looking. No, I mean, we're out looking and we're finding snakes as well. Right. Yeah. So, but yeah, and just they can teach you things that you didn't know. It's definitely helpful to have a local set of eyes.

For sure. Yeah. Some things you wouldn't be able to find without, you know, those local guides. Permission to access land. Or, yeah, that too. Yeah. Yeah. Chris, what are your thoughts on this?

I knew you were going to ask. Well, I historically have always had an apprehension to pay people to take me to look for snakes. With that said, I haven't necessarily ended up in those cool places and might be different if I was planning that trip out or if I had a chance to do it. I've been to a few cool places. And, you know, that's where when we did our big Costa Rica trip, we were lucky enough that one of our friends, he was out there, Mike Siegel. And he spent six months out of the year in Costa Rica for like three or four years running. Wow.

So we had the guy. vibe, but he was the homie. So, you know, we were all down for it. But definitely, you got to have someone who can keep you safe and put you in the right places to be paying people to take me to look for snakes. It is a bit of an area that, yeah. That's something. something that I have, I won't say avoided, because even on those trips, you know, Nate, by all means, tried to get me on them and it just didn't work out for work or length of time or, you know, one reason or another, had I been able to make it work, would I have been there? Hell yes.

Would I have been happy to pay someone to take me out looking for snakes? Probably not. But all things aside, I definitely would have been there. So that's, you know, pride, ego, call it what you want. That's just something for me. I've tended to, I'm lucky enough to say I haven't had to do it up until this point in my life. Yeah. Costa Rica is kind of an interesting place where most of their, you know, GDP comes from tourism and you know, you almost have to have a guide if you're going into certain areas. You can't even go to Corkavado National Park if you don't have a guide that you're paying, you know, and it's per person. That's the thing that drove me crazy. It's like you didn't just hire the guide. You had to pay for each person in your group, you know. That was a little frustrating. But at the same time, like, I don't follow them and, you know, that's what it is. But yeah,

I feel the same way. I would rather try to just muddle through it on my own, do my own research, and not pay somebody to find snakes for me, you know, get out and find it myself. So, yeah, it's a different balance, though, when you go to some of these countries where you're not getting anywhere without a guide in some ways, you know? Yep. How is your Thailand experience in some other spots? like at Borneo, I'm curious about those trips.

Where was that? Borneo was great. That's probably my favorite trip that I've done so far. Yeah, that'd be amazing. Yeah, just everything out there was awesome. Jungle was awesome. The plants out there, some really cool plants. I'm not a plant guy, but there's some really cool stuff out there.

And then, yeah, one of our big. targets for out there was the Malcolm's pit viper, which very large, impressive pit viper. We ended up getting like a four-foot adult female. Still one of my most favorite snakes that I've ever seen in the wild. So, yeah, Borneo was a great time. Thailand was also really cool. saw, I think, nine species of vipers out there and a couple different species of crates. Right.

Yeah, it's just so cool being out there. And, you know, looking for some of the snakes that used to see on Discovery Channel and animal planet and those types of things, it's awesome to be there looking for them. For sure. Now, like I always wondered, too, if you went back there, would you be able to do it on your own or do you think you'd still hire a guide to do it? I think so, yeah. Yeah, I think I would feel, I think the thing that would make me the most uncomfortable would be having to drive my own car in Southeast Asia. Right. Yeah. Driving cars in other countries can be. Yeah. Different world for sure. But I feel like, and I guess the language barrier was like much harder to deal with in Asia than it was, you know, in like Costa Rica or Mexico.

Right. So that side of it definitely helped having someone there who could, you know, talk to the locals and that sort of thing. as well. Yeah. So while we're in the question of things counting or following up and the question of things counting differently, given y'all's privilege of being involved with Project Obscurious, do you feel differently about finding animals in areas that have been supplemented with animals from other populations or in areas that are suitable habitat? So this wouldn't be the obscureous context, at least not now. It doesn't matter because we found it before it was supplemented.

So you have thoughts. Okay. Feel free. Rub it in, huh? Yeah, well, that was just my shitty answer as you were saying that. Haven't found one in supplemented area since they've been supplemented. And I don't know. Nate, I just had to crack a joke, so you might have a more substantial answer.

Well, and let me extend it even further, right? So if that's sort of a middle, what about an area that's suitable habitat, but where all of the animals are reintroduced? So, for example, Louisiana pine snakes, right? They, for a decade now, have been putting them into habitat in national forest property that's seemingly suitable. there might have been animals there a hundred years ago but there's no clear reason they wouldn't have been but there are no historic records prior to those animals being released there. Subsequently, so they put tags into everything

and animals have been found that don't have tags so they're having wild reproduction in that population. That's sort of the continuum all the way to Chinese alligators in areas that are entirely supplemented and have a big fence around it. So if that's the rain, from no supplementation through to a fence around it.

Kind of where and how do you feel about that spectrum in terms of saying, yeah, I found something. Does it count? Is there an asterisk? How does it fit for you? For me personally, I think it really boils down to why are you there? If you're out there to see the animal in a place, either where it's supposed to be or where it should have been,

Quite frankly, I don't give a damn if anyone else puts an asterisk on it or not. An animal living, thriving, reproducing in the wild, it's there under its own terms, whether it's parents or grandparents or however, you know, that the reestablishment of the species, really would mean less to me. An easy example of that is pythons in Florida. Now, I've never found a python in Florida, but if I found a Burmese python in Florida, would I think it's cool?

Hell yes. Do they belong there? Is it something that should be there? Is it a bad thing for the ecosystem that they were there? All the answers to those questions are easy. But if I'm in Southern Florida, do I want to run into a Burmese python? Absolutely, I do. And that's something that, you know, whether or not it makes a difference to other people,

I think the circumstances of the animal surviving and thriving there are what would be important to me. Now, if I went and found a pine snake that was very, released yesterday at a site that I knew they were released at yesterday. Honestly, I wouldn't even be there looking for them. But that's where it would be a difference to me. Is the animal surviving on its own? Or was it situationally placed there for me to find it? I mean, I guess I should toss out, right?

Anyone has had a snake get out in their house can appreciate that even five minutes can be a long, you know, They can get up there on mine for five minutes. I do the same thing. Like when we're taking pictures of a snake or something and then we walk away and I'm like, well, maybe I want a few more minutes and I'll go back and try to find it. And most of the time it's, you know, unless it's a crow, it's really difficult to find that snake or tortoise or, you know, box turtle or whatever. They're just gone and you don't find them again. So, yeah. Unless you watch the guy pull it out of a bag and put it on the ground.

and say, I found it, you know, then you're probably, that's always the risk with guides, right? We've got that. That's a good point. Yeah, if your guide's doing that ahead of you, you know. Oh, check this out. Well, and one experience in Costa Rica, I went and, you know, there was this like little preserve area and you had to pay a couple bucks to go look at the, you know, look around the area.

And I said, well, have you seen any snakes lately? And they said, oh, yeah, go to this area and look around. around, you know, in the middle of the police tape and you'll find it. Like it was like a viper and it was just right in the middle of this taped off area. It was kind of funny. Like, do I count that? Well, it was a wild snake doing wild snake things, you know, just because somebody pointed it out to me, you know, I don't know. It's funny enough, my first time in Costa Rica. I went with my girlfriend and we did the resort and I was looking for snakes here and there. and whatever.

But I had one night and hired a bird guy to just take me out into the jungle and we could go look for snakes. And we were out there searching, you know, I really wanted to find an eyelash viper. And we stopped at three or four places, didn't find nothing. We're driving down the highway. And he goes, you know, I got this one place that I, I think would be worth stopping. And we stop in the parking lot and he goes into the lodge and I'm out in the parking lot

smoking a cigarette, just waiting for him to see if we can go there or not. I see this guy walking out with a huge smile. And he said something along the lines of, oh, you want to see snakes? I said, yeah, I'd love to see snakes. And turn around and put your flashlight on the tree right behind you. And sure is shit. There was an eyelash viper. He said that had been coming down to this Brumiliad for like four days straight.

And I'm sitting there in the parking lot smoking a cigarette, just not even thinking twice. And this eyelash viper is 10 feet above my head. And I would have never seen it unless he came and pointed it out to me. But still to me, like that's my first eyelash viper. And that's even more significant or more memorable to me. than if I just would have got out of the car and happened to see it myself.

You know, that's a good story to tell. And the way it all played out was very ironic, but also awesome. Right. Yeah. I think it does help to ask locals, like, hey, have you seen snakes in your area? Like, yeah, there's one up in that tree right there. You know, there was a, you know, I think I've had two of those experiences in Costa Rica in parking lots where I'm like any snakes?

They're like, yeah, right in that tree next to the parking lot. And there's people over there. And I'm like, oh, cool. You know, there's like a side stretch or a, what, anyway, some sort of viper. I'm not up on all the vipers as well as I should be. But then the eyelash viper was in a tree just outside the, yeah, the visitor center of one of the parks or whatever. Always ask the locals. That is something that we live by.

Oh, go ahead, sir. Even cruising or, you know, at the gas station, getting into town. Walking by people on trails. You see a snake? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, the other, I guess the downside of this, I'm trying to get, you know, getting close for photos. And they're like, oh, stay back.

It's venomous. Don't go close. I'm like, I'm okay, guys. I'm not that close. I've got experience with it. No, no, no, you need to get down. Come down. I'm like, all right, yeah.

You don't get that experience, I guess. Yeah. At this point, do you guys take phone shots? Are you bringing your camera? You mentioned this a little bit, but in general, right, if you're going out, Herpin, you're bringing your camera, you're taking phone shots, you're taking video. What's your preference at this point? The last year or so, I have gone back to basically solely just using my phone. Just I have a camera.

I have a pretty decent setup. I used to use it quite a bit. Sort of have just found it annoying and a hassle to get it out and, you know, use it. And pose a snake sometimes. It just takes time. And, you know, going back to just living in the moment, I feel like the last year, just, you know, snapping a couple quick pictures on my phone again and then sitting there for five minutes and actually looking at the snake, move around, and just staring at it for a few minutes,

not through a lens has given me more appreciation the last year than I think I would have more appreciation and enjoyment than I think I would have got them if I was still pulling out my camera every time. That being said, I do enjoy using my camera for some things. You know, phones can't just quite get that quality that a good camera setup does. So, you know, most international trips, I'm definitely still bringing a camera, and I'll take photos of things that I really want to see, mostly Vipers. And, yeah, the rest of it gets a cell phone a lot of the times. Yeah, pretty much the same here. I actually have a pretty sweet backpack, unsponsored plug for Lowy Pro, has a sweet little camera thing that just flips around.

And I can have my camera out, take a picture, and back in in 30 seconds. so for the most part typically a phone shot or sometimes nothing depending on what it is Rattlesnake I'll typically at least

take a phone shot of it cool Rattlesnake I'm going to bust out my camera snap at least a few shots of it definitely something I haven't seen before or like targets on any international trips or anything like that. Like, it's getting a photo shoot.

But over the years, that's where I've taught myself to get an acceptable photo photo pretty quickly. And that's where I can chill while everyone else is taking pictures or I can keep looking for snakes and let them do the, a 30, 45 minute photo shoot and I'll go find them another one to take more pictures of. What are you guys doing with those photos then? Are you sharing those on INAT, Hurt rapper, Instagram,

texting people, nothing. I'll send Chris pictures of the snakes that I find generally. Well, sometimes we will be like in different states in different areas and we like to have snake offs

and we'll be like, all right, next 24 hours, whoever can find the most snakes wins. So that's always fun. Who's ahead? I usually win. You do usually win, I feel like, yeah. I think I've maybe won maybe once. Yeah, you've got one or at least.

Maybe. No, I, even anymore, like nothing is typically what it is. Like I'll send some pictures to Nate and my friends and stuff, text messages, you know, hey, got this, whatever. We've got our group chats. People are always posting whatever. Even anymore, like sending them to my parents or I'll get home and I'll show my girlfriend like, yeah, check out what I found and she could care less, but it's still like,

yeah, I got one cool. It was really big into the Instagram and Facebook and all of the groups for a while. It just, it's a lot. And feeling like, you know, we all have to have the next best snake on Instagram or be the first one to post the cool snake out of the group or you know someone just posted a cool spec last week so I got to post a cool spec this week like that all just became a lot so

Instagram is cool I mean we're all on it all the time but I find myself hardly posting anything on social media anymore whereas five years ago any good weekend everyone on social media was going to see what we found right after

right? That brings up another question with that is are you posting it sort of real time real time with a slight delay off season? You know you're posting in January about your stuff from April what are you doing?

It used to be real time when we first started out. Like you said, we had a good weekend. People are going to know about it when we came back. For me now, I don't put any rules on it for myself. So, you know, if I find a snake and I really want to share it right then and there, I can and I will. that also typically does not happen. And, you know, I post a little less now as well than I did before. But, yeah, I try not to put any rules on it because there are a lot of people in the community that are like, you shouldn't post, you know, in real time and you should only post out of season.

And, you know, I think that there's maybe some benefits to not posting in real time. But at the end of the day, you know, there's so many herpers and so many people doing it now that me not doing it isn't going to stop it from happening. There's, you know, a hundred other people that are still going to do it. So it's not exactly a secret of what's going on in any place anymore. I think that's a big aspect of it. Like, let's be honest, March through October, snakes are out. Depending on the time of year and depending on any given day, there's a snake out somewhere.

I think people get real touchy about certain spots and places. which we all do, but I think some of the areas that are a little more heavily herped are the ones that someone sees a picture posted. They feel some type of way about it. And let's be honest, for every picture posted, there's probably 10 people out looking for these animals, whether or not the picture is posted. So I think by default, just because of the way that my life has gone, posted or not, if I post a picture, it's probably going to be from two or three years ago anyways.

But also, like, a story. Stories are cool because you tell your family, you tell your friends, people who you don't know, but know you like snakes. Like, yeah, you go out for a weekend. You can put a few pictures on stories and people can know you're having a good time. Mom can know that you're out camping and loving life and you had a great weekend. So there are, in my opinion, more benefits to doing what the hell you want. Of course, with certain regulations, you know, posting pins, posting specific. locations or places

like probably best if you don't but like are we really taking it so far as chastising people for posting a snake they found 20 minutes ago? To me that's a bit much. Second and last question for me based on your experience does the moon cycle

impact your ability to find snakes? I look for rattlesnakes so I don't think it's that big of a difference maker. I do think for Calubrid's it is but I've found

plenty of rattlesnakes and even plenty of Calubrid's on full moon nights. I think there are more aspects even now that nobody has even thought of yet or a convergence of factors

that might make things tick but to me I go when I can go Sometimes I'm driving out And it's like oh yeah full moon Ten years ago I would have been like oh man Full moon

Now it's like Full moon whatever I'm going Yeah I haven't noticed like a huge difference Of moon or no moon for me You know I feel like

70% of like 70% of like nights I don't even look up at the moon because I'm just staring at the ground looking for snakes. So, you know, I don't know what phase it's in anyways, to be completely honest. But yeah, I don't think I've noticed a huge difference in my herping for moon or no moon and whether that makes things productive or not. Is it something you would bear in mind doing that international travel when you're like setting the dates out forward or is that just when you can go?

Not as not. as much for international trips either because usually I'm there for you know like two to four weeks depending on the trip and where I'm going so you're going to get basically a full moon cycle whether you like it or not so yeah those ones it's moon cycle is not a factor when I plan international trips it's more like a time of year thing and when people say is you know like these are the productive times to come out here for pit vipers. That's music to Justin's ears, I can tell you, based on length of the trip, that's a whole different fight that we've already had.

Maybe I have to have again, but that's great. Justin, do you have anything else you want to hit on? I got one more. I just had a question about, you know, when you're guys like, you that focus on a couple different species pretty heavily. Are you planning to share? that information or, you know, like publish something or, you know, share, share information about what these animals are doing or best ways to find them or things like that, you know, habits or

interesting observations you make. Or is it just kind of, you know, you're accumulating that for yourself? Do you consider it like, you know, trade secret kind of thing? I'll talk to people. that's even funny this came up. Someone was asking me for some stuff on Panama Rattlesnakes pretty recently and he was asking the right questions. I tried to be honest and I'm not going to lie to people.

Rob can't even speak to this. If you're asking the right questions and you're seeking the right information and you're respectful about it, you can definitely get some answers. I'm not going to be forthcoming and just blasting it to the world. But that there are certain levels to that. I know I've talked to Nate about it, and I still want to do this, whether it'll happen or not.

That's another thing. But I've really wanted to make an eye candy picture book for specs. much like Michael Price's books on rock rattlesnakes. That doesn't exist for speckled rattlesnakes. And I think between our group of friends, like we could most certainly catalog the majority of the speckled rattlesnake phenotypes and locales. Obviously, there's some work into that. And Justin, you know, the author of several books, maybe this is something for us.

to talk more about in the future, but that's something that I've wanted to do. I've even templatized it to a point. Right. But anything further than that, I know I would like to do it, whether or not it will happen. Only time will tell. But certainly not unspoken trade secrets if people, and it goes for anyone. You send a message, you Facebook. Instagram, you know, whatever.

If someone wants to talk snakes, much like tonight, I'll go all night long. If you flat out ask me for a spot, I'm going to tell you to pound sand. But if you want to talk specs or any given species that I know something about, I'll tell you what I've observed and I'll tell you what's worked. I'll tell you what hasn't. in aspects of locations and spots, I will confirm or deny. I'm not going to hand them out, but if you come with your own spot that you're asking me about, I will tell you what I think about it.

Yeah. Cool. I would encourage that book. That sounds fantastic. It would be great to see the variety that you've seen and all the different color morphs and patterns and things. That would be really fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, it'd be a lot of fun. Maybe we'll have to put our heads together. And I can ask you a thing or two about publishing something because between Nate and we've got a solid group that we've been out looking for specs with over the last eight, nine years. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Shout out Mike. Shout out Travis. Shout out Trent. Shout out RJ. All the homies. Like we've seen so many specs that it almost feels like it would be a disservice not to show the world. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. And before we get to Nate, Nate's answer to Justin's question, this really did bring to mind something I did want to bring about, which was actually the original ideation to say, hey, what are we going to do next? It was, you know, COVID had foreclosed going to Western Australia in March 2020. and the idea to go look for all the U.S. croak forms was born of your project to your map with the photos of all the different forms.

You missed one. I highlighted that for you, but, you know, at least relative to my view. But that was it, man. You showed me the map. Yeah, that's right. And I have my own saved screenshot of that with an act. over at least relative to crow it's all but i missed the cane break but michael i saw that map and i said there you go dude you just made the project i need to be able to make that map based on my own

pictures and that that was where it came from hell yeah that's cool that's awesome thank you for saying that about snakes with other people for me. Same thing. Chris had it pretty, pretty well. I enjoy talking about snakes. I can talk about snakes for quite a while. Same thing. I'm not going out giving around spots or exact pins for people to go find things, but ask the right set of questions. If you want to know information about the snakes, that's great. If you want to know spots to find the snakes at that are from me, that's not so great. So, yeah, sort of, I sort of, you know, I lean the same way as far as that side of things goes for the most part. Can you guys tell that me and Nate have been doing this together for a while?

We share the same thoughts about a lot of aspects of this. And I really do think that the right two guys found each other at the right time. And, you know, one way or another, the universe works in weird ways. And we've been doing things together in similar ways for a while now. and really proud of it. That's awesome, yeah. That was one of the challenges of doing the Utah Field Guide was getting pictures from Rob and Nipper and these other guys

that we've done the trips with. So it was like a lot of the same animals. And you're like, well, do I like their pitcher better or my pitcher better? It's kind of a, it's a hard question sometimes. Yeah. Well, and then it turned into a question, right? What does Gordon like? You know, when he had a book,

And it's like, does his sensibility align more with mine or with yours or nippers? Right. In some ways, I imagine that helped as an arbiter of such a question. Right. Yeah. That's for sure. So the last thing I wanted to hit on was really give you guys each an opportunity. Is there anything as a go-forward message in terms of what ethical herping looks like that you would want to put out there as we head towards Rappin'n for a nine?

Respect the snakes You know, that's a big one. No matter how you hurt, how you go about things, respect to the animal. And, you know, everyone does it for themselves to an extent, obviously. Like we all go herping because we like it. But I find myself, like even with, you know, photowing sometimes now, it's like, is this for me or is it for the animal? Is it for the better for me or is it for the better for the animal?

And if that, if the answer to that is it would be, you know, better for the animal to do the opposite of what I'm doing, I think that's important to ask yourself and to just try to make sure that that's something that purpers follow is that we're constantly reevaluating ourselves and just what we're in it for and how we're respecting the animals because of it. Well said. Yeah, that's good stuff. How about you, Chris? Any other aspects of that? I think it's along the same lines, but over a period of a few years, and even still, I've noticed that a lot of people will claim to be advocates for these animals while using the animals to advocate for themselves. And that's how I simply put it to myself.

am I being an advocate of the snake or am I taking the advantage of the snake to advocate for my image and ego and pride, which sometimes is pretty big. I love myself, but the older I get, the more, I think I'm pretty cool, you know, depends who you ask. But the older I get, the more I just keep telling myself, you, you sell. all the snake, get a quick picture, let it do its thing. Be an advocate for the animal. Don't use it as an advocate for myself. So that's pretty much how I leave it. That's good.

And beware of too much self-love because it makes you jealous of those who envy you. I love that. I haven't heard it, but I'm going to stick that one in my pocket. All right. Well, this has been a great conversation. We really appreciate you guys coming on. Some awesome information shared. And yeah, it's really great. I guess you mentioned you post on Instagram and stuff like that. Is there a place where people can find you best? Instagram is best for me. Yep. My handle is Spex and Weps. Okay. So that's me. It's good to put a face with the name.

I've followed you for a while. Okay. Enjoyed your stuff, but I didn't know it was you. Appreciate that. Thank you. He has it for a reason. Yeah. That's about what you can guarantee finding.

If you go out with Nate, you're looking for specs or leps. You're probably going to find them. That's very cool. Mine's not as flashy, but same thing, Instagram, Chris Sid, 24. Cool. All right. Well, was there anything else, Rob, or did we cover all your your? Well, I mean, there's a ton more I'd like to ask and a ton more they wouldn't like to answer on the record, but maybe we'll get them back this.

But, no, this is fantastic. Thank you guys. I'm happy to do part two. Yeah, part two. Anything you guys ever want to set up if you need to fill a hole, I will most certainly do this again any and every time. Rob, thank you for making this happen. Justin, thank you for all you've done for the community. You know, green tree pythons, carpet pythons, it's an honor to be here talking with you and excited to see what we can talk about in the future next time. and count on me to ask you about making a spec book because maybe this was just what needed to happen to do it.

So thank you both. It really means the world and I had a great time. And obviously with my bro Nate, like this was a lot of fun, which I knew it was going to be. So thank you all. That's great. That's good stuff, man. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, even after two hours of talking with me, you still say that's really nice of you.

Thank you. Definitely have to have you guys back on. This has been a lot of fun. Love to. Well, have a great night. So hang out for one second. We'll end the record. Justin will read us out.

Well, as always, we're grateful for the Moralea Python's radio group and hosts on our podcast. And thanks for Eric and all he does. And we'll leave you with, thank you for listening. And we'll catch you next week for Rept Off High Club. Thank you.