Reptile Fight Club - Haranguing the Herpers w/Gabe Shuler

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob have another installment of Haranguing the Herpers w/Gabe Shuler. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow 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/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

All right, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. This is Justin Ju-Lander speaking to you here. And with me is Mr. Rob Stone. Welcome. How you doing? I'm doing great. Wave to the people. A hoi-fi, et cetera, and so on.

I love it. Yeah, so how are you doing? Everything good? Yeah, all good. Man, it's getting hot here, surprisingly. I don't know about you, but, yeah, we've had those in the mid-80s and stuff. You know, a typical. Yeah, yeah. I came home. My daughter's got a sunburn. She was laying out in the sunshine and, like, didn't put sunscreen on the back of her legs. She's going to have a rough night, I think. But I guess you'd have to learn somehow. I forgot to put on sunscreen in Puerto Rico once, and I will never make that mistake again. That was a rough couple of days after that. But yeah, so what do you do?

Yeah, very good. We actually did get no herbs yet, but I did go after we were. recorded last time on a six and a half seven miles jaunt with my daughter the sun suntan loachian reminded me we didn't put any on but we then uh it was when we were out on the trail that i was going oh maybe we should have you know that sort of idea so yeah we came through it all right though right all right well tonight uh don't want to leave him hanging here we got gave schuler so welcome to the podcast i'm glad to have you on how's it going y'all doing good oh yeah yeah i'm looking forward to doing some herb talk yeah man absolutely So, as they said, I'm Gabe.

I'm with Flippin'10 with Josh. I mean, sorry, gosh, James Guy. So we do the Flippington podcast. Check it out if you guys get a chance. We go over a lot of different cool field herping stories, techniques, different experiences in the field. And just talk about, you know, getting people out, getting them interested, getting them out in nature.

Because, you know, if we don't get people into it, then there's going to be no one left to protect it, right? Right? Yeah, you got to care about it to protect it. That's right. I do love the, you know, kind of the portion of your podcast where you talk about kit and, like, hearing about what people bring. And, I mean, I, most of the time I show up and I've forgotten, like, half the stuff I usually, you know,

on a, you know, since I drive through the forest and I live out here, half the time I'm so close to my house or somebody that I know that I just wing it. Right. Like, you know, a bottle of water. and cell phone. Yeah. Well, that's the one thing I did forget was water, right? I did like a 10-mile hike with zero water.

Like, okay. But I don't know. It's funny because, like, a lot of times I'll go out and I'll have water, you know, and I'll be carrying around the whole time and I'll get back to the car. And I haven't, you know, had any drinks at all. So then I'm like just carrying around that full bottle of water all day. So it's kind of, I don't know, a mixed bag. So, yeah, I usually just wait until I get.

get to the car and then get a big soda or something at the gas station. Rehydrate that way. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a lot of fun hearing the, we don't have enough herping podcasts, I think. No, not at all, man. I mean, it's, you know, everyone talks about the captive stuff, which is great. I mean, as you can see behind me, like we all cat.

But, you know, there's just something about seeing that animal in the wild to really, like, full spectrum, bring you a around and like just help you appreciate those animals even more and help you be a better keeper. Yeah, yeah. And I really think that's kind of the evolution of it. You know, we get really excited about, you know, breeding and keeping stuff. And then we're like, well, I want to see them in the wild. So you go check them out in the wild. And then you're like, man, all this, all this captive stuff's keeping me from going out herping.

So maybe I don't need to thin down my collection or whatever. So I put a cap on myself. I said like once I reach like 100, like that starts. cutting in to herping time. We're, you know, yeah. Yeah. And it seems like baby, especially like pythons, babies come right when it's good herping season.

So, yeah. Speaking of which, I freaking missed a Woma clutch. I was cleaning out a cage and I find this desiccated clump of eggs. I'm like, how did I miss this? Like, I thought they were a little young to go. So I wasn't really monitoring or too close. But then I'm like, oh, I missed eggs. Not cool.

But what do you do? I got some pines pared behind me. I'm hoping. crossing my fingers they go. Nice. What type? Florida Pines. One's normal and one's the female's patternless,

100% hit Lucy for both the pinks and the yellows. So I'll be making some hets and holding some stuff back. Yeah. It's such a weird thing. Like in the East, like pines are the like rare hard to find thing and out here like the gopher snakes are like the most commonly encountered snake almost.

My buddy in Colorado is like look at this bull snake I found. Look at this. other bull snake I found. And I'm just like, man, if I found as many bulls as he found in pines every day, like, I'd be the goat. Yeah, right. Yeah, but then it wouldn't be as cool because if they're that many, you know, I don't know, but I really love Great Basin Gophers. They're one of my favorite snakes. They were one of my first pets and, like, had those for years and just loved, you know, love that snake, you know, they're really fun. I always like geek out finding them.

I mean, pits are, in my opinion, one of the best calubrids. Yeah. Yeah, speaking, which that book is out now, the Pituophis book, it looks really good. Yeah, I need to get it. Me too. I haven't gotten my copy. I was waiting to get one from Jordan. Jordan Pairt helped out with a lot of the range maps and did a lot of the work in that regard.

So I was going to get a copy from him. Nice. Yeah. Well, and it seems like pre-ordering didn't help with this process because I did pre-order and plenty of people got on before they come in the mail. Yeah. So I think going to the show was actually the way to get it earliest or whatever. Right. Yeah.

Did he have a table set up at one of the show or a couple shows? I think so. That was my impression is that it was kind of the first release of it. Yeah. Well, I'll put in a plug for IHS. It sounds like we're going to have a bunch of books at IHS, hopefully including my own. I'm really hoping that nipper. in my book make it in time to be at IHS.

I'm also so obvious you guys have got the HIPP with NEPR. Yeah. He just seems like he'd be a blast to Herp with. Yeah, I'll accept one front, and that's the musical front. He still gives us. He's from Europe, man. You know, they got the, they had the Beatles, and there you go. Well, he'd probably say, like, what do you mean the Beatles?

who are the Beatles. Yeah, never heard of him. He was saying that about Led Zeppelin. I'm like, are you kidding me? There's no way you don't know Led Zeppelin. Come on, man. Good old nipper. We love him.

He's a good man. Yeah. But, yeah, I've just trying to put on the finishing touches on this field guide, and it's been, yeah, it's kind of a slower process. I mean, there's a lot of other projects. Like I said, they're going to have. three or four books that, you know, kind of are around the same time, and, and they lost their editor guy he took off and chased tail or something and left them kind of high and dry.

So it's been kind of a bummer for all the projects over there, but hopefully we'll get through them. And, you know, Bob's great to work with and working with Gordon Shuit now, so that's been good. But, yeah, I'm learning. There's been some taxonomy changes in the couple years that we've been right. writing this thing and trying to get it out. It just did a huge paper, I believe it was year before last, changing the taxonomy on so many things.

Right. And so now technically in South Carolina, it used to all just be pantherophous alleghenyenses, right? I don't care if it was a yellow or a black rat or like it integrated. It's now black rats, they're pantherophous alleginenses. Our yellow rats on the coast, they're quadripetatus. Yeah. And I mean, some of the changes are probably warranted, you know, I don't know. I guess the frustrating thing is, you know, when it's hard to find the information. You know, there was a change on one of the short horn, you know, mountain shorthorn lizards and one of the rhinosoma. And I was trying to find like a paper that, you know, that changed or described the subspecies that they changed in the book to. And I'm like, I can't find it. Like I found a paper references. the different types and they're used to, you know, somebody proposed that they should be

different subspecies or species or something, but nobody made the official like, here's this and here's where it ranges and, you know, that kind of thing. So I'm like, if I can't find it, like, how are we making these changes? You know, so I'm a little confused. And so I've been just trying to dig in the literature, trying to get things back to them as quick as possible, you know, kind of a hurry up and wait situation. But yeah, taxonomy is not my favorite. subject as of late. They made all the true frogs on the East Coast Lithobades and all the ones on the West Coast Rana.

And, you know, the Latin of Lithobades, I believe it translates to like lives in rocks. How many damn rocks do you see on the East Coast? Right. I'm like, no, give us Rana back. Yeah, yeah. Some of those things just make you scratch your head. I think it goes back to my perpetual favorite that Owen Pelley Python are theoretically

Nictafil a Python the beautiful oh yes the nocturnal python distinguishing it from zero other pythons but but we have to count out to that you know yeah don't don't change it to which is a much cooler genus name for sure these are the rules right it's not 250 years ago yeah tried and true for sure yeah my my least favorite change too or at least one of them was the sarah malice obesity the chukwala obesity just fits a chukwala you know adder i don't know where atter came from but i'm like it'll always be obese to me i'll always be bermered at me good times all right well kind of tell us where you fit into herpesculture herpetology herping and wherever um so i work currently as a natural

for Berkeley County. And so being a naturalist, I do a lot of nature tours and nature guides throughout Berkeley County and through the park system. I also do a lot of educational programs at the park I'm based out of. Is it kind of like a park ranger type job? Yeah, so it's a county park, but it's the largest county park we have that is as interactive as it is. So we do classes from schools all the time, teaching them, like I do a herpenter.

pathology class. I do like a birds class, a fossils class. Yeah. We do nature guides, you know, bird walks, all the, all the cool stuff. Oh, that's awesome. And I also do a lot of traveling educational programs, both for

work and outside of work. Okay. So like, to the right of me, I have a rack system here. This is all program animals. And most of them are like native species, just because I am bringing awareness to primarily native species.

I have pythons and stuff too, just because, like, you know, my biggest is a big carpet python. He's a old, funny story about him is one kid was like, does he have a name? And I was like, actually he doesn't have a name.

It's like, what kind of python is? He has a carpet python. This little country bumpkin kid with a mullet goes, well, I think we should name him Rug. And I was like, all right, his name is Rugg.

So that's how Rugg got his name. That's awesome. But yeah, man. I get to help out through some different volunteer opportunities as well and meet some great people and work with some different conservation organizations. So, yeah. That's cool. So what you're telling me is you get paid to herp.

Well, I get a lot of other stuff, but since it's in the woods, I get casually hurt as I'm doing all the other stuff. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. That sounds like a pretty decent job.

So my job is actually a, was an old rice plantation back in the early, in the late 1600s through basically early, late 1700s. And so over time, the reservoir that they dug out to flood the surrounding rice fields is on a peninsula in between two river basins. And over time, nature's taken that back and it's this big, beautiful blackwater swamp. Okay. So surrounded by Cypress. wall. Cool. So I'm working in a Cypress swamp.

So you can imagine a lot of aquatic snakes. Right. Yeah. That's cool. What are the main species you see? Well, before you say that, just for clarity, right? Since we haven't said it here, anyone is not familiar with you. Berkeley County, South Carolina.

South Carolina, yep. I work for a park called Cypress Gardens. Okay. And so it's where the notebook was filmed. the Patriot was filmed there I got to do I got to do some Gator watching

and you know just kind of secure in the area for filming on righteous gemstones that was fun that's cool yeah yeah every now and then you get some cool opportunities like that when a film crew comes through and they're like well that's the that's the reptile guy

he knows how they're like hey man you know come spot for alligators or snakes or whatever and that's cool nice Well, as long as you're not reenacting Notebook scenes with Jake or something, you know, we're cool with that. Not that there's anything wrong with, no.

I love the man, but he's not quite pretty enough. But yeah. So have you, you born and raised, South Carolina? Born and raised, South Carolina. But I, born and raised grew up in the Francis Marion. So I've been here my whole life. It's hard to leave when you live in such a really cool, wild area. You know, I grew up very much as like the feral child.

Like when I grew up on a horse farm out in the middle of National Forest. So like when I wasn't at school or doing farm chores or whatever, it was riding full withers through the forest and catching critters. Yeah, not horses, huh? Well, I grew up on horses, yeah. I rode horses. I showed horses actually in tournaments and shows up until I was about probably 15, 16.

Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's fun. My boss, he kept horses and he said, you know, you can always tell, or what do you say, person's love of horses is inversely proportional to their IQ or something to that extent. I can tell you right now. Someone who grew up on a horse farm, there's a reason I own horses.

I tell everyone you want to know what it's like owning a horse, call your vet a few times a month. I said every time you call them, pull $500 out and flush it down the toilet, I said, and every time you walk outside, throw $100 bill on the ground. Right. And then go hop on your bike and ride it around in the bumpiest area possible. And, you know, it's... Basically what you're experiencing as a horse farmer.

Horses are fun, and it's really, you know, the ride, and the competition's fun and all, but like, forces are a lot of work. Oh, yeah, yeah. And they get themselves into some pretty sticky situations, too. Like, they're not, they don't make the best decisions all the time. No. Yeah. Yeah.

They're cool, cool animals for sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, is it time for some haranguing? Rob, do you want to start us off with a question or two here? Um, sure. We're going to hurrah.

rang the herper tonight. Okay, perfect. Well, yeah, and I would say, actually, kind of the first place that I want to start is, can you describe, so where is the Francis Marion National Forest, particularly the part that you're involved with in South Carolina, like relative to the state, relative to, yeah. Well, I will say I am in all over the Francis Marion throughout the week. I work on the complete opposite end, so every day I pretty much traverse the whole forest back and forth to work. How big is it? I believe it's 200 and roughly around 270,000 acres.

Okay. Yeah, it's big. Yeah, it's massive. So it encompasses Berkeley, Charleston, Berkeley County, Charleston County, I believe a little bit of Georgetown County. and I think maybe a small portion of the edge of Williamsburg County, but I think it's pretty, most of it's just Berkeley and Charleston County and a little bit of Georgetown County. Okay. Is it completely protected or is it, do you?

So Francis Marion's composed of multiple WMAs. For anyone wondering what a WMA is, that's a wildlife management area. and those WMA units are Units that are federal land that people can hunt. We pay our taxes so that we can have public access land. Right. So that's what that is. There's different rules on different seasons for different WMAs.

Legally here, you can go out and find and photograph snakes all you want, but legally you are not allowed to have a snake hook or bags or any sign that you're actively trying to take. animals out of the wild. So no permit system or anything like that? No, it's just like a, hey, don't get caught with a hook. Because of some volunteer opportunities I do and some other stuff, and because of my work and stuff like that,

you know, I get permission to do certain things, or I have, you know, a permit for this or that, or I'm under someone's permit for this or that. But overall, you're usually not going to get harassed super bad I mean, they have been starting to crack down on it. But usually if you've got a snake hook and you're road cruising, they're not going to stop you for road cruising with a snake hook in your car. Now, if you're hiking and you've got a snake hook, you might get stopped.

Most of the time, these guys are reasonable if they can tell you're not out trying to be shitty and poach stuff. You know, not that like taking wild snakes, you know, that's a whole other topic. Right. Unless it's illegal, yeah. When it's protected WMA, it is illegal to take, kill, or harass snakes on public lands in South Carolina. So if you have a snake hook, you could get ticketed. Really just depends on who stops you. Right. Yeah.

One of those fun deals, huh? Yes, yes. Okay. And in South Carolina, in South Carolina, if you're caught from a vehicle spotlighting, because I, we all. do it. When we're driving roads and we pop out and shine a light on the road, oh, what is that? Yeah. It would get stopped for spotlighting. Oh, wow. At the time, if the officer

stops you, and you're like, oh, man, I was looking for snakes and I saw a snake on the road. I was going to help it cross. He's going to be like, all right, weirdo. Like, move along. Yeah, it's mostly for, like, deer hunting and things like that. It's for people illegally spotlight and deer and food. Right. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, fair. So, the area generally, right, it's kind of the central part of coastal South Carolina. Central coastal, yep. Where I live at is, where I actually live at is almost dead center on the coast in between the north and the south coast of South Carolina. So if I drive a couple hours north, I'm hitting into like Wilmington Beach, like North Carolina area, that Calabash area.

If I drive two hours, two and a half hour south, probably closer to three. So about two and a half north, North Carolina. Two and a half to three, south, I'm in Savannah. So I'm almost dead center. I'm about an hour outside of Charleston. Okay. Very cool. And what does that habitat type look like?

Is it sandhill stuff? It's six. We get, you know, of course, on the coast, we get whatever hasn't been developed. We do get remnant maritime forest. Unfortunately, development is at an all-time high, and we are losing acreage every day. The only thing that stops it from moving in on top of me is the Francis Marion. And every private piece of land out here is getting homes put on it.

Right. Yeah, it sucks. But, you know, only so much you can do. Well, at least they have the protected areas. That's a good thing, yeah. And so anybody can come and, you know, poke around there. Yeah, that's nice because a lot of private land on the East Coast. That's the biggest difference between, you know, the West Coast and the East Coast,

at least from what I've seen is, you know, in the West, you've got a lot of public lands and the East, everything's private almost. But that's nice to see a good big areas. In the Francis Marion, it's, you know, it's a large area, but within the Francis Marion itself, you have a lot of private inholdings scattered throughout the forest. So where I'm at is a lot of upland pine forest, remnant sandhill, surrounded by bottom wetlands, river drainagees, and Carolina Bays. Okay. So we get a lot of Carolina Bays, Picosons, as you, on the backside of a – so do you guys know what a Carolina Bay is?

I do not. Okay. So Carolina Bays are really unique as they're only found, and I believe North Carolina, Georgia, into the upper portion of Florida. They are these big ovular divvets in the ground. If you look at it from an aerial view, they all go from deeper to shallow in an ovular shape. And on the shallow side, which I can't remember which direction it normally is,

I want to say it's normally northeast, could be wrong. But on that side, there's always a sand ridge. And it's always really, it's always really tanic water. So it's, you know, really a lot of tannins usually has cypress in it. And there are natural formations. And I think the current scientific consensus on that is that during, oh, God, what? Millions of years ago, I can't remember the exact time.

But millions of years ago, when the Ice Age started and that coastline kind of receded to about 70 to 75. miles offshore from where it is now, all from where it was, sorry, not where it is now, from where it was. This was all barren. And so during that time, the heavy winds kind of, think about wind blowing across like sand, right?

Kind of diveted out these pockets, and these are remnant pockets that have basically been wind blown out over however many hundreds of thousands of years or however long. But that's the consensus. We still really don't 100% know what causes the formations, but they're really cool and they're unique to this part of the coast. Interesting.

So I guess I'm looking at a map and I see Francis Marion and Sumter National Forest, and that looks like it's kind of on the northwestern kind of portion. That's a separate part, right? Yeah, Sumter is a whole separate national force. They're managed together and grouped together, but Sumter's all the way up into the Piedmont up into the foothills. So that's, it takes me three and a half, probably three to four hours to drive to something. Okay.

So you're more down on the coast and that's, I guess. I am, if you look on your map. Uh-huh. And you look at a town called Georgetown. Uh-huh. And a town called Mount Pleasant. Okay. I'm like halfway in between those two.

Okay. I'm right outside of a little town called Allendall. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. Now I'm seeing the Francis Marion.

Okay. So it covers a large portion of the state. Yes. Yeah, that's great. The north side is where the Santee River is. That side literally borders the Georgetown County. Okay. And then the upper part from that on the other side of the bridge borders Williamsburg County.

And then across is Berkeley County. And then on the south side is Charleston County. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. So what I do that is right on the Charleston County, Berkeley County line. Okay. And then Jake and some of the other, isn't he down south, like around Buford or something like that?

They're in Buford. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. Very good. It's a, it's a beautiful area, but I will tell you that, you know, habitat-wise, it's getting a lot better. But out here during the, during the 40s and 50s, there was mass.

clear cutting. Just mass deforestation, all the old longleaf taken out, all the ancient swaps. So a lot of that got replanted in the 60s and 70s and then cut again in the 80s in an effort to start reintroducing longleaf, right? So a lot of these areas out here are still used for timber. They're federal timber lands. So some places are fully protected where they're never going to clear cut and fully log, but a lot of places are actually logging in holdings. where they actually come in and cut timber for timber production and manage it for timber. Right.

Usually on rotations of every 10, 15, 20 years. They used to clear cut a lot of areas, but they've gotten better now where if they're going to clear cut one area, it's going to be a smaller acreage or they're only going to thin. They have gotten better on that, but it's always been in holding for timber production for the nation. Right. And are they native trees or mostly? A lot of it's a lobeli, but there's a huge initiative to replant long leaf. A lot of it's been restored to long leaf.

But again, you're not looking at ancient, you know, 100-year-old lob lollies. We're looking at 40 to 60-year-old trees. Right. In the grand scheme of things is still pretty young. So herping out here versus herpens somewhere like South Georgia, where they still have like true. old growth, fine forests and stuff, it can be a little bit harder and a little bit different to target and pin down just because of the age of the forest and the succession plants that are growing in.

It can kind of disguise what's good habitat and what's not just because of how young a lot of these portions are. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. All right. Well, we've got the geography lesson out of the way and the ecology talk. Yeah, let's get into some herps.

Is it time, Rob? Are you good there? Yeah, all good. So, obviously, South Carolina, herping in South Carolina was popularized in the Carl Carl Caulfeld books going back to the mid to late 50s. How did you get into herping? And is that still sort of a thing that you see where people are regularly coming down? Is there a big community around it?

Well, I can tell you right now, I grew up in a family. with a bunch of only good snakes a dead snake or the snake's the devil right and so no i'm the oddball i'm the weird guy i'm the weird snake guy in the neighborhood that everyone's like well he's all right he's cool he's just a little weird nod and like snakes um but over you know my over my lifespan here i've gotten a lot of the old timers to finally get to where they'll call me to come relocate something before they chop its head off um i've changed a few people's minds um um um um i've changed a few people's minds um But overall, I am the crazy snake man. So it's not a common thing out here.

There are a handful of us out here who all hurt together just because we're all working in the forest or live in the forest. So usually when we're out, it's like, hey, let me call my buddy down the road because it's more fun to cruise with your friends. Right. I do a lot of solo cruising and solo hiking and stuff too, but I do try to make time for my friends. I will say that a lot of people, a lot of locals around here really hate snakes and they're really sketchy about people driving by their properties and stuff. So, you know, I get away with it a little bit more than others because they're like, oh, that's just the local weird guy.

Like, you know, because I'm a local. I will say I've had friends come down and hurt before, and they've had people like egg their car and flatten their tires and, like, they can cast them on rock roads and stuff. So there's definitely a few areas of the forest that can get a little sketchy. There's, you know, unfortunately, like, I'd probably found two or three different mobile meth labs in the forest. So, you know. A little sketchy, yeah, sometimes.

Some areas, you might not see a soul. I will tell you that we're one of the few states that still allows people to actively, drive deer in the National Forest with dogs, which gets on my ever-loven nerves because it's in October when the prime fall herping is, and I see so much road mortality

from backwoods, rock roads because of it, but I will say like right now it's turkey season, heavy traffic through all the forest roads. Or in due season, as soon as they open it up August

or sorry, October 12th or 15th for dog hunting, tons of traffic. So you get this sweet spot in each season where it's not super busy, but then you get all the hunters out there. That's unfortunate. I'm not familiar with the term rock road.

Oh, so we have, throughout our forest, we have forest service roads that intersect the forest that are public. You can go down them if they don't have a closed gate on them and don't stay closed to vehicles. It is a public access road. Usually it's to get through the forest to get to a WMA over here or a boat landing here or a historical site here. And they're literally just white limestone rock-coated roads cut through the forest for you to be able to kind of traverse the forest.

I will tell you, sell services shoddy out here. And if you don't know your way around these woods, you could probably drive rock roads throughout the forest for days. on end and not hit the same rock road twice. Wow. You can get lost if you don't have a GPS or know where you're going or have good cell service. Right. Wow.

Okay. So beware of the rock roads. Yeah. You can get turned around easy out there. Okay. Cool. Awesome. Okay.

Do you know a lot of the conversation around the Kauffeld stuff is further south more by down by Schmidt and Jake down in Beefurt, right over in Ridgeland, the old Okitee. Is it your understanding that sort of there's still a cult, despite Okiti being closed since the later 80s, early 90s, that there's still sort of a culture around South Carolina corn snakes and looking for that stuff. Out-of-towners coming, Yankees coming down and giving a look and that sort of thing. Every now, they patrol it so much, and it's so strict, and it's so hard to actually find corns without walking that property that like you might get a couple of guys every once in a while

go out there but I don't feel like it's I feel like it's kind of died off I mean back in the 90s yeah all the time right 90s early 2000s all the time nowadays I think just with it being so you know heavily patrolled um and with you know already so many oketee corns in captivity I think at this point a lot of people are just like, oh, well, I'll just go buy one for 150 bucks. Right. And now would they be kind of technically illegal if you're not allowed to collect? Oh, yeah. If you collected from the Okie Hunt Club Road, you know, that's, you didn't have permission to take that snake.

So that would be illegal. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, I'm not like saying, I mean, I have wild cops. Right, right. But there's the right way and a wrong way to do it, you know? and if it's a protected area or it's not your property and you don't have permission, like don't take it.

Right. Sounds like there's plenty available anyway in captivity. So no reason to go, I mean, go enjoy them in the wild, take pictures, but that's all you need to take. Absolutely. Absolutely. Cool. Sure. So other than the Francis Marion around by you, where have you been herping so far?

You're going to laugh at this. I've been up to Ohio a couple of times and herped around there. And the only thing I found up there that I haven't seen before when I went was the Lake Erie water snakes. So those were cool. They just got to look like if you put the color and paint job of a black rat snake onto a sip of dawn. And, you know, I mean, they're all right. I went to Belize Latter. That was my first one in the country.

That was awesome. Oh, yeah. We got in a, and we were in the jungle at the base of the mine mountains for five out of their, or no, seven out of the nine days. And we got 14 species of snakes, I think 14 species of frogs and 13 species of lizards and then seven of the nine species of turtles. Yeah. And I got to see both species of crocs. Nice. Really cool bird, really cool mammals.

I think the first couple nights there, we were hiking. All right, so this is a really cool story. So we're hiking through Belize, right? We get up there, we're staying at this place called. And just real quick, my buddy, Parker Gibbons, puts these herping get-togethers. Yeah, that was going to be my question. What's the context? How did you come to do this?

Yeah, so he puts on herping expeditions at this property in Belize called Be Free. him and the owner work together. He actually is trying to fill the trip up right now for June. If anyone's interested, it's a really great deal. You have bunk beds in like a bunk house to stay in, an outdoor shower. It's a really beautiful property. It's all ran off of solar panels for the most part. They have some backup generators, big kitchen house.

They cook meals for you, three meals a day. You're guided through by locals on different trails and paths. I think it's like, I think it's like a thousand or 1,200 acres that you're on. And then you're surrounded by the Bladen Nature Reserve and the Catacomb, I think, nature reserve. And it's right on the Bladen River at the base of the Mayan Mountains. It's beautiful. You have a six-mile hike just to get there through an open savannah. And the savannah is a wet savanna.

It kind of looks like if you mixed up upland pine savannah, with the Everglades. It's really to explain. It's this weird mix. Yeah. What part of the country is it in? It is goodness gracious. Where did you fly into, I guess?

That's a good question. I don't remember. It will come to me. If you look up the Bladen Nature Reserve, it should be. It's cool. But yeah, first two nights there, we found a bunch of and then the rains kind of slacked off.

It was supposed to be start a rainy season. But the first night there, we found nine Mayan coral snakes. Wow. It was crazy. Like, we just kept being like, oh, there's another one. Oh, there's another one. Oh, look, there's another one. It was wild.

Now, were you able to take photos or, you know, pictures, video, any of that stuff? I took the box. Okay. Oh, yeah, absolutely. They are squirmy, just like you would think. They won't try to run. Usually, you know, you do the old hat trick, place the hat over it when it calmed down, pull the hat off, get some photos. We found a big boa underneath the kitchen house, like first or second night there.

A lot of really cool stuff. One of the best spots was we hiked up the, there's only one or two little ridges that we can access on the property that go right at the base of the mountains by the river. And on the top of them are these big rocks, right? These rock outcroppings. And I found out through the natives there that that is actually an old Mayan site. And we actually saw some old Mayan pottery washing out of the bank. And at the very top in these old rock formations that were remnants of a Mayan temple, we found a big Kribo. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Man. That's really cool. Yeah. Is that kind of the most, what other notable finds did you ever? Like some of your favorites? We saw a snail-eating snake.

It's called a terrestrial snail-eating snake. It kind of looks like a coral snake. It's black with orange stripes. Very coral-snakey, but it's rear fang, but it's not harmful to us. But it's a terrestrial, right? This thing was 20 foot up a palm fron.

Never been documented that high off the ground before. Interesting. We saw a lot of really cool species. I had a furtillant slither. over my foot. Oh, wow. It was chasing, Yucatan Banded Gecko,

which, surprisingly, one of my favorite finds was the banded geckos. Oh, yeah, they're cool. They're species of colliotics. They're really cool. They're, I mean,

I think they're prettier than the ones in Texas. But, you know, they're cool. They're a little bit bigger. But this thing was, I was stopped on the trail. Me and a friend of mine had hiked up this trail.

And this was, I mean, we didn't get much sleep. We'd be out until 3 a.m. in the morning, night hiking and sleep for a little bit, get up and do it all over again. You know, we walked 130 miles in like five days. Crazy. So we're hiking through this trail, and I see this Koleonics gecko, this Yucatan banded gecko, just kind of dart across the trail. And he stops on the other side, and I pull my light around to look at it.

And my buddy is on the other side of me. And as I pull my light around to look at it, and as I pull my light around to look at the this gecko. He shines his light down at me to see what I'm looking at. He goes, Gabe, don't move. And I look and this furtlance is going over my boot chasing this gecko. Wow. And I'm staying still, right? And I'm watching it. And I was like, I thought I felt something hit my shoe, right? Yeah. I was like, oh, shit. That's crazy. Chases this gecko. The gecko runs down a hole. About the time the snake sees us realizes we're stitting their gawk, you know, I was like, oh, look at this.

Get spooked, turns around, looks at us, and tries to bolt. But it was just so cool. Like, it wasn't interested me in me one bit. It was trying to get the gecko. Wow. Now, do you think you guys spook the gecko, or was it already in the process of hunting? I think it was hunting the gecko already on the trail, and I think when I stepped, the gecko ran over my shoe,

and then it went over after the gecko. So I think it was actively after what it looked like. It was actively after the gecko. Right. Oh, that's crazy. That's really cool. What a fun observation. We got to find, actually, we got to find giant Mexican mus turtles.

Oh, yeah. We're so cool. Oh, yeah. It's actually such a cool find that when I got back and went to Daytona, I bought a pair of giant Mexican muskers. I was like, man, these things are cool. Yeah. They got a pretty serious bite on them, right? Big little head.

I mean, we're like keeping a snapping turtle. Right. Yeah. That's cool. They are neat looking, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I had a similar, uh, similar thing happen. I was, uh, road cruising out in Western Australia and I came upon a snake and it was, looked kind of weird. So I jump out of the car to see what's going on. And it's this, uh, MOLGA, King Brown, eating a D-O-R, uh, death at her. It's like trying to peel it up off of the, off of the pavement. And so, of course, I'm taking pictures and shine my life. lights and stuff and it gets spooked and takes off. So I get a snake hook and I pick up the death adder and follow it. And I go up and put it in front of its face and it starts eating the death adder off the side of the road. So I got pictures of that. I actually just published that in Herp Review as a natural history note or whatever. So kind of cool.

I've only ever seen something predate something dead like that one time. And it was a cotton mouth peeling a jerkyed frog off the road. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of crazy how often that's used. Like, there have been several observations of that kind of behavior. So, yeah. But, yeah, seeing that kind of stuff in the wild is great.

After traveling for out of country for the first time last year, I've got the bug. I'm like, I get to South America. Right. Yeah. It was kind of the opposite for me, I guess. You know, I'd try to get to Australia as much as I could. And then when COVID happened, it's like, well, now what do I do? And so Rob's like, hey, let's.

hey let's go find all the crotolus forms or let's you know explore our backyard a little better and I'm like good point you know I haven't I still haven't found all the reptiles in Utah I might as well knock as many of those out as I can lot in Utah too how many native species do you have in Utah there's there's around 30 snakes 30 lizards yeah one tortoise a couple turtles you know depending on whether or not you you you buy into them being native or introduced or whatever. Right. There's some questionable ones there. And then, you know, a bunch of different toads, a few frogs. So, yeah, probably not.

You just have a lot of some lizard biodiversity. Like, y'all's lizards are, oh, man. Ah, it's fun. Yeah, there's a lot of cool lizards. Yeah, we've found the lesser earless lizards down in the southeast corner of the state. Just, yeah, they were really fun. That's so cool. Yeah.

That's awesome. What, were there any particular things you were hoping to see when you went down to Belize? There was it mostly just everything's new. I'm just trying to get in. I mean, everything's new. I had a blast. I found,

like I said, I got 14 lifer snakes. I got, you know, 14 lifer lizards, seven lifer turtles. Like, everything was a lifer.

But I will say, I'm very sad that I could not find the, uh, the, the, snake, the tricolored king down there. And I'm very sad that I didn't find a jumping viper, and I'm very sad at an eyelash viper.

Other than that, it was great. I hit most of my targets. Right. You've got to have a reason to go back, you know. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Sad I didn't get to see the burrowing frogs.

We missed them by about a week. Or the burrowing toad. Yeah. Yeah. Burrowing toad. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, those are, I guess a little early, the rains were just starting, so the animals weren't out yet.

Right, yeah. That's fair. And it's cool that it's in this context where you have really good visibility with your buddy running these programs as to sort of the changes throughout the year, kind of the timing. What was it like two weeks ago, two months ago, all those different things, even if you're not there. He just worked three months through the winter there, too, to kind of scout out some new areas for this year's trip. If I had more leave from work, I'd be going on it again. But unfortunately, I can only do so much in one year. Yeah.

I think that's the constraint for one of the constraints, at least, for all of us. Yeah. I told the wife, she just needs to let me be a stay-at-home snake daddy. My goodness. You've kind of hit on this, but do you, or at least I would have a strong guess based on what you've said. Do you keep a life list both in the state and general? I do, yes. I keep a lot of lists of both in the state and in general. Currently in the state, I am missing southern hog nose, coral snake,

mole king snake, milk snake, smooth earth snake. And you're going to laugh at this last one. I've never seen a decays brown snake. Oh, wow. How, I mean... It's not quite as funny for us because we're not East Coasters, so we don't have to... It's the most common species on the East Coast. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, I found one at the National Zoo, just like outside of these enclosures. In their garden beds and neighborhoods in the spray. I can't seem, I don't know. It's my white woman. But even, I mean, even so, I mean, you know, some things are locally abundant. And, I mean, you talk about ringneck snakes, ringneck snakes.

Like, you can find, you know, 50 under a single board or something. But in, you know, you know, you know, you know, Utah finding a ringneck stake is a huge deal. Like, they're very rare and very hard to find. They're common around here. Statistically speaking, it should have been impossible for me to find this many snakes and not have found a decays. I don't understand it.

Yeah, that's funny. I'm cursed. Are you going to target them? Well, that's the issue of it is I'm never like, man, I'm going to go out and target to decays brown snakes. Right. I'm like, well, if I really wanted to, I could probably drive an hour into town and ask some old lady to go flip rocks in her flower bed and probably find one. I'm not going to waste that much time and energy for that.

And if that ends up being the last snake on my life or list, so be it, it's going to be an easy one, right? Yeah. Oh, my goodness, the pigeon. My list is complete. Right. It would feel like being a barter in your last life or be a pigeon. in my Yeah, that's crazy.

Well, and we've talked about it a little bit before as well in the context of Python's in the top end of Australia is, you know, in some ways, anything, what you're looking for on your list, right? It can be both easier and more difficult if they're specific to a certain type of habitat or certain conditions, those sorts of things, whereas something that's considered to be ubiquitous and is often in urban or suburban areas, in some ways that could, I can see how that's a challenge, especially living out in the forest, right?

Right. You know, I have a friend of mine, old biologist buddy of mine, who once said, you know, every great herper has the curse of the one common snake. And I was like, yeah, you know, everyone I know of has at least like one

fairly common species that alludes them or had alluded them for a very long time. No clue why that one alludes me, but it'll happen. Yeah, relative to, their abundance. I've found you a lot. It was never a lot.

Yeah, I still haven't found one yet. Like, I've spent plenty of time in their habitat and just haven't seen the most common rattlesnake out there. Yeah. Yeah. I've only ever seen the three that we have here, you know. I've never, I need to get out west. Yeah.

Well, speaking of which, what are you, what are some of the trips you're hoping to make happen in the next year or so? Well, unfortunately, with everything going on this year, I've got some, you know, family stuff going on and other stuff. I was hoping to go to Costa Rica this year, but I do not know that I will be able to make it just with everything going on. So this year might just end up being a stick around the house and make the best of a year. Maybe do some little weekend trips.

I think I'm going to do a weekend trip to the upstate in the mountains and the Blue Ridge and try to knock out like Mole Kings and Eastern milks and smoothings. earth snakes. Cool. Yeah, I mean, that happens. I see the price of gas rising about every day, and I'm just like, crap, this is going to put a kink in my plans to earth. It's all the worst, right?

Right. It starts at a couple bucks more. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was $3.59 today. Yeah, we're up over four now. I think I saw that at $4.19 or something at a gas station this morning. I'm like, oh. possible.

All the Europeans are laughing, whereas for a leader, you know, so it's right, you know, a hundred a half as much and, you know, it's twice as much for half as much. But, I mean, you could traverse the whole entire UK and like what? At a three-day weekend, like it's

right. Yeah, everything's a lot closer. It's like our states here, you know, you can go to another state, you can go to another country over there. Yeah. It's true. Yes, we should. Rage Bait Nipper. I like that. And, I mean, they're just not, not many herps over there. And all of Europe, how many could there even be?

One of you had said, I think that was, I don't know, Jake trying to be sly, you know, at one point it said that, a nipper was duly offended. Quite rightly. Yeah. Yeah, especially considering the number of miles and the amount of money he spent to traverse Europe finding all the herbs. Yeah. His various adventures and misadventures.

jumping on to C-Stacks and all of that. Yeah. I could imagine how, I mean, that is dedication to find all of the Herps in Europe. Like that's right. Yeah, you hear kind of the, I mean, you know, with birders, you got the big year. And I've always thought, and, you know, Pingueton talks about this, about doing a big year for Herps. And that would be really cool. Because, I mean, I mean, we kind of do in a sense.

We just don't brag about it. about it and get put on magazines. We just get to bag to our buddies and be like, eh, you know, I found the snakes, or look at this snake I found, or, hey, I'll finally knock this lifer off. It's just, I feel like, you know, it's very much more like

centered around, you know, friends' groups and, you know, local groups. It's not as, because not everyone likes snakes. It's the cute effect. Birds are cuddly, snakes are. Well, man, birders sure spend a hefty some money on birding, you know,

Like, you couldn't get that out of herpers. I talked to a man at work who's a birder who comes out to the park all the time in photographs, and he has this extremely nice tripod and camera set up. And I was like, oh, man, that's really nice. He's like, you want to try it out? Sure. I'm looking through it. I'm like, oh, my God, it's crystal.

Like, I can see the downy feathers underneath the eye of this titmouse. Like, what the heck? Right. I'm like, man, how much this thing run you? And he's like, oh, it's, it was. just like $12,000. For the lens. Yeah.

I was like, oh my God. Yeah, that's crazy. Yep. I'm not sure how, I guess you have to be independently wealthy to get into birding in the first place. I bought an $85 collapsible Midwest hook the other day and I was like, oh, God,

oh, ain't a golf club around here somewhere. Yeah. Exactly right. So what would you say at this point is the toughest thing that you've chased and found? Oh, probably a Francis Marion Diamondback. Yep, yep, has probably been the toughest one that I've actively chased and found. Yep. Tell us about that experience, yeah.

Yeah, so I can't go into detail too much on, you know, of course, look at all. but it's estimated that there's probably less than a thousand diamondbacks throughout the whole national forest. And, I mean, that's being generous. I would say probably 500 or less across the whole forest. Yeah. And we're also the northerly most range for them until you – I mean, I'm sure there's some private pocket in holdings, you know, here and there further north than us. But as far as what's known and documented, We're the farthest north until you get into, oh goodness, what's the fort in North Carolina?

Camp Lejeum, there we go. Until you get into Camp Lejeum, we're pretty much one of the most northern populations. Very rare. You're not going to road cruise them out. Not going to happen. So you pretty much have to get lucky and hit the weather the perfect day. And you have to know where they're at because they're not scattered across the forest. They're in specific habitats in specific blocks of the woods, right?

Right. And so I was walking a spring burn just because we like to go out there in spring. We'll walk around and, you know, check the freshly burned ground, you know, roll logs, looking holes. Just it opens it up. And, you know, when you go out after the burn, if you get a rain after the burn, it cools stuff down. You go out there, see a lot of cool stuff emerging from protective areas where they escape the fire. Right. So we're going out there, we're walking around, and this was last year that I found my first Francis Marion Diamondback. And so the boys are with me. Jake, Jack, Smitty, they're all with me.

And I'm walking, and Justin was like, man, I really want to, I want to find a pygmy. And I'm like, well, don't worry, buddy, I know there's going to be pygmies on this bird. I walked up like 12 of them the other day. Like, we're going to find pygmies. Don't worry. about it. So first 20 minutes into it, we spot this beautiful pygmy, Carolina pigmy, sitting up on this stump just basking. And Justin's like, oh, man, look at that. You know, he's photographing it. Everyone's having a good time. And so after about 10 minutes to photographing it, I'm like, all right, guys, I'm going to keep walking on. Like, I'll be right up here. You guys holler at me if you need me. You know, I know we're all, you guys want to stay in photograph.

We're just going to kind of stay around the area. And so I kind of walk off through this little inkberry patch onto this open area that had just been burned in the pine savannah. And I just happened to see coming out of a hole, just this beautiful diamond back coming out and getting sun. And I mean, it took me, I was like,

oh my God, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, me, he's taking a leak. He hears me go, Diamondback and Jake's fumbling. I hear him almost tripped. He's fumbling. He runs over there. He's, oh, my God, it's a top of him back. The other guys are running over there, you know, and we got this beautiful, like,

three-foot, look like female Eastern Diamondback. Uh-huh. Yeah. That's awesome. Bright yellow. Yeah. And it took me, I've gotten to help on some progress. I've got help on some studies before out there and stuff in the past.

I helped radio track them and stuff. But as far as like physically me walking one up, herping one up, it took me over 10 years of actively trying. Wow. Yeah. And it's just right weather, right time. Right. The car's just all lined.

Oh, very cool. I do remember that story from your podcast. Yeah. It was really cool. Yeah. I actually got my second lifer, Eastern Diamondback, the exact same day this year. Oh, really? Wow, that's crazy.

It wasn't the same animal, was it? Nope. It was a different one. Yeah, this was bigger. This one was probably about four or four and a half foot. Uh-huh. Very cool. Oh, that sounds like the day to get out there.

Yeah, right? Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah, beginning of the month, right? So, yeah, that was probably my white whale that I accomplished. and it took a very long time. But I did it. Yeah.

I still doesn't feel real. Yeah, you know, it's a good find when you just have that almost ethereal state of the find, you know? Yeah, that's a good feeling to have. And it's the only one of three Easter Diamondbacks that I've had in the state of South Carolina. So, yeah. Yeah. So probably not the best place for me to go find my life or Eastern Diamondback. No.

If you want to find an Eastern Diamondback, go to South Georgia. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Or Florida. It's, yeah, South Carolina, while you can do it, it's tough. A big challenge, yeah. Yeah.

That's cool. Very cool. And you also mentioned there Carolina Pygmy. So the ones that you guys have, what, so those, those, those, are the Carolina type, right? They are the Carolina. They have a different look than the North Carolina, madameau's stuff, right?

So we get them ranging from almost that dusky look with the more reddish around the face and the stripe, all the way to like a light reddish, orangeish pink hue, but not as dark or not as bright red as the North Carolina ones, but we still get some fairly red ones. I've seen some that were probably, like a

really deep red hues and the base color about the color of like an orange marker like a washed out orange marker. Oh, cool. They definitely range. I see more of the darker ones with the really bright red highlights around the face and the bat.

I've seen some that were like purple with cherry red stripes and face markings. They're beautiful. That's cool. Yeah. So my Instagram, actually, most of what I post are pygmies and cotton mouse because I just love it. Yeah. I still haven't seen a pygmy.

I need to see a pygmy. I tried to find 50 pygmies last season just as a little self-challenge. We got a cold snap right for the end of the season. I got busy and couldn't do it. I got to 48. Oh, wow. That's cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like I just need to get in the right spot and I'll be able to find it. I will tell you right now. comes to pygmies, they're either there or they aren't. And if they're there, you're going to see them. Yeah, yeah. If you're there at the right weather and the right temps, and they are there at any number, you're going to see them.

All right. Well, tell us about the last rattlesnake of South Carolina. Oh, yeah, the cane break. So, as you know, you have the cane break form of the timber rattlesnake, which is considered a phenotypic difference of the timber. rattlesnake. I don't know how much I agree with it, but it is what it is. They do

typically have a little bit more toxicity, a little bit different venom toxicity, some more neurotoxin down here on the coast typically. They don't din like timbers up in the mountains. These guys overwinter solitary, you might

get one or two that kind of find the same cover and just deal with each other. They don't din in mass because on the coast here doesn't get cold enough long enough and there's not massive hibernaculum areas. So they're utilizing stumps or under logs, things like that, undersheds sometimes. Yeah. Not as much room for multiples. Right.

I will say that in September through October, August through October, is prime time for them to move because they're not only giving birth, but they're also, it's an overlap with mating. So that's when I find a lot of juvies And then luck up on some big adults Every October My deer hunting buddies down the road call me And they're always like, man, I got a big cane break Sitting on my deer corn pile

I need you to come get it And I'm like, all right So there was one day I have a picture posted somewhere A friend of mine called me He lives 10 minutes down the road He goes, man, I Can you come on and get this rattlesnake?

And I'm like, Yeah, where's it at? It's sitting around my corn pile, and I know there's more because I've seen them on my deer camera moving across the pile, and I've been looking at them, and I know they're different because they're different sizes. I'm thinking, all right, there's probably like one or two. And I go out there, and he has this area bush hog to the ground where his corn pile is, and it's, you know, maybe 30 foot by 30 foot with a little road going in, and then his deer stands right above it in a pine tree. surrounding this is all Blackberry briars inkberry scrub like you know a foot to two high two foot high scrubby shit with with berries on it and it's it's prime cane break habitat I'm like and here he is he's got a big pile of corn in the center for all the rodents to come to right yeah I walk out there and I'm walking around the perimeter of the bush hog area and I'm looking at different indentations where these things have pressed the leaves or the pine straw down. And I'm counting.

And I'm like, one, two, three, four, five. And I'm like, okay, all right, this isn't the same snake. I'm like, at least two to three snakes. Yeah. And so I'm looking and I'm like, where'd you see it last? He goes, it was to the right of the pine tree about five foot. And I look over there and sure shit is sitting right there. beautiful it could be.

I go over there, I hook him out, I put him in a bucket, I'm looking at him, and as I go to bucket him up, I turn around, and I see the tail of one going into the bushes, five foot past that.

So I look at him, I said, hey, I need you to hold this bucket. I've got to go in here and actually hook this out. And I hook out this big, beautiful, like, five-foot cane break that has the cleanest orange stripe. Oh, nice.

That cuts through the blackish, brown and fail all the way down to the button. Wow. That's so cool. So I catch those two and I go to turn, I go to leave his house. I'm pulling out of his driveway to go, and I don't take these things far. I literally just go like a few hundred yards down the road and I'm like, here you go. Like, you know, here's what it is.

He'll call me. I'll come do the same thing over again if they show back up. I don't even pull out of his driveway when his neighbor calls me and says, hey Gabe are you busy right now oh why what's up he goes and this guy lives like 10 houses down I'm like no what's going on man he goes well I've got a big cane break

in my yard and I just put a bucket over it with a rock on it can you come get it and I'm like sure so I pull up to the other neighbor's house this is all on my way home from work right I pull up to the other neighbor's house I go take the bucket off another all three of these cane breaks were four and a half to five foot.

Wow. So I'm driving, you know, a minute down the road, and all you can hear in the back of my car is just going off. Yeah. But in a matter of 30 minutes, I relocated three adult cane brakes in that area. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And the look down by you is kind of that peachy pink with the...

Oh, no, no, no. Most of our can breaks are ugly. Oh, okay. I hate to say it. We get a few pretty ones here and there, but they're pretty, like, dingy grays and browns and, like, dirty. Every now, if you get a really nice, like, steely gray-looking one with that beautiful reddish-orange stripe, and every now then you'll get one that's a little bit more tan-out, but we don't see those pretty pink ones like Georgia gets in Florida.

We don't know. Okay. I wish we did. Once in a while, right? Yeah. No. Well, very cool. You hit on certainly what's missing from your life list and then saying you're going to go upstate to the mountains.

What else are you interested in going for this season? Well, I'm going to really try hard to find Asimus. It's just a matter of having the time to put in to actually find them. Unfortunately, they are a very cryptic species. And as somebody who works a full-time job, I only have. limited time to go hurt for them. And being a diurnal species, it's not like I can do it after work. It has to be during the day.

Anyone who knows anything about hog-nosed snakes in general, you're not going to find them after dark, and you're not going to find them right before dark, and you're usually not going to find them right after sunrise. You're going to find them that middle of the day point, right? And, you know, that's cool. What do we mostly work? Nine to fives, right?

So, yeah, a lot of it has to do with just me not having the time needed to really put in the work in the area I need to be in at the right time. But I'm going to try my hardest. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, here, so right, the westerns obviously are much easier than Southerns. But I would say that in late spring and early fall, yeah, that kind of 10 to noon is a really good window. It's the snow here. Yeah, and in midsummer, you can find Westerns out and about as you're dusk into early night.

But, yeah, certainly what you're saying, you know, and it seems like Simas, there's just the densities are lower. And really, you're trying to really hit that spring and fall windows, right? They also, they, you know, they don't traverse very far distances typically. You know, these are small snakes. this snake might traverse an area of, you know, a couple hundred yards, maybe a few hundred yards its whole life, right, unless it gets displaced. So you really have to be in the right spot at the time, right? I will say during the summertime, I occasionally find or get called to relocate big eastern hog noses.

I've never seen an eastern hog nose that's an adult with color. They're almost all melanistic here. So I would love to actually find an Eastern hog adult that has color to it. All cars are solid black. How common are the Eastern hogs out there? They're not uncommon. They're just a little more cryptic. So if you look for them like you do any other hog, you know, early spring and late fall,

and you really hit it on like cloudy days but with a little bit of higher UV and, you know, mid-70s into the, you know, low 80s, you'll find them. It's just, as with most hog-noses, it's kind of luck of the draw. Right, right? They're a little bit more generalist, right, than Simus. They are more generalists than Simus, and they actually will utilize a little bit more wet areas than Simus will. So Simus will be, like, parallel to wetlands sometimes if there's, but, they're almost strictly an upland species, right?

Whereas eastern hog noses will range all the way from those intermediate low areas, those transition zones, all the way up into the high areas. So they're a little bit more adapted to different types of habitat. They can take it a little bit wetter. And they do get much larger. The biggest one I've ever caught was three foot. It's a big old three-bell. Yeah, heavy-bodied, yeah.

was massive. Yeah, that's cool. But again, they're a little bit more generalists, so a little bit more common. Sure. I wouldn't say common by any means. Right. But if you're going to find a Hognos, it's probably going to be at Eastern. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Hiking up that Simus in Florida was pretty great for sure. And the funny thing is, right, so they have, for the most part, I think they get cruised. And that's the same with NASCAR as the Westerns as well, although. if you're out in that habitat tramping about in that kind of right time

you can still see them above ground cruising around the part that really jumped out to me is it both their pattern actually does make sense relative to where you find them with that sort of oak leaf litter mixture they look

very cryptic simultaneously it's like a highlighter glowing orb of both I see how that pattern that was sort of the thought in my mind right as I saw it I was like oh now your pattern makes sense, but also I can still see that thing, you know, from 20 feet away. That's what I, yeah.

So, I mean, there, you know, a lot of turkey oak scrub habitat, scrub oaks into into upland pines and, you know, a lot of wiregrass. It's, yeah. And when you're looking in wiregrass for a species that's, you know, it's 12 inches long, usually, it's, yeah, it's difficult. Yeah, fortunately, you know, I was lucky. Ours was like a mature female, so it was probably more closer to that 18 inch two foot. So, you know, a little bit harder to miss. I think the biggest one are, and like, so the crappy part is I've had multiple friends cruise them in front of me. Like, you know, or cruise them on a pass.

Right. I had a buddy of mine come down one day and I had been cruising all day and was coming home. And he passed me and called me as he passed me and said, you'll never believe what I just cruised. We'd have a cruise to Simus and a pine. Whoa. I'm going to murder you. That's pretty bad. Yeah.

After cruising for like six hours straight. Right. Yeah. Some people have all the lot. No. So we do, but I mean, really, if you want to have any chance of finding one, like, go Piedmont into the sandhills and stuff. Like, they're here, but they're not common. You're like, good luck finding one.

It's, there's only a handful of people that I know about here that have like successfully found them. And that's because they, they work with them out here in the forest. Like they're, right. Yeah. Yeah. If you really want to go find them, go into the Piedmont. Like, you know, you can hit up like Carolina Sand Hills or, I mean, even, you know, Georgia and Florida. Like, if you want Simons and Edb's and Pines, you can do it in South Carolina.

There's going to be a lot of work. And if you just want to find them, go to Georgia. Go to Florida. Certainly that's been my lived experience, and it's been good enough. But no, I hear you, especially being from there. The interesting thing to me with the forest and the idea that you have these things is, for the most part, right, especially if you're looking in Georgia or Florida, is it does seem like they are obliged to have more open canopy cover than it looks like the forest has.

you know, I know just from listening to you guys on the podcast and hearing kind of those discussions and things, it is interesting. And I certainly understand why it's more challenging for you because I don't see real equivalent habit, the quantity of equivalent habitat that would support and substantiate sort of, you know, robust pines or other than... That's the thing is they're holding over a lot of its remnant populations pre-cutting or, you know, pre-80s in between the 40s and 80s that are holding over in like, what was a lot of its remnant populations pre-cutting or, you know, pre-80s in between the 40s and 80s that are holding over in like, what was. Prevo Habitat, which is still somewhat suitable habitat, but isn't excellent habitat. Because, again, a lot of the forest is young. There are open areas. There are pine savannas. But even then, a lot of those pine savannas, again, are six years old, 80 years old at the most.

So it makes it a little bit harder to really pinpoint, you know, the prime habitat, unless you really know what you're looking for. just because this forest is managed for timber and because it has been influenced by man since, I mean, for thousands of years, basically, but really influenced and changed for the worst since early colonialization and, you know, clear-cutting for, you know,

timber for the British naval ships in the Army, clear-cutting for plantations and rice fields, you know, re-deverting waterways, mass logging endeavors that took place for the war in the early 1900s, and then in the 50s and 60s, again, in the 80s. So there's been so much disturbance here that these populations are holding on in these suitable habitats that are very fragmented. And so there's being a lot of work done to try to improve the habitats in these areas and between these areas, so that we have more corridors for these species to be able to interconnect. and thrive.

Yeah. Speaking of Nipper, I mean, just hearing that, I guess I hadn't really conceived of how different the West, you know, the East Coast versus the West is in terms of historical land use and, you know, manipulation and those sorts of things. Even if we're, you know, beyond obviously indigenous peoples and things, but just in terms of absolute resource manipulation, it's probably, it's more, the East Coast is more like Europe, whereas when we're, you know, anywhere out here, sure, there have been people, but generally at lower densities and not with the massive manipulation,

historical manipulation in the last three or four hundred years that you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, our, you know, our oldest forest, there's probably some swaps, and I know for a fact there are some swamps and some lowlands that weren't accessible that might be, and there's areas where there's force that might be dating back several hundred years or so, but it's pretty far and far and few between. you got to think during when we were one of the colonies under British rule

they would cut the big live oaks for the ribs of their ships because of the natural curvature in which they grew they would cut the pines to get the turpentine and the pitch and the tar to be able to water seal their ships and so then they would get the lumber from here to build their ships at the time

the British had the largest Royal Navy fleet and so that's why there was such uproar when we wanted to become a separate nation is because they would lose their largest resource for them to be able to keep the largest naval fleet in existence because all the lumber and materials to build their ships came from the colonies.

And so you can think about kind of in Europe when they de-forced a lot of areas to build towns or to build these castles or cities or whatever, kind of same thing happened here during the early colony days. Yeah, and also exchanging, you know, maybe more native trees and areas for more commercially viable trees and things like that. So switching out habitats. I want to say it was the 50s and 60s was when they came back in and replanted a lot of the lob lollies because the lob lollies,

aka Virginia pine, but grows quicker typically. It grows taller, and it was more suitable for lumber use. So when they cut all the long leaf, they replanted in that. And so over my lifetime and my father's lifetime, the big effort has been to,

when they go back through and log and cut, certain areas are still designated to just replant lob-lolly for timber production, but certain areas are for restoration purposes. So they'll go in, they'll log it, they'll either clear-cut it or thin it, replant with long leaf. The problem with that, unfortunately,

is that long leaf takes longer to grow and mature than lob lolley. So while it's great efforts, you know, we're just getting to a point now where in some of these areas we're seeing the results just because of how long it takes to manage long leave versus loblolly. Sure. Yeah, I'm sure it's a lot easier

to do the damage than to undo the damage. I wish I had a time machine and could get that time, and whoever was like, we should plant lob-lolly. Just, I challenge you to a duel, sir. You've insulted my honor. Right. Yeah. And so with that faster growth, right, you probably get mid-story more quickly and things like that that kind of wrecked.

I mean, they're both fire-dominated or fire-managed species. Yeah, they're both fire-dended species. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of the, and a lot of the birds and other animal species out there, depend heavily on long leaf as well. Longleaf is a very important plant or tree to a proper upland coastal sandy habitat that houses pines and cymus and eastern hogs and diamondbacks and, you know, all of that good stuff. So we get that here, but again, it's all, a lot of it's very young,

very fragmented between prime habitat versus okayish, habitat. So you got a lot of okayish habitat, and then you have in holdings of like, oh, that's been managed properly. That's really great. And that's far in between the hundreds of acres of like, as woods. All right. Well, can we, I want to ask you a question about your techniques. Yeah, we got some quicker, a little bit of quicker ones. Yeah. Well, so there was an article that said, you know, moving quickly through a habitat or slowly can kind of yield different results. And so I'm curious, do you like to kind of cruise through an area or if you are a little more

meticulous, slow, like, and what circumstances dictates either or? It all depends on what species I'm targeting for what time of year and how productive my year has been at that point. If my year's been really productive at that point, I'm probably going to take it easy, just road cruise, just road crews, some forest service roads, have a good time, find what I find. If I'm putting work in

for it, like we've, you know, when I've led trips out here with buddies of mine or, you know, had college groups come out with me and stuff for college classes and stuff. And, you know, they're like, hey, we want to find some stuff. And we're put work in.

I had one trip or I had some friends come down and some colleagues come down. and in a 24-hour period, it's probably the best weekend I've ever done. In a 24-hour period, 24 hours, we got 17 species of snakes. Wow. And that was from sunup to sundown. We stopped at a gas station for 30 minutes to get some gas station hot dogs and Gatorade.

Kep out it from sun up all the way to like 10 o'clock that night. Wow. That sounds like a Rob Stone trip. I mean, I'm there. I'm not about like I'll bring some water and some Gatorade's and some beef jerky and like I'm not stopping. Right. So I have to pace myself more when I'm with other people and all unless it's like my usual herping friends. Right.

They know the drill. Yeah. Newbies may not. And yeah, they might suffer a little bit more too. Exactly. And again, it all depends on like if I'm just leisurely herping, you know, after work, I'm like, I might go hike a trail for a little bit. I might go, you know, if they do a spring burn, I might go walk a burn,

or they burn off the forest, right? Opens the understory up, you can walk through it and see for miles. It's really fun, so you can spot stuff from far off. And it's just a nice leisurely walk. Or I might just road cruise. I will say part of the reason I find so much stuff, I work outside, and I also drive a little over an hour one way to get to work. And that traverses across the whole.

whole that whole side of the National Forest. Right. On my way home, I have, I have extended routes that I can take. A long way home. I can take back roads and forest service roads all the way from my work to my house pretty much. And it adds like an extra hour, hour and a half drive. But it's just nothing but road cruising habitat.

Right. Oh, that's cool. So if I'm like, if my wife works nights, so if she's working a night and, you know, I've got the night off and it's a warm night and I know it's going to be in the low to mid 70s still by like 9 o'clock I'll be like, oh, we're going to rotate through after dark. Yeah, that's cool. And I traversed so many habitats on that long drive too that I can really be like, oh, hey, it's like really wet and rainy.

It's been humid today. We've got a nice warm night coming up. Sun came out last couple hours of the day. The aquaunts are going to be moving. I need to go get one of my aquatic roads, cruise some glossies, cruise some black swamp snakes, go find some mud snakes, you know. Or I can be like, man, it hasn't rained a lot, but it's a little dry. I can go cruise by this one area where I know there's water in this ditch or a pond and maybe find something there. Or, you know, if it's a great night and it's human but it's not overly wet, I can sometimes manage nighttime pygmies or, you know, rat snakes, corn snakes.

So it kind of just depends on the weather and time of year. Right. That's cool. Yeah. Do you prefer taking videos, pictures, nothing? It depends on what it is. Typically, if I'm finding species that are, that I don't, so I'm very big about, like, site protection and, like,

not having a ton of people out just harassing the same spots over and over. I'll get, and a lot of that isn't, isn't because I want to, be a greedy asshole and oh, I want to keep all my spots to myself. A lot of it is disease related. So right now in the Francis Marion, we're dealing with a little bit of a disease that we don't quite know what it is yet.

Public knowledge, I'm allowed to talk about this. I can't go into depth on a lot of it, just, you know, NDAs and crap. But I know that it's got, we've got over 200 dead turtles right now. Just in a five mile radius and more being found further out.

So, it's stuff like that that really worries me because how many herpers do you guys see go out there that go out there and don't disinfect hooks. I mean, at the very least, carry a bottle of 10% bleach solution and spray your hook and your boots down, right? I usually go a little more in depth than that when I know there's disease going on out here. When I know there's got disease going on out here, I might get a little bit more lax and just spray the stuff down. Right. With disease going on like it is right now, it's very, very.

much of like, hey, you're going to spray everything down, rinse it off with water, and then use hand sanitizer or some sort of alcohol. Another good example is rainbow snake spots, right? So a lot of our rainbow snakes, our mud snakes, and our brown water snakes here carry SFD. It's a bowel disease. And so I'm very much of like, you know, I, everyone knows I find a ton of rainbow snakes. Like, it is what it is.

They're not that hard. You just have to know where to look, what time a year, and be in the right river drainage. Unfortunately, though, because they are so predictable that if a lot of people find out about those spots, they might go harass the same rainbow snake in the same spot and the same stretch of river 20 times in a week. And now the snake that's coming out in the shed that's already stressed out from SFD. Right. because most of them do have SFD when they come out. They are living in wet, humid environments.

They're aquatic. Yeah. And how many herpers do you know that probably don't disinfect, right? That can spread this SFD around. So I just, it's a very like, hey, if it's a common species that I know is not likely to carry something or, you know, like a corn snake or a rat snake or a pygmy or something like that, sure, by all means. like, here's a spot, go check it out. Certain species like that and certain times a year for certain things, I'm just like, eh, we're not going to share that.

Right, yeah. Sure. You're using Hurtmapper, Inat, Instagram. For those very reasons. I do use Instagram. Well, either as a poster or a user. Yeah, I do post on Instagram. Again, I don't post everything.

a lot of stuff that's more sensitive species. I won't post until after season or until after it's active season, just in case. And then a lot of times, honestly, lately, my life's been so busy. I've kind of taken a social media break from posting a lot. I will get back on that soon as Herpin season picks up and all.

I think I posted a post a few weeks ago, but just with life and everything, I've kind of taken a little social media break from a lot of it just to kind of focus on other stuff. But I probably will post some stuff this summer after I've had a good spring. But mostly Instagram. Okay. What's your username on there? It's just Shuler Gabe.

Okay. Yep. I have a TikTok as well, but I haven't posted on it in quite a while. Yeah. So you're doing a lot of solo herping. I mean, you mentioned, you know, cruising with, cruising with buddies and things. But when you're doing that, when you're doing group stuff, are you usually planning that, you know, pretty extensively? Or you just kind of, are you a wing of guy?

I've got a couple of friends that live around here, and half the time, we're all really good herpers. So half the time, one of us is calling the other one going like, hey, so-and-so is such-and-such is moving right now. Let's go hit these. Or, hey, the weather feels really great. You know what's going to be moving tonight? I bet you we can find this. And so it's pretty, it's not really planned out in that sense.

But if I have like Jake and Jack and Smitty and all driving down to herp with me, then yes, I actually plan that out just because I want everyone to have a good time. A little bit more prep goes into that because these guys are driving a couple hours plus or more. But if it's my local buddies, it's very much of like, what are you doing after work today? Nothing.

You want to go find a snake? Sure. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Do you think lunar cycles matter? 100%.

What kind of patterns do you see? If it is a full moon here, you ain't going to find anything. Really? No, snakes don't move on full moons. I will tell you, I've noticed if it's half full or more, productivity down. Now, I've noticed that. oh god what is it when it's like a third or a quarterful i forget my lunar cycles waxing and when it is waxing or waning and you're getting to that like little pie shape

and you're getting like a nice clear night with that little bit of light is better in my opinion than uh than the no moon at all than the new moon um full moon and you know half full or more you might find some stuff here and there not saying i haven't but you notice a huge difference. Okay, fair. And the other part of that, too, right, is the amount of time that the moon is above the horizon is different. So the full moon is not only the quantity of illumination,

it's up basically all night, right, while it's dark, where on the, when you're in waxing into new, it's basically not up at all. The moon is visible during the day as opposed to being up at night. Right. So it's kind of both factors, both illumination and amount of time that's exposed while you're out.

Absolutely. What time does the sun go down in spring, summer, fall with you? Right now it's about 7.30-ish is when it's like dark, dark, 7.30 to 8-ish. It'll keep getting later. Once we get into, you know, May and June, it's getting dark at 9 o'clock.

Yeah. So really, really late, late summer afternoons. And it's hot as hell, like June, July, August. We actually see a lull in July and August. It's hot that without rain, unless you're going out late night road cruising, you're not going to see a lot because it's so hot during the day. I mean, we get days where it's 100% humidity in 98 to 102 degrees. You know, feels like 110 or 12 sometimes.

It's pretty gnarly. and it feels like you're living in a hot tub. You get into it. Yeah. So I went to, when I went to Ohio and felt that humidity difference, I was like, man, I feel like Superman, when he makes it the earth from crypto. I'm superhuman. I'm like, I can breathe.

I'm energized. This is great. Right. But yes, it's hot. And so a lot of these snakes actually estimate or like start becoming more nocturnal. or they're coming out early, early in the morning just because once it hits, you know, 10, 11 o'clock all the way until about 30 minutes before an hour to 30 minutes before sundown, it's just blistering hot. Right. So we kind of get that, I mean, I have better luck finding snakes here on warm days in the winter than I do the hottest days in the summer. Sure, yeah.

Yeah. Very cool. So you hit on this a little bit. What are your thoughts on folks collecting wild animals where it's legal to do some? Here's my deal with that. I would be a hypocrite if I said I didn't have wild collected animals. I mean, all my emerald tree boas, they were wild caught. I actually have some local corn snakes that I collected that came from a gas station.

But I feel like there are ethical ways to do it in situations where it is ethical versus not. if I'm road cruising down the road in a national forest and I see something on the road that's, you know, just to say I'm like, oh, that's a really pretty corn snake or oh, that's a really pretty rat snake or something. I'm not going to collect that, right? If I'm on private property, however, and I have a reason to collect something, sure. Like I have, you know, these corn snakes, I use them for programs. I also breed these for a specific locality line that I'm going for. because these corn snakes don't look normal.

They're really dark, really black. But these corn snakes were also under a rubber mat in a gas station down the road for me. And surrounded by a colony of like 30 feral cats, and they had just clear-cut the whole area behind the gas tank homes. And the only patch of woods left was across a four-lane main highway cuts the whole coast of South Carolina.

So I was like, oh, man, you guys are going to, like, die. So they were mating when I found him. So I was like, all right, cool. Well, I didn't find him. A friend of mine found him. We stopped at the gas station after a Hurp trip. And he's like, I'm going to go flip this rubber mat. And I'm like, dude, it's 85 degrees full sun.

Nothing's going to be there. And he flipped those. And I'm looking at them. Like, oh, these are really cool. I'm like, well, they're probably going to die right here. So I'm going to take these back. We'll show the guys. And, you know, I might hang on to these.

So I've been breeding them. I use them for programs. But situations like that, sure. If you're collecting threatened or rare species to your state, you're an asshole. It is what it is. Like that species is already struggling enough in the wild. You don't need to make it struggle any harder, especially in populations like, say, Eastern Diamondbacks here.

Right. If you're going to come out here in a population that's 500 or less and take an adult healthy animal out just because you want a pretty one when you can get them captive bread, like it makes you an asshole. It's what it is. It's just there's ethics to it, right? We wouldn't have anything we have in captivity now

had the originals not been wild collected. So I'm not against that. I just think there's right ways and wrong ways to do it. You know, if your gut's telling you, man, I probably shouldn't take this snake, then you probably shouldn't take that snake. Yeah, fair enough. And kind of in that, I suppose the question's kind of in that same vein.

Have you witnessed bad behavior from other herpers? There was a pair of poachers that went around the Francis Marion for a number of years. I forget their real names, but they were, I mean, I'm talking like the most hillbilly of hillbillies, right? Like, I'm talking, they might have been embrid, I don't know. I don't remember their names. The old man's dead now, so I think the son is special needs and in a home or whatever. But they would come out with buckets and bags and just grab everything and go sell them to, you know, whoever, wholesale or whatever.

And, you know, I actually actively tried to help with the Forest Service and all to catch these guys for several years. But then the old man died. Something happened to the son and he was disabled, couldn't live on his own. So I'm assuming they, you know, that's not going to be an issue. you anymore. But we always referred to them as gator and possum. So yes, I have seen it. I've seen people come out here, you know, cruising and looking in areas for stuff. I don't think we deal with a whole lot of poaching out here personally, minus that instance. And I also had a tin site behind my house that I caught a guy from

Montana who was coming down from Montana and said, man, I've been hitting this tin site for three years now, I come down here and catch a bunch of cane breaks and take back up north to sell. And I was like, well, you know, if I catch you back out here again, I'm going to shoot you. So get off of my property. Yeah, that wasn't pleasant. I haven't seen him back since. So I have seen it. It does happen.

People, you know, think, oh, well, they're all captive bread. It does still happen. Absolutely. Yeah, that's unfortunate. it, but I guess, you know, laws and stuff don't stop the legal behavior. No, it does not. That only affects typically the law about in citizens, right? Right.

Yeah. That's unfortunate. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any other sort of thoughts around what ethical herping looks like, you know, kind of sequence of it is? You know, I think, you know, being aware of sight sensitivity, you know, a lot of, you know a lot of that going, I see a lot of people that go find sensitive species like cymus and pines and stuff and they'll post with identifiable backgrounds the day they find

them with geotags attached, right? And I'm like, you're a shitty person, you know? And it's like, hey, we're all excited for you. We would be excited if we were there. We're not mad that you're finding it. Like, we're excited. We won't that to happen. We're glad you're into it.

But if you post this, the day you've found. found it and the exact spots you found it were in an identifiable area, you have all the, all the, you know, app herpers, I call them, that are opening up Google Maps, looking where that geotag is, analyzing the background, looking at the foliage and going, I know where this is, and then you've got 200 people making their way out there in several weeks tromping through this sensitive area. Think how much disturbance that causes, and then think how much potential you have for disease transfer, just in that. How many of these guys do you think own private collections that don't

sanitize or use the same hooks in the room as they do out? Or don't sanitize in between sites, right? Or are just tromping through willy-nilly ripping everything up, out the ground, destroying habitat left and right, just for that one shot of that one species. So there's definitely ethical ways and non-ethical ways. Bark peeling. I think I have some thoughts on this.

I know Justin gives me back. All right, so here's my deal. If you're going to peak under bark like I do, you're going to lose some bark. It's what happens. It's not the end of the world if the bark falls off that tree. If you can place that back going, great. If you're in an area and you notice there's only a handful of dead pines

that you're looking under bark, and usually under bark, we're looking for stuff like Scarlet Kings, corn snakes, rat snakes. and there's only a handful of them and you know that when you rip the bark off or you look under the bark, it's going to fall off and now you've destroyed three or four of the only decent trees for that type of habitat in that area,

it's better just not to do it. But if you have an area with a ton of dead pines, you had like a bad fire that burned too hot or you had pine beetles run through, and you've got hundreds of trees of dead pine trees across hundreds of acres, like, yeah, man, if you peel some bark here and there, not the end of the world, right? It all just depends on, like, the amount of that habitat,

you know, being conscientious of when you're looking through that habitat, you don't want to hit every tree at one after another, just strip all the bark off, just be an asshole about it. But like, if you hit one or two trees and that bark's already coming off and there's 50, 60 other trees around you that are dead pond trees with loose bark, it's probably not the end of the world. Yeah. Very good. Flip stuff. For the love of God, put it back. I have flip sites and a drift fit set up at my job with a no trespass and sign in a rope that people still go flip.

And I know it's going to happen. I know people are going to find my cover boards laid out here and there. For the love of God, if you're too lazy to flip a board or a piece of tin or a log back over in the place that you just moved it from, stop herping, stay inside, play a video game. Nice. I like it. Yeah. Good stuff, man. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, you said this year you'll be close to home. What are the areas of the U.S. that are in U.S. or foreign. I mean, you mentioned Costa Rica. Probably South, South Carolina, right? I might try to go through a little bit of herping in Florida. if I don't go to Costa Rica later this year we'll see how things go then at some point

I'll probably like I said go up into the mountains if I get the leave I'd love to go out to Arizona I've got a buddy of mine that lives out there but I'll probably stay with in southern Arizona and Hurp with and he's got like 40 acre ranch out there and he's

you know he finds cool stuff so out west Out West, Southwest trip would be great. But again, it all depends on how much leave, how busy, all that goes. Right. Well, I think we're out of questions for you. Awesome. Yeah, some great information, and really great to have you on.

And thanks for sharing your expertise, and especially in regards to South Carolina Herpin. That's really cool stuff. It makes me really want to come out there and do some herpin. You know, y'all let me know. We'll make stuff happen. Very cool. All right.

Well, kind of at the end of the show, we like to, well, we'll have you throw out your information again, I guess. You did say your handle on Instagram was Schuler, Gabe, all one word, right? Yeah. And any other places you have a YouTube channel? I do not have, I should start a YouTube channel, but I don't have one. I do have a TikTok, and my TikTok is literally just my first and last name. It's Gabe Schiller. Okay.

Yep. Cool. All right. Well, we like to say anything that's been cool that you've seen or heard of in herpetology, herpticulture, herping, whatever, over the last little bit. And I'm trying to think, I mean, I know I've talked about this, but almost done with that pyro book. It's been a fun read for sure. And I think Rob has booked the author on the show in a few weeks. So, yeah, so that'll be fun to chat with him and kind of get some more information on his book and the process or whatever.

But that'll be fun to have him on. Nice, man. Yeah. You guys have anything cool you want to share? A friend of mine recently gifted me his copy of the Snakes of Arizona book. I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with Dr. Randy Bab. So Randy signed the book for me. Oh, cool.

Yeah, so he brought that back. He's good friends of Randy, and he brought that back for me. He was like, hey, give me your new copy of Snakes, Arizona. I'll give you my copy and inside Randy and signed it for me. That's cool. Yeah, what a book, man. That thing is a tome. It's one of my favorites.

Right. It's one of those few books that I can pull out and just read through and just be like, I'll read this all over. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a dream list of all, seeing all those snakes. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Yeah, I still, Pat May's been putting out more videos. He just put out one today where they found five ringnecks in Utah, like flipping and like,

oh, there's a ringneck. What the heck? Oh, here's another one, another one, another one. Yeah. I think he's, yeah, he said, like, that was the, weirdest day. And they found several milk snakes, too. Like, just one of those crazy days you could never predict or have happen again, you know, just awesome stuff. But he just put out that footage. So check that out. Pat May, Utah,

I think is his YouTube handle. I just found this today on the way home from work. Oh, nice. Is that a sunbeam or a sun? What? It's a rainbow snake. Rainbow, I mean, yeah, not sun mean. Rainbow snake. Very cool. So, man, you're the rainbow snake man, huh? I, uh, things nailed. It's, yeah.

I think that puts me at 17 species of snakes this year so far. Wow. Go. It's been a good spring. Yeah. I'm at a whopping one, but I guess Utah starts a little later than. Yeah, you get a lot colder winters there. It's, yeah, it's already heating up here.

That's cool. Yeah, very cool. 17 species, man. That's crazy. Nice. All right. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

I said it took a lot of time. When do you start? Just January 1? The key is I'm always herping. As I'm doing everything, even as I'm driving home from work, I'm like paying attention to weather and temps. And I'm like, oh, man, it would be great to find this today because the temp's perfect. I'm going to detour for 30 minutes. Right.

So it's just got a spontaneous herping throughout the day. Yeah. And an understanding wife probably helps there too. She works might, so that's... Oh, perfect. That's great. Yeah. All right.

All right, Gabe. We appreciate you coming on the show, and it's been fun chatting with you. We'll thank Eric and Owen and the NPR crew, and we'll catch you next time for Reptile Fight Club. All right, Phil. Thank you.