2023 Snake Extravaganza

So my youtuber friend from Utah flew down for the 3rd consecutive year to go catch some sneks, but this year we upped the stakes a bit - instead of just hitting my local spots, we went as far northwest as Natchitoches and as far southeast as Key Largo, with a couple days and nights hitting the Everglades around Homestead, Florida.

We caught 76 out of 127 snakes we found, including 20 out of 22 different species/subspecies. I’ll break this up into 3 posts, starting with Louisiana.

Ringneck - caught 5 out of 5 found
Straight from the airport we hit the Westbank looking for La. milk snakes to no avail. But we did catch 4 ringnecks there and later picked up another in Central, La.


Midlands water snake - 1/2
Got this guy in a creek by my house.


Rough green snake - 19/24
We caught a few. Had a couple nights shining where we found 11 each night around the Manchac swamp area, plus picked up a couple others along the way.


Broad-banded water snake - 6/24
Found these in several locations but didn’t try too hard to catch many of these musky bastards.


Western ribbon snake - 8/12
Saw most of these in St. Martinville, but ran across them in a few other areas. Another you don’t exert much effort catching because every one will musk you.


Western cottonmouth (venomous) - 1/6
Didn’t target these guys heavily in Louisiana but caught one just because I couldn’t resist. Also in St. Martinville.



Black-masked racer - 9/15
Caught around half in St. Martinville and most of the others in New Orleans East.


Southern black racer - 3/3
Caught in Central, Mandeville, and Florida.


Smooth earth snake - 1/1
Caught in Central, La.


Speckled king snake - 1/1
Caught in Mandeville. Technically, based on geography and genetics, this an Eastern black king snake…but frick that reclassification bs - these will always be speckleds to me.


Eastern garter snake - 1/1
Caught in Mandeville - maybe the prettiest one I’ve seen.


Mississippi green water snake - 1/1
Caught by another local herper we teamed up with one night. He also put us on the rough greens.


Canebrake rattlesnake (venomous) - 1/1
One of my favorites of the trip. We had hit that area in New Orleans East buy struck out, but decided to take a short detour on the way to Florida. This time we got one in the first 15-20 minutes and got back on the road to Florida.




At that spot we missed a plain-bellied water snake, which was the only one of 14 species we found but didn’t catch in Louisiana.