Herping for Wild Snakes in Wisconsin!!

it is finally in the 80s this week which means Winter's behind us and it's herping season again it is we are in southern Wisconsin right now we're actually speaking for the Madison area herp society and while we're in town we figured we'd go herping because the weather is gorgeous and we're gonna see what kind of snakes we can find I think we're gonna try out um we'll start maybe here with the Iraqi outcrop type of habitats yeah I don't think I'm gonna go all the way up to the top of the block you're not gonna climb no I mean if I wasn't afraid of falling down the bluff then yes I'd join you but I don't want to fall I would be the one I would be the one to fall down the Bluffs I'm sure there's snakes at the Lower Side of the bluff too after the Bluffs I think we're gonna check out some Oak Woods uh maybe some prairies maybe some Wetlands we're just gonna Adventure today and see what snakes we can find [Music] ah looks like I'm on my own now as we have encountered Ed's one weakness Heights [Music] foreign [Music] Ed gave up and is just sitting on a rock [Music] oh man that would be a perfect spot for a timber rattlesnake but there's nothing [Music] oh my gosh I found our first snake there's a hognose snake dick come here come here oh my gosh look at you yes found our first snake this is an Eastern hognose snake just a baby you're so dry dude oh my gosh oh and you're musking all over me but you're not playing dead that's really surprising actually look at you oh my gosh so I can tell this is an Eastern oh oh there we go oh no don't die on me no oh no the hog knows he's dead oh I killed him you poor thing I'm so sorry okay he's not actually dead guys this is what they do as their defense mechanism I'm kind of surprised he didn't do it right away to be honest oh you're so dead look at your mouth it's open and everything oh deaded so dead well here's the ultimate test if we flip him so he's right side up let's see if he's actually dead oh he's so dead he flipped over again that's how dead he is oh my goodness that is amazing look at this poor little dead eastern hognose snake oh fun fact they can on purpose pop a blood vessel in their mouth so they can even bleed and look even more convincingly dead looks like he's decided not to do that today though but yeah here we have our first snake of the day and Eastern hognose that's what I was trying to say before he died on us died is I can tell this is an Eastern Hawk nose over a Plains or Western because well first off planes don't live in this area of Wisconsin so just knowing the ranges I know this is by default going to be an Eastern but also the Easterns are known for having those large black blotches on the back of their head right there and right there that's a notable characteristic of Eastern hognoses the Easterns also have a less upturned snout than the planes do oh did you realize I'm not oh are you gonna die again are you dead it or are you gonna realize that I'm not actually here to hurt you it seems like he can't make up his mind if he wants to die or not what if I pet him oh my gosh oh now we're dying oh so dramatic all right buddy you look really good actually you're kind of dry so I wonder if I can give you a drink of water okay I'm not gonna actually use my camera because with how windy it is my phone's actually better on picking up sound with wind than the camera is but yeah this little guy I'm kind of surprised to see an Eastern hognose in such a dry climate or dry environment these are pretty strict toad eaters so I would assume you would want something with a little bit more of a water source nearby to attract toads and tadpoles but he seems to be doing quite all right on his own without a water source nearby let's see if he is a male or female looking at his tail that's a pretty long tail before it tapers out so I'm guessing this is a boy if it was a female it would have a shorter tail that tapered a little bit more quickly and now he has realized that I am not here to kill him I believe you look so healthy oh you're so cute looking at his body weight he seems pretty thick actually looks like he's finding food just fine oh are you dying again why now why are you dying now oh okay oh wow you really died this time again okay usually the first warning that they are stressed is the Eastern hognose will flatten out the sides of its face or kind of stretch out out their cheeks to try to look big and intimidating to scare you away and if that doesn't work then they do their backup plan which is playing dead like this complete with mouth open tongue out and the whole nine yards obviously he is not dead I'll get him looking at us he's like are you gone yet are you actually gonna eat me right now is actually April of 2023 which means it is breeding season for Eastern hognoses here in Wisconsin now this guy won't be breeding he is much too young my guess is based on his size he has a baby from last Summer's or last year's breeding season so this guy still has a couple of years to go before he is big enough to breed which means right now he is just focused on growth and eating and getting as big as possible and avoiding predators of course but he I think now has realized yeah I'm definitely not gonna not gonna hurt him he might die for a third time you never know they're very dramatic they are the drama queens of the snake World by far even more so than Plains or Western hognoses in my opinion oh and he has died for a third time okay buddy I just trying to film a little bit bit of beer footage for you okay sorry sorry I killed you again we're gonna just put you back in your little hole that we found you in if you're ever herping guys it's very important to put the snake back exactly where you found them and if you had to lift anything up in order to find them make sure you put that back in its place too but luckily for me I didn't have to lift anything up he was just right there okay buddy here you go back in your hole goodbye [Music] timber rattlesnakes love Rocky outcrops they love to sit in those little gaps in between the Rocks facing the Sun so they can warm up and they can just tuck back in if they need to hide or cool back down so I'm looking in all of these crevices to see if I can find any signs of scales [Music] now where we're herping today is actually kind of interesting this was a recently burned site and it was a controlled burn site I mean I can just kind of tell based on the surface area that's all charred around us and what it encompasses that this was done on purpose now there are several reasons why it's actually important to do prescribed or controlled Burns and albeit some slower moving Wildlife does unfortunately perish in the Flames the majority however is able to escape I mean the DNR agents or whoever's doing the burn doesn't and they use flamethrowers it's awesome I've been able to witness them before they don't create a fire Circle and then work their way inwards trapping the wildlife no they will start from the inside and they work their way out so that the wildlife has time to escape those flames and fossorial species like hognose snakes actually just burrow underground and they stay safe during the during the burn now the importance of burns is to get rid of the accumulating Leaf litter on the forest or field floor and that's because if there's too much Leaf litter and a natural fire starts it's going to be so much more devastating because it'll have so much more fuel on the ground for that those Flames to feed on so it gets rid of that fuel a prescribed burn is also important because it helps get rid of some invasive species of plants by just burning them away and it encourages certain native species of plants to germinate and grow Jack Pines for example the pine tree their pine cones will only Sprout if they are burned first so they have to encounter a fire in order to reproduce so it's really crazy how how nature works sometimes but that's why it's actually important to have prescribed Burns in certain circumstances so I'm really curious to see if we're still gonna find some reptiles in this area addicted [Music] oh my gosh that's a bull snake face oh my goodness is there any way I'm gonna be able to catch him oh my goodness you don't want me to catch you there aren't any Timbers around right nope just you yeah I think just you okay come here hello beautiful beautiful bull snake wow you are gorgeous why are you not trying to bite me oh there's this Ah that's what I was waiting for oh my gosh we found a bull snake look at this you are Darkness hello hi bull snake oh that's how you're gonna greet me a tail Rattle and hissing oh my gosh you are so feisty wow look at you I was expecting to see a timber rattlesnake in that crevice but then I saw your face broken house oh you're beautiful all right we have a nice lovely wild bull snake here oh my gosh and he is very vocal fun fact bull snakes can hiss louder than other snakes because of a piece of cartilage in front of their glottis which is their Airway they have an extra piece of cartilage in front of that Airway that kind of acts like when you put a piece of grass in between your thumbs and you blow and make a loud noise oh wow thank you thank you wonder epiglottis that's what the piece of cartilage is called can we see it can we see it in there no you're not gonna let us look okay well Michael can put a picture right here on the screen that is what the epiglottis is and that's what allows bull snakes to hiss so ridiculously loud compared to other snakes this is a gorgeous snake one of the things I like about bull snakes is they have this very heavy dark line across their eyes it kind of gives them I don't know a heavy eyebrow gives them resting snake face we'll call it they always look angry all right let's see dude are you actually a dude oh I think you're a female that's a pretty short squat tail that you're rattling in the air that's awesome all right sorry ma'am would you would you calm down I'm gonna call you Karen if you don't stop here soon so something that's kind of cool to point out with bull snakes is that and a lot of our native species almost all of them actually all except for the milk snake in Minnesota and Wisconsin have what we call keeled Scales which means there's a raised Ridge that runs down the center of each scale and that gives them this rougher appearance it breaks up the shininess that smooth scales have and since they're not shiny and instead they're dull it helps them camouflage into their surroundings it makes them less noticeable oh man but this is just a beautiful bull snake based on her size I would think she's around four years old give or take she definitely has some growing still to do you are so pretty these grow to uh about six feet long and she's probably around three feet long if that so she's still gonna double in size when she becomes a full-grown adult but she is close to breeding age and the wild she might breed at this size anyway they tend to breed on a little bit smaller than what we breed them in captivity but she might but I think she has one year left and man this is just a beautiful specimen there's no blemishes no Nicks no wounds nothing this is like a perfect condition chars I mean bull snake even her belly scoots look perfect she's rattling all the time aren't you where's your face where's your face oh there you are are you gonna hiss into my arm now yes we're constantly hissing and angry but you look beautiful you're in really good shape anyway we're gonna let this beautiful girl go oh can you say goodbye say goodbye to everybody all right we'll put her back all right back into your crevice here you go you can let go of me now it's okay you just want a hiss oh my gosh how am I gonna take you off with only one hand there we go got her off my hand and back into her home she goes you know oh and she immediately stops hissing oh never mind there she goes again goodbye Karen foreign [Music] hello bull snake hi sir all right you're so comfy in there but you know what I'm gonna put you right back hi oh sorry sir okay well fine you know I think I found your girlfriend Karen she's up the hill aways yeah we found her you're so pretty I can't take you out huh come here bull snake we're very stuck in there now okay sorry sir I'll leave you be man I thought bull snakes were more of a prairie species I had no idea they'd be living literally in a rock wall that's news to me that's just crazy [Music] okay we're trying another location this is our third location so far today that we're trying I don't know what we're gonna find but let's see [Music] do you find something really you found a water snake oh my gosh do you want me do you want me to grab them or do you want to grab them I bet you could hook them just I was thinking yeah oh my gosh dude nice oh oh you got it you got it you got him you got him nice go go going I believe I believe you found Wisconsin's smelliest species of snakes nice must all over now Ed found is this your very first snake that you've seen in the wild I know I've seen what I've seen them but you found you found yourself is Ed's lifer uh water snake hooray nice nice wow this is gorgeous oh yeah male or female that's totally oh yeah that's a really thick tail okay so you found a male northern water snake wow all right I tried to get Ed to do this segment but he just found the snake and wants me to do the educational work yep okay that'll work though so this is again the northern water snake this is kind of a heavier bodied snake even though this particular one is actually a pretty thin bodied guy they're somewhat closely related to garter snakes and they are live Bears just like garter snakes are they usually are very stinky but this one hasn't masked me at all I think he must Ed though yeah a little bit not too bad now as their name implies these live in or near the water they're often found on the edge of a body of water and that allows them to not only dip their head into the water to catch fish and amphibians which are their stable diet but it also allows them to make a quick getaway of something like a predator gets too close to them they do have killed scales like how we talked about with the eastern hognoses and the bull snakes so those keeled scales give them kind of a duller appearance it makes them less shiny you can actually see the difference between cute scales like on his back here which are dull compared to his belly scutes which are smooth and therefore very very shiny so the the Keels that raised Ridge does actually dull them out quite a bit now it's also believed that the Keels on their scales does give the water snake a bit of a grip around rocks and logs near the water so they can hang on to those while they hunt for fish so that also supports the hypothesis that Timber rattlesnakes have killed scales to help them grip onto the rocky outcrops that where they live so it sounds like there's a couple different benefits to having killed scales the white water snakes eat is kind of brutal they're not venomous they're not constrictors though either really they just grab fish or frogs and simply eat them I'm alive so it's kind of rude you're rude to your prey yeah you don't kill them first that's very rude they love to eat though they love they these are like Bottomless Pits and they're pretty brave too they will take on fish that they shouldn't because they're much bigger than them but they don't care they want to eat them anyway as babies these seem to have more vibrant of a pattern than they do as adults this one's probably a couple years old he is a male and you can see he still has some of that pattern down his side but he would have had a lot more when he was first born now whether that helps them camouflage into dead grass on land and they don't need that so much when they're adults who knows exactly why they lose the pattern but as adults they seem to be more of an overall brown color with just hints of pattern left behind so he has some really pretty water snake he has a really pretty belly too he's just gorgeous and just like all the other snakes we found today he has no blemishes he has his complete tail there's no nub on the end like you often see while you're herping for snakes he looks perfect he is a very gorgeous snake so unlike the Eastern hognose whose defense mechanism is just a to play dead like you saw and the bull snake's defense mechanism which is to hiss and try to act offensively the defense mechanism for a water snake is to musk on you which is why they are arguably the smelliest snake in Wisconsin in my opinion even smellier than garter snakes musking basically means emitting a very foul smelling liquid from their convenience all in one hole called a cloaca that's where babies come from poop comes from and is where musk comes from too and let me tell you water snake musk does not smell good and it takes a while to wash away so I'm really happy that he has decided not to musk me today actually alright buddy we're gonna let you go here go find some ladies it's your breeding season and he's probably breeding size these don't get terribly big two to four feet but he's I would say able to breed at this size being a male there you go enjoy the wild go catch some fish go catch some frogs go do sneaky things well that was so much fun we found an Eastern hognose we found two bull snakes we found a couple water snakes and we caught one of them we found we saw a garter snake and it got away from us yeah just catch that ducked into the water yeah they're good at swimmers and I learned some new things today I learned that Eastern hognoses are even more dramatic than I thought they would he died three times in my hands I learned that bull snakes live in Rocky outcrops I thought they liked prairies I had no idea we were gonna find bull snakes up there and I learned that sometimes water snakes aren't smelly that didn't mean to me at all that's a really nice water snake so I'd say it was a successful herping Adventure today saw some fun snakes other than your arms are now uh I got slightly Pinker I think I got a little sunburned yeah up there I forgot that sunscreen is important it was our first exciting warm day ever again I go a little bit not not as bad as you did yeah I can feel it already it's already tight it's not gonna feel good it's fine though it's working for the snake exactly so I want to thank Eric for giving us some ideas on where to herp he had some great suggestions which we have strategically filmed so as to not give them away we have thrown in several red herrings of footage in this video so if you're trying to figure out where we are I wish you luck we were really careful as to not give away any of these spots uh we'd also like to thank Bill Stewart for letting us borrow his snake hooks for this adventure we ended up not finding rattlesnakes but that's okay they still come in handy when you're herping just moving things aside and peering under things so we're very thankful to have hooks with us today so thank you guys so much for watching as well thank you patreon backers and I might look around one more time on this Bluff and see what else we can find I'm gonna go all the way up there again maybe I'm gonna go sit in the car okay [Music]

Channel: Snake Discovery

Views: 785,817

Keywords: herping, snake discovery, wild snakes, herping wisconsin, wisconsin snakes, bullsnake, hognose snake, eastern hognose, water snake, garter snake, wild bullsnake, finding wild snakes, snakes in the wild, reptiles, animals, hognose playing dead, hognose snake play dead, snake playing dead, snake feigning death, snake hissing, bullsnake hissing

Id: Io38wnnXinI

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023