Gopher, Pine, Bull Snakes - Pituophis

Snakes of the genus Pituophis, often simply referred to as "Pits" amongst their keepers, are medium sized powerful constrictors. There is a small dwarf race that lives on the Santa Cruz Islands off of the coast of California, but it is currently protected from wild collection and extremely rare in legal private collections.

Pits have a reputation for being particularly mean snakes. There is some truth to this. Often adults in the wild are very defensively aggressive when bothered by people, repeatedly striking and biting if their warning is not heeded. Combine that with their decent size and their very loud hiss, and it is understandable why some people fear them.

Captive bred pits sometimes hatch out on the aggressive side. Usually they acclimate very well and become accustomed to handling, behaving themselves quite nicely. Even wild collected adults often calm down fairly quickly, and some wild caught adults can be as gentle as a Corn Snake the day they are found.

Pits have strongly keeled scales and usually have four prefrontal scales (most North American colubrids only have two). In the wild they chiefly feed upon rodents.

Pacific Gopher Snake (Pituophis catenifer catenifer)

Pacific Gopher Snakes are natives of Oregon and California where they are fairly common in the great California Valley, feeding upon the rodents that thrive on our agricultural industry. Wild adults are typically between 4.5 feet and 5 feet long, though 6 foot specimens are not unheard of. In captivity they reportedly can exceed 7 feet. Hatchlings are big, sometimes as long as 20 inches out of the egg.

Pacific Gopher Snakes are native to the State of California, the state where I reside. As a native species, they fall under the regulations of the California Department of Fish & Game. The Pacific Gopher Snakes I offer are legally bred under permit RA0282.

Some natural history information on the Pacific Gopher Snake can be found at http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/p.c.catenifer.html.

Available Pacific Gopher Snakes

No Pac Gophers are available at this time.

I recently collected a locality mate for my female. He is very young, probably a late '07 hatchling that only had a few meals before winter came, but he is a very stunning specimen with clean blotches and an absolutely gorgeous head pattern. He probably will not reach sexual maturity until 2010. I will not be collecting another, I felt he was nice enough that collecting him and waiting for him to mature was the best course of action.