Okeetee Questions

[Chip]

He had a Myrtle Beach line that I thought was stunning. But I bet a lot of people get out of this hobby if they expect a work to $$$ ratio of any sort!

 

[kathylove]

Although we did go the Jasper County a few times and did find a few locality corns there (we always considered anything in that county to be a locality okeetee), most did not look like what breeders today sell as okeetees. The wild ones do TEND to have larger than usual blotches, pretty colors, and thicker than usual black borders. BUT - they also tend to be very, very dark as adults, and often have ugly (to me) dark, longitudinal black stripes, sort of like yellow rats. And there is great variation as to whether an individual will have one or all of those traits, anyway. And of course, breeders have tried to do away with the "ugly" traits and promote what we see as beauty. So our selectively bred 2013 okeetees often don't look much like the typical wild specimen you are likely to find. New collectors are often disappointed to find that their first wild okeetee in the field doesn't look like their cb baby.

Back in the '80s when captive breeding was just really getting started in going strong, and some of us were beginning to think about selective breeding, we all started combing through okeetees and other corns, looking for the best to become foundation stock. We looked through offerings from people like Davie Jones and Todd Ivy and others who lived nearby or spent a lot of time there, to get the best we could. And then we bought or traded from other breeders from other states who had caught their own or bought from local SC breeders, too. As far as we knew, they all came from Jasper County corns. But we couldn't be POSITIVE, since we didn't catch them all ourselves. So when some purists started nit picking about localities, we started calling ours Okeetee Phase, so we didn't have to GUARANTEE the locality origins, even though we thought they were pure. That way, the pure locality people could have their designation, and we who were MOST concerned about looks, but also wanted to try to stay true to the locality, could still fairly call ours okeetee (phase), too.

I can't say how many actually came out of the hunt club itself. We never hunted there. But it was managed for birds (quail, I think) in such a way as to be perfectly managed for snake production, too. So they were probably artificially abundant there, and I imagine many were available for harvest.

 

[dave partington]

Thanks Kathy

 

[DMong]

Yeah, I've told folks many times in the past that they could even find a corn under a floorboard of the main Okeetee estate and it wouldn't necessarily look anything like the captive-bred lines of today, even though some might


~Doug

 

[dave partington]

Dave, have you read accounts of snake collecting in the "old days?" Snake hunters would go out and bring home 10's or 100's of snakes at a time and sell them into the pet trade.

Kind of like, you know how they had to pass the turtle collecting law here in Florida to prevent our lakes of being stripped of ALL turtles? (For Asia).

I have some original 1960's & early 70's publications from FWC accounting how many of which species of herps (and non herps) were wild collected, and where the paperwork said they went to.

We'll have to go wading thru the canals here sometime so you can see how many red-eared-slider hybrids are all over the place in the east Volusia county area.

 

[Chip]

The wild ones do TEND to have larger than usual blotches, pretty colors, and thicker than usual black borders. BUT - they also tend to be very, very dark as adults, and often have ugly (to me) dark, longitudinal black stripes, sort of like yellow rats.

Here is the first female I ever caught from the HC floor:

I can't say how many actually came out of the hunt club itself. We never hunted there. But it was managed for birds (quail, I think) in such a way as to be perfectly managed for snake production, too. So they were probably artificially abundant there, and I imagine many were available for harvest.

I tend to agree. Even though EVERY one I found road cruising turned out to be male, it was crawling with snakes. Not just corns; but racers, rattlers, corals, garters, ringnecks, it seemed like every piece of tin or wood had a collection under it. Of course, memories get fonder with time I suppose, but that area is literally crawling with herps. Shame they are so strict about trespassing/collecting.

 

[chris68]

Great info everyone