Eastern Kingsnake Resource Site

Eastern Kingsnakes are impressive snakes from the east coast of North America - from Florida to New Jersey. Kings can be common in many states where they occur. As a result of that and the recent trend and popularity of morphs and hybrids (unethical and irresponsible crossing of different species of snakes purely for profit), Eastern Kings were long overlooked as pets and study subjects - except by old-timers and hard-core snake hunters.

Enter Keith Hillson. A few years ago (2002 or 2003) he started the "Eastern Kingsnake Resource Site". Keith tapped into a suppressed and hidden desire held by many snake hunters and snake lovers for the pure form of a previously overlooked snake - the Eastern King, also called the Chain King. Deeper than that - snake hunters wanted to see the variation and differences in one species of snake over its entire geographic range. Keith's site wowed me when I saw it for the 1st time: there were pictures everywhere - but they were segregated by state and then labeled with specific locality data - and the name of the people who took the pictures. This started a lot of people to take a second look at Eastern Kings and it is a widely held belief among snake guys like me that Keith single-handedly brought the Eastern Kingsnake back into favor among snake lovers.

For me, it led to the friendship of a number of serious snake hunters like Carsten "Zee" Zoldy, Ted Thompson, and Michael Coone who taught me how to find snakes like Eastern Kings, Corn snakes, and Scarlet Kings. Since 2005 I have been able to do that and have photographed many of these snakes in their natural habitats. You can't buy that experience in a deli cup at a snake show. I don't care how much you spend on a pink or pastel snake with a high price tag.

Things happen and his site was deleted from the server and believed lost in 2006. However, in early 2008 a backed-up disk was found and Keith agreed to let me put the site back up in a new form. I talked it over with him and decided to work on the re-do of the Eastern King site - and also sister sites dealing with Rat snakes, Corn snakes, Milk snakes, Scarlet Kings, and Mole Kings. I will work solidly to put these sites up as well. My goal is to make this site a public repository of photographs of locality snakes from the eastern United States.

Below is a picture of me with my 1st ever field-collected Kingsnake in 2006 (kissing the snake and wearing a Redskins hat - and standing next to Carsten Zoldy). The second picture shows me holding a seven foot (measured) Eastern Coachwhip I ran down, dove on and caught in the North Carolina Sandhills in 2007.

If you share a passion for snakes like I do - you came to the right place.