Hi guys and gals!
I just joined the forum and am new to herping and just wanted to make a post introducing myself and ask for some herping advice.
To start off my name is Brandon and I'm 22 years old and live in the Coachella Valley near Palm Desert, CA. Growing up I've kept and bred a variety of local and nonlocal species of insects, arachnids, and reptiles. I've had everything from camel spiders to chameleons lol. Currently I have an adult cornsnake, an adult ball python, a juvenile Mexican black kingsnake (might be a hybrid), a juvenile Madagascar giant day gecko, an adult female Mexican red-rump tarantula, and an adult female black widow. I also am very interested in carnivorous plants and used to have a somewhat decent collection of them, but am now down to just a couple species of nepenthes. Also when the season is right I love catching, raising, and breeding mediterranean mantises that are found in abundance all around my area. I can't find a decent way to get an IMG code to covert the coding on photos from my iPhone, but I have a Youtube channel that's had a bit of success where you can see some of the various animals and inverts that I've kept over the years: youtube.com/user/nakedreptiles
Now recently I've become more interested in the herping hobby after my dad found a gorgeous desert phase Cal king in a pool that he was servicing out near Indio, CA (again, I have photos on my Facebook that I can't seem to link but it is featured on my Youtube channel with quite a few hits). It was severely dehydrated and sickly due to spending time in a chlorinated pool, so I kept it for about a month and nursed it back to health before releasing it in that same area. I've gone out to areas around WW and the Salton Sea recently over the past couple of weeks (morning, day, sunset, and night) road cruising and on foot to look for snakes, the Cal kings in particular, with no luck except for finding a few dune scorpions. With it being the beginning of May and having a pretty decent rain period for the desert I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to see at least one or another species of snake. I am thinking of moving out of state to Seattle in the next year or so and I would really love to collect a gorgeous juvenile Cal king to have in my reptile-family because of it being a local snake and from my home.
Any tips on herping this area or tips on what I am doing wrong? Or is it really that hard to find snakes out here? I know you can't give street names or specific areas, but if you have any tips on a good ideal habitat or general area where you've had success out here that would be helpful. Also, if there are any local herpers out here I would love a chance to meet up or tag along and learn a little bit more about the hobby. Also, I want to make sure I'm representing the hobby well and abiding by the CA laws of viewing and/or collecting a snake so if you have any info about that I would appreciate it as well.
Thanks in advance!
Brandon 
Statistics: Posted by Candyfornian — May 13th, 2016, 4:03 pm