Coconut

2020

My introduction to Arizona Mountain kingsnakes came through websites and magazines back in the 90's. At the time, there were breeders like Bob Applegate who seemed to breed every kind of tricolor snake imaginable - Thayer's kingsnakes, Durango Mtn kingsnakes, Mexican milk snakes, Pueblan milk snakes, Sinaloan milk snakes, Nelson's milk snakes, etc. I was especially interested in the "Applegate pyro" which is a hypomelanistic AZ mountain king that is essentially a red and white banded snake.

Living in Utah there is a subspecies of the Arizona Mountain kingsnake called the Utah Mountain kingsnake (Lampropeltis p. infralabialis) but I've never seen one in the wild. I have encountered the cousin species - the Utah Milksnake (Lampropeltis triangulum taylori) - a couple of times, but never the mountain king. In the 2010s, the state used to issue this kind of permit that allowed you to hunt for them in a specific county and you could keep one if you found one. I had Brian Hubbs' "Mountain Kings" book and I studied it to try and guess where to go. I chose Piute county and spent 5 days and nights in late Spring and early Summer searching but never found one.

Mountain Kings, A Collective Natural History of California, Sonoran, Durango, and Quertaro Mountain Kingsnakes, by Brian Hubbs, 2004

Piute County, Utah

We have found a couple of Utah milk snakes in Salt Lake and Utah counties. I don't know if this is always accurate but the way that I differentiate the milk snake from the kingsnake is that on the milk snake as the white bands get closer to the ventral (bottom) side of the body they tend to widen out, like milk spilling on the ground.

Utah Milk snake, Salt Lake County, Utah

Utah Milk snake, Salt Lake County, Utah