We had an excellent weekend of camping at Hawn State Park, approximately 60 miles south of St. Louis. This is a beautiful park full of shut-ins, boulder strewn hillsides, dense forest, and open pine savannah. Not the best time of year for snake hunting as temps were well into the nineties during the day, then soon after dusk rapidly fell to the mid to low sixties. We hiked a bunch, ate good food, and slept well.

Daytime hikes produced tons of cricket frogs, leopard frogs, green frogs and northern water snakes were also abundant. Flipping rocks produced zilch:( In my previous post about Missouri, I mentioned that I would like to get a couple pics of a Missouri Calligaster, and copperhead. The herp gods were with me as some quick dusk to night road cruising on night one produced these gems.

and here's the proud herpers holding one of the targets

{{!gwi}}

Besides the common daytime finds, these were the only finds of the weekend, but we were both thrilled to find both of them. The calligaster is a lifer for me, and both were lifers for Lisa, who got a big rush out of watching me hook the copperhead and safely move him off the road. See ya at snake road! Happy herping, and thanx to all who helped me get my two targets.

Later, Matt