Locality Okeetee Red Rat Snakes
Jasper County, South Carolina is legendary for its gorgeous red rat snakes. The Okeetee Hunting Club is located here and was made famous by Carl Kauffeld in his iconic 1957 book, Snakes and Snake Hunting. Kauffeld introduced us to the Okeetee Corn snake, and the name is now synonymous with any brightly colored orange and red rat snakes. However, true Okeetee red rat snakes (as I prefer to call them) are specific to the SC Hunt Club area.
Classic wild-type Okeetee red rat snake. This yearling female is showing nice color development, with thick black borders on the dorsal blotches. Not all locality Okeetees have the heavy black borders.
A “Red Zeppelin” amelanistic locality red rat snake. This albino form is from the original founder stock and is distinct from other albino corn snake lines.
A double-visual amel and hypo, known as the “Phoenix” corn.
Hypo Okeetee, known as the “Sun kissed.” There are four phenotypes that have been produced from the original Sherman locality Okeetee line: Wild type, Red Zeppelin amel, Sun kissed hypo, and double visual Phoenex amel/ hypo.
An “extreme” Okeetee, line bred for color and not locality traceable. This animal is in fact 75% pure locality Okeetee, but in the world of locality breeding, an animal is either 100% pure or it isn’t locality.
Male Sherman line Okeetee. There isn’t much that can beat one of these for sheer beauty.
About This Project
The locality-specific Okeetee Hunt Club red rat snake line was started many years ago by Howie Sherman, who was able to collect his founder stock from the Hunt Club area in Jasper County, SC. Many people have obtained stock from the original Sherman lines over the years, and have worked to keep the line pure. Others have used Sherman red rats as the foundation of a selective breeding project focused on color and pattern. While I am more interested in locality Okeetees, I also have some “extreme” Okeetees from the second group.
I am enthusiastic to be working with all four locality Okeetee phenotypes: Wild type classic, amelanistic “red zeppelin”, hypo “sun kissed”, and double-visual amel/ hypo “phoenix. These were all produced from Sherman lines and not from out-crossing with other corn snake morphs.