I know this is amateur. Is there any visual technique to help differ between Crotalus oreganus helleri and Crotalus oreganus oreganus? I just recently moved and where I'm located I can't seem to pin point whose range I fall into or if I fall in the inter graded area. All research I've tried doing doesn't seem to come up with a clear answer. So for the upcoming months if I run into an oreganus in my new neck of the woods, I would like to be able to know whether it's oreganus oreganus or oreganus helleri. Thanks for any help!

sub species can only be identified by location..

Fundad

I'm glad Fundad said that. That's what I was thinking, but I didn't want to give wrong info. Comin' from him it's pretty much gospel. Check range maps for both Crotes. I haven't looked @ range maps for either in a while so now, I'm wondering if there's an area where their respective ranges overlap.

reako45

South of the 138 is helleri north of the 58 is oreganus.

I appreciate this. Thanks for the knowledge haha. I think I might fall in the overlap area.

Yeah I've looked at a couple different range maps. It just seems a bit hard to pin point where locations are on them. From what I can tell there's an overlap. But I'm no expert so I can definitely be wrong.

Where are you located? Snakes that are morphologically helleri extend as far north as the Lebec/Gorman/Frazier Park area in southern Kern Co., while snakes occurring north of there (at least those I've seen on the northern slopes of the Tehachapis) are oreganus phenotypes.

Cheers,

BH