Jasper County Corn Snake
It is clear as dried up mud, but I accept your opinion of what an Okeetee Corn Snake is. Hopefully, this is just friendly discussion about differences of opinion. Mine just happens to be different than yours. It is extremely unfortunate that everybody in the snake hobby has not kept better records of the lineages of the snakes they own, especially from wild caught snakes. Many of the Okeetee Corns Snakes that some of us have, who have been in the hobby for a while, could be traced back to the exact locality of capture. I have seen so many people come and go in this hobby or business, it is amazing. I have a hard time remembering the people I bought snakes from 20 years ago or even 10 years ago sometimes and many of those snakes are no longer with us. What if I could remember the name of the person I bought them from, it still may have no meaning to you at all.
I totally agree with you that when the Okeetee name is placed upon normal corn snakes in an attempt to get higher prices for the normal corns it is wrong. I guess to me a normal corn is a normal colored corn, with no know ancestry, or no special ancestry that I would wholesale to the pet trade. I am not pointing fingers at you or anybody else specifically, but it also seems to me that locality buffs totally slam anybody’s Okeetees that can not be traced to the person who captured them, in an attempt to pronounce their Okeetees as being better and therefore, worth more money. This is very similar to the objective of people adding the Okeetee name to normals to get higher prices for their snakes. Offspring from a wild caught snake in the vicinity of the Hunt Club, to me has the same value as offspring from some caught on the Hunt Club Property, but not to you. When people buy snakes like the Okeetees from wild caught snakes they are told a story. It may be true or not, but the names of the actual collector of the snakes are not normally passed on. If I did have a name of the collector of the wild caught snake which the Trans Hypo came from and it was lets say, “John Doe”, and you did not know him, would this still disqualify or qualify them as being Okeetees? John Doe could have collected a wild caught Okeetee from the Hunt Club Property the same as anybody else. I have been inquiring about purchasing wild caught snakes from the Hunt Club. Sometimes, they tell me that they have actually collected them, but most of the time they say they buy all that collectors can find. Even If they told me who the collector was, it would have no real meaning to me, because I don’t know them and could not verify that they were actually the one who collected the snakes.
I place a higher price and pride of ownership on Hunt Club Okeetees and will own some very soon. The wild caught snakes which the trans hypo line came from were actually captured in the Okeetee area, what ever that means. I will attempt to find out more information about them. Gordon Schuett’s brother was working at the Ridgeland Zoo and obtained these snakes from collectors of locality Okeetees. Who knows, Schuett’s brother may just know who he obtained them from and if he is still into snakes, may be able to relate a more accurate story to me. If this person, is unknown to you, then it may mean nothing at all. I know if I captured Okeetees from the Hunt Club and bred them and sold them to a guy who works at the Zoo, I would probably still remember the incident. I have very vivid memories of my snake hunting expeditions and each snake that I have captured.
At what point in the history of Okeetee Corn Snakes did they have to be collected on the Hunt Club Property? I really don’t know much about it. Obviously, the collectors in the area would know much more. Was this something, that began in the 50’s and has never changed or something that new collectors of these snake has decided what a Okeetee is. Collector in the area, may have passed down the information to new collectors in the area, or they are all gone and new comers have established there own opinions of what a Okeetee is. I was reading through one of the threads the other day and I think it was Rich Z, but it could have been anybody, it doesn’t matter. They said something like, once a collector like yourself collects a snake from the Okeetee Hunt Club and breeds them in captivity and then selects the best looking offspring to breed in the future they are no longer what would occur in the wild. The response is what caught my attention. They said, Well, the genetic make up of the snake is still the same, even if we are selectively breeding them. I guess that once a wild caught snake is bred in captivity and F1’s are produced the only connection to the Hunt Club, other than the parents were capture there, is their genetic make up, which is my point about a snake caught on an adjoining property.
I am not trying to complicate the hypo issue, by referring to the wild caught corn snakes as “Pure Okeetees” I guess my references to the “Purity” of the line, is the fact that the hypo gene was produced from F2’s from wild caught stock from Jasper County with no other corns bred into the line. Will you except that? They were sold to me as Okeetee Corn Snakes from wild caught stock in the vicinity of the Hunt Club, at a reasonable price. My success in breeding the Trans Hypos is nothing to pound my chest about. Anybody, who can breed corn snakes could have done the same thing. The only thing that I have done, which may or may not be of any value to someone, is maintain some Okeetees (Jasper County Corns) in my collection that are still direct dissidence from the wild caught line. This can not be said for most of the other recessive traits that may have popped up over time. Lets take the amel gene for example. If the amel gene originated from a wild caught snake and was produce from a know locality, and kept pure over the last many years by somebody, by only breeding them to other locality snakes from the same area, would that be worth anything to somebody. If I had gotten out of snakes altogether, then the story behind the Trans Hypos would not be known, but somebody eventually would have test bred them and pronounced it as being a new hypo gene. The only difference is that the story would have been quite different and not traceable very far or not accurate.
I guess I have a couple of last questions for you. If you catch a corn snake on the Hunt Club Property and produce F1’s and then F2’s and a anery gene, amel, aberrant gene or any other recessive gene is produced from them what would you do? Will they have the same value to you as a normal colored corn from there or would you destroy them or something like that. I guess the reason I ask, is because it seems that wild caught corns from the Hunt Club, with any aberrances at all are the first offered for sale, because it is one of the signs that a snake is not Pure Okeetee, even if it was caught on the property and is in fact pure Okeetee.
