Need snake ID: gray with black bands - Clover, SC

DangerRuss

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Hey! Can anyone help ID this snake?
Some friends in Clover, SC found it. That is just west of Charlotte.
I thought the shape of the bands looks like a water snake, but I have not seen a gray and black water snake before. And I am no expert. :)
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Cool looking. Diamond head? Hard for me to see against the concrete background.
 
Quiet, ya'll... that is not a venomous snake.

I can’t see his eyes (round vs slit) and my eyes are getting so that I need reading glasses to see details up close...

I’m def snake-phobic but try to live and let live until confirmed to not be my friend and in my zone. Then all arrangements are null and void.
 
Banded water snake? Maybe?

That’d be my guess based on the pattern.
 
They just submitted a picture of it to something (app?) called snake snap, and got a reply that it is a midland water snake
 
what was the terrain?

i’m leaning towards Eastern Hognose snake

if it was near water then I would lean towards a water snake with a relatively unusual color variant
 
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Whatever it is/was, if my wife sees it, she's calling in:

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I thought hognose, but the pattern is all wrong.

Rattlesnakes have rattles, generally, and timber rattlers have a different pattern.

hognose snakes have so many color variants i’m not ready rule it out. That body shape and thickness pretty much rule out of juvenile rat snake to me.

that fat body is usually water snake or hognose.
 
Doing a little Google Fu, the closest thing I could come up with was a Miami phase Corn Snake but not for sure.

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I'm not sure that's not a black phase timber rattler. @Burt Gummer, what say you?
Nah. I say non venomous, honestly not 100% sure. Doesn’t have the head or face of a hoggie, not a milk snake either. The body shape resembles hog but head and nose are all wrong unless the pic just hides it. They have very distinct heads
 
I'd vote for banded water snek, but that requires it to be way out of its zone. They say that bandeds and northerns interbreed. A ventral view with a close-up side view of the head would be diagnostic +/-.
 
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Not a snake person so I didn't know that at all. WV has timber and eastern diamond backs which are less common if I remember my natural history class correctly.

It's like pop vs soda, sneakers vs tennis shoes. It's really a regional thing. They are called canebrakes usually in the coastal plane, and timbers everywhere else. There is an army place in WV, Camp Dawson, one year in the late 90s we were up there doing some training, and a guy came across an eastern diamondback. It was a thing; apparently they are quite rare up there.
 
It's like pop vs soda, sneakers vs tennis shoes. It's really a regional thing. They are called canebrakes usually in the coastal plane, and timbers everywhere else. There is an army place in WV, Camp Dawson, one year in the late 90s we were up there doing some training, and a guy came across an eastern diamondback. It was a thing; apparently they are quite rare up there.

Camp Dawson is a very interesting place. I had a friend in the National guard up there said it was a training center for a lot of Special Forces because of the terrain. No Idea if that is true or not.
 
Camp Dawson is a very interesting place. I had a friend in the National guard up there said it was a training center for a lot of Special Forces because of the terrain. No Idea if that is true or not.

I know CAG/Delta (whatever they like to be called these days) used to do assessment up there. I do not know if they still do. My platoon went there for land lav and some mountain training. It is very rugged terrain.
 
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