Herping methods?

[FWK]

Well the first thing is to study up on the animals native to your area. Learn about their natural history. What they eat, the type of habitat they prefer, etc. Spend some time looking at pictures of each snake found in your area, lots of repetition will make ID'ing them in the field much easier.

As far as safety, use common sense. Don't touch any animal that you aren't 100% confident as to what it is. Don't put your hands or feet anywhere you can't see. Use a hook or other tool to flip cover. If you will be walking in tall grass or otherwise can't see where you are putting your feet wear snake boots.

Do not destroy cover. If you flip a rock be sure to put it right back where it was, and that there are no critters under it (don't crush a frog). Don't tear apart stumps or otherwise damage habitat.

The real trick to herping is just to invest a lot of time in the field. The animals you are looking for are experts at not being seen. I can walk out into my backyard knowing for a fact that there are at least a half dozen species and probably dozens of specimens within a couple hundred yards of me at any given time, but I'll be lucky to find just one of them (other than Rough Greens, those guys are easy to find around here). Many snakes spend most of their time in places inaccessible to you (underground, a hole in a tree, etc.), others will know you are coming long before you get there and book it. Still others are so well camouflaged you can look right at them and never know they where there. They have been practicing not being seen for millions of years. The more time you spend in the field the more little things you will start to notice. What habitat produces certain species, what times of day and night are most productive, how the weather affects your luck. Even if you know everything there is to know about the critters you are looking for you still could come up empty, the only way to turn the odds in your favor is to invest a lot of time. The best thing about herping is that even on a "bad" day, a day when you see not a single snake, you still got to spend time outdoors and probably saw lots of other wildlife along the way.