Discover When Missouri Copperheads Are Most Active

Copperheads are the most populous snake in Missouri, a state with nearly 50 species. Copperheads are incredibly crafty snakes, able to camouflage themselves incredibly well against various backdrops, such as fall leaves, trees, green leaves, cardboard, and more.

In Missouri, copperhead snakes are most active in the spring and fall months, which may confuse those unfamiliar with this particular reptile. It’s well known that snakes (as reptiles) prefer heat, so why spring and fall?

From early to mid-spring and fall, the leaves and general topography are the most convenient for the eastern copperhead’s blending capabilities. Leaves aren’t falling in the summer months, as hot and timely as they are.

Eastern Copperhead Activity in the Spring and Fall

Just because they are the most active during the spring and fall months, doesn’t mean that eastern copperhead snakes aren’t active throughout the summer months as well. They are plenty active in the summer—just not as busy.

Copperheads seek out moist areas and finding them close to stream beds, creeks, river banks, and pond edges is fairly common. Since they love rodents, they also migrate toward barns, farming fields, the outer edges of forests, and meadows.

Rodents make up most of the copperhead’s diet since they are small and easy to catch. Also, like many vipers, they tend to come out at night. While they may not be nocturnal per se, nighttime is when the rodents leave their nests and venture out, searching for food.

Female copperheads will often battle a male, submitting if she loses and refusing to mate with the ones she defeats. Spring is the best time for copperheads to mate, so they have time to hatch eggs and nurture their young. If she mates too late in the season, she will store the sperm and go into hibernation, only allowing fertilization once she’s up and about again in the springtime.

One hundred Missourians per year are bitten by copperheads, generally in the spring and fall months. Fortunately, the venom in a copperhead is not very potent and shouldn’t be fatal in a grown adult. Children and the elderly are more susceptible, however.

Life Cycle Throughout the Seasons

Mating seasons coincide with active seasons, to a degree, beginning in February and lasting through May and beginning again in August, lasting through October. Females maintain the eggs inside their bodies, only releasing them when they begin to hatch (ovoviviparous).

A female will give birth to anywhere between 2 and 18 baby copperheads, each roughly 10″ in length. Babies, like most vipers and pit vipers, have fangs and are venomous, often injecting far more venom than is necessary until they reach adulthood.

Fortunately, babies stick to mosquitoes, grubs, larvae, and caterpillars until they are big enough to tackle larger creatures. Baby copperheads hunt differently from that adults. As babies, they have distinctly yellow tails, which they wag back and forth while remaining very still.

The tail serves as a lure (caudal luring), confusing other frogs and lizards into thinking there’s a potential meal awaiting them.

Post Baby Stage

Junior copperheads may not stray far from the pack unless it’s hunting season. Like many pit vipers, they are semi-social and will all hibernate together in a large cluster throughout the winter season. They’re also perfectly comfortable hibernating with timber rattlesnakes and other, various, non-pit viper snakes.

According to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, copperheads migrate far out from their place of hibernation during the hotter, summer months, traveling farther out as they approach full adulthood. However, they always return to their hibernation spot for the winter.

Also, as the junior copperhead reaches maturity, it loses that bright-colored, yellow tail that it used so judiciously as a young snake. It fades away, with the tail taking on the same colorations as the rest of the copperhead’s body.

Once they reach full adulthood, they are generally between 2′ and 3′ in length, with dark, brown hourglass patterns juxtaposed against a pale, brownish background. As the summer months roll in and it becomes oppressively hot, copperheads become more and more nocturnal, avoiding the simmering heat of warm but much cooler evenings.

Types of Copperheads Active in Missouri

We mentioned the eastern rattlesnake simply because it is by far the most prevalent of the species in the state of Missouri, north to south and east to west. However, there are also southern and northern variations as well. The broad-banded, Osage, and trans-Pecos are not native to Missouri nor have there been any recorded instances of the latter three in Missouri.

In terms of habit and life cycle, there is no real difference among southern, eastern, and northern copperheads, in Missouri or anywhere else in the United States. The southern copperhead is typically paler than its northern cousin, with a slightly pinkish hue.

The northern variation is the farthest-ranging of all the types, with northern copperheads found far outside of Missouri, from the Florida Panhandle to Washington D.C. and west, covering most of the central portion of the U.S.

Conservation Status

Though many copperheads reach their end at the hands of humans, it’s often as unintentional as it is intentional. Copperheads are often found throughout the central, eastern, and southern parts of the country on the road, having been run over.

Fortunately, depending on how you look at it, copperheads are not on any endangered lists—not at the local, state, or federal level. They are abundant, reproducing at a nominal rate, and continuing to populate states like Missouri.

As a non-aggressive pit viper, copperheads don’t run into humans very often, especially not on purpose. That lack of interaction is key. If human-copperhead interactions increase, there is little reason to believe it wouldn’t be detrimental to copperhead populations.

Final Thoughts

Copperheads are at their most active in the spring and fall months, becoming completely nocturnal in the summer, and hibernating in the winter. During their active periods, The odds of Missourians being bit increase to a small degree.

On the bright side, it’s very uncommon and copperheads of all varieties tend to keep to themselves as much as they can.