I see your point, but if you check out this website,
http://www.uga.edu/srelherp/snakes/hetsim.htm, and look at the color of the tail in the first couple of pics at the top, you'll see why I am thinking it is a southern. If I still had the thing here, I could look on the underside of the tail and tell for sure, but he is now in NJ with his new keeper. There will be some people coming over Saturday to see his collection, and one of those guys is an expert in Heterodon. He had seen these pics earlier, and said he could not tell which one it was by 100% from the pics, and had to see the underside of the tail to know for sure, so we can wait until then and find out who is correct here. Personally, now that I study the patterns of the eastern vs. southern in the pics on the last post, I'm thinking it may very well be an eastern, but then again, the website I just pasted has me thinking the opposite because of the lighter tail. Either way, it still was a really nice find that happened when I least expected it. After a morning of loading the boat, having to go back to the house in a the back of a friends truck to get my wallet because we couldn't turn around my truck and boat, then finally getting underway, my wife was thinking I was crazy for making a panick stop in the middle of the road for something nobody else saw. I'm just glad the little guy didn't get run-ded over...