TONY D said:
Thats a good question and I wish I had a simple answer. As an example, I tend not to breed locality pure in my hpyo coastal plains milk project and only look at locality data as a means of ensuring I'm getting unrelated stock to outcross into a line that was once quite inbred. For my purposes its sometimes OK to speculate on locality and be wrong because its in the context of a non-locality project. As the others are very serious and enthusiastic about locality snakes speculation doesn't go over well.
I have nothing wrong with speculating locality in production of non locality as long as you state it as such.
IE - I'm breeding a locality cal king to an unknown origin amel cal king.
The amel has traits that appear to me to indicate a predominantly southern california genetic history. You can see SoCal influence in the head pattern and in the tail pattern, for example. Specifying her as a SoCal king would be incorrect, specifying she shows SoCal traits is correct however.
If you call a snake of unknown origin a locality specimen, that I think is wrong. If you say it has the appearance of a given locality, I think that is fine.
What's really funny though - locality snakes are often line bred, and sometimes no longer represent the actual locality. IE you can take a snake from the wild at a specific locality - and sometimes it will look nothing like the line bred snakes from that locality sold in the pet trade. Try going to Davis, CA and finding a Cal King that looks like the Davis locality in the pet trade. They are there, but not common. I suspect the same is true with other locales.
I've got two male normal looking Redding locale cal kings. This year I found a female with an unusual belly. Actually I found two - but only kept one (bag limit). After 3 or 4 generations of selective line breeding, the locale snakes I'll be offering will likely be unusual representatives of the locale - and may even be bred to extreme that isn't found here.
People tend to keep and breed the unusual from a locale.
Anyway - my opinion, if it resembles a locale there is nothing wrong with claiming it resembles a locale. As long as you note it resembles the locale and can't be traced to the locale. That's my opinion.
Tony is an honest a person as you can find. A long time ago I bough an adult pair of red mole kings from his and they were absolutely the best looking mole's i've ever seen. I wish I still had those snakes. Tony is honest and knowledgable. 