what are your temps? it' quite possible he goes to both sides and just prefers the cool side, I catch my ball pythons on the cool side quite often in my rack and I don't give them hides. My big pastel female is in a 4ft melamine cage, she has a cave-ish hide on the warm side and one of those pieces of wood thingy's from petco I think(it's basically a bunch of pieces drift wood attached to each other) definitly not a typical "secure" hide, and I would say I catch her on that side of the cage about 40% of the time I see her. I keep my snakes a little cooler then most say; 89 on the hot side and try to keep the cool side 80+- a few degrees. If he seems fine and eats I don't see a reason to change things up.