Quote Originally Posted by elevatethis
I always thought the exact opposite to be true. After I'd looked at hundreds of thousands of snakes, I would like to think I'd be pretty good at picking out the good stuff...even deep in shed.

Put a normal and a fancy next to each other and ask a person on the street if they can tell a difference...probably not...its our seasoned eyes that let us see the difference between normals and aberrants.

Those guys in africa know what they're doing. To think anything less at this point in the game is foolish and naive. These are businessmen, not a bunch of natives beating on drums and pulling snakes out of the ground...
Hey,
As you know i write the "Hunters Guide" series and obviously know what to pick out in shipments...

Well, after about 400 balls THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME! lol
Its true, you have no idea how many times i come home and cant figure out why i picked one out... Yesturday almost all the ones i went through were in shed and im looking for bad calicos and shatters that slip in, so i start off being really picky as to what im taking then about halfway through the 1000 i start adding more and more... i get home yesturday and laugh since i have 5 snakes that "looked" like Calicos at the time, but now that i have looked at them again they are completely normal.

The same thing happens in reverse to...
At some places i pick out everything that is cool and then go through them again so i can have a kind of "second opinion" and keep the best of the group. Last week (the first shipment i went through) when i first started, i found a Sable, put it in the bucket with the rest of what i was picking out thinking i would easily spot it again when i went through them the second time. Well 4 hours later and 700 balls, i forgot about the sable and didnt notice it the second time... by the time i remembered i was over halfway home and it wasnt worth going back through the 700 to see if i could re-find it ... since they all look the same in the end