This secretive, semi-fossorial snake inhabits hardwood, mixed, or pine forest/woodland and adjacent open areas with sandy or loamy well-drained soils (Behler and King 1979, Trauth et al. 2004). Specific habitats include pine flatwoods, dry or dry prairie, salt grass prairie, maritime hardwood hammock, bottomland forest, sandhills, margins of irrigation canals in sawgrass prairies, borders of swamps and ploughed fields, abandoned fields, and roadsides (Tennant 1984, 1997; Werler and Dixon 2000). Individuals are sometimes found under rocks or in or under logs. Eggs are laid under moist humus (Minton 1972) or in other underground sites.

This species is endemic to the United States. Its range extends from southern New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri, and eastern Oklahoma south to southern Texas, most of the Gulf Coast (except in Louisiana), and southern Florida (Conant and Collins 1991).

This species occurs in many protected areas.