The species' habitats include meadows, grassy marshes, moist grassy fields at forest edges, mountain shrublands, stream borders, bogs, open moist woodland, abandoned farmland, and vacant lots. This snake has been found hibernating in abandoned ant mounds. Eggs are laid under rotting wood, underground, or under rocks.

This species occurs widely in the United States and southern Canada, with an isolated population in northern Mexico. Its range extends from Nova Scotia westward across southern Canada to southeastern Saskatchewan, south and west to northern New Jersey, western Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, southern Ohio, northwestern Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Chihuahua (Mexico), and Utah, and highly disjunctly to southeastern Texas in the United States; the distribution is highly discontinuous throughout the western half of the range (Conant and Collins 1991, Grobman 1992, Walley 2003).

This species occurs in several parks and preserves.