The species' habitat encompasses arid and semi-arid regions, from plains to mountains and from sandy flats to rocky uplands, including desert, grassland, shrubland, woodland, open pine forest, river bottoms, and coastal islands (Degenhardt et al. 1996, Tennant 1998, Werler and Dixon 2000, Stebbins 2003, Campbell and Lamar 2004). In southeastern Arizona, this snake is more numerous in desert scrub than in semi-desert grassland (Mendelson and Jennings 1992). It hibernates in rock crevices or cavities or sometimes in animal burrows or under other cover (Ernst 1992). Hibernation sometimes occurs communally in brushy upland ridges. A population in southeastern Arizona used mainly creosote bush flats but switched to rocky slopes during winter (Beck 1995). This primarily terrestrial snake sometimes climbs into vegetation or enters water.

The species' geographic range extends from southeastern California, possibly southern Nevada, central and southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas in the United States, south in Mexico to extreme northeastern Baja California, northern Sinaloa, Veracruz, and (at least formerly) disjunctly to Oaxaca (Ernst 1992, Campbell and Lamar 2004). It is unclear whether specimens collected in Kansas represent translocated individuals or part of a natural population (Matlack and Rehmeier 2002). The elevational range extends from near sea level up to at least 2,440 m asl in San Luis Potosi (Klauber 1972), but most locations are below 1,500 m asl (Campbell and Lamar 2004).

Several occurrences of this species are in protected areas.