Habitats include wet prairies, wet savannas and pastures, palmetto-pine flatwoods, swamps, hardwood-dominated floodplains, sandhills, mixed pine-hardwood forest, hilly second-growth forests, scrub pinewoods, borders of cypress ponds, vicinity of lakes and marshes, and along rice-field canals and roadside ditches, generally in moist or wet lowlands (Werler and Dixon 2000, Ernst and Ernst 2003). This snake is mainly terrestrial; it shelters under surface cover (logs, stumps, thickets, etc.) or in animal burrows. It swims well; rarely climbs into vegetation.

This species is endemic to the United States. Its range extends from eastern North Carolina to the Florida Keys, west to Oklahoma and eastern Texas, and north to southern Missouri and southwestern Kentucky (Conant and Collins 1991, Palmer and Braswell 1995, Werler and Dixon 2000, Campbell and Lamar 2004, Trauth et al. 2004).

Many occurrences are in protected areas.