The process of finding a mate occurs in a various phases. First the male has to find a suitable mate and may have to go through some male to male combat. The two males basically attempt to "top" its oponent several times for a period of 8-145 minutes. Then the dominant animal is established the loser quickly retreats with a short pursuit from the winner. The dominant male depending on whether the male combat was over a female or food approaches the female and begins to rapidly flick the tongue making contact with her by rubbing there chins together.  The male then advances towards her body putting their trunks side by side and the mail strokes the females cloaca with his tail. All throughout this time they continue to nudge each others heads.  The female must gape her cloaca in order for the male to have a successful copulatory attempt. When there is a successful intromission the male quickly retreats to a more casual distance with some chining and tongue flicking occurring.

It is interesting to note that the loser of the inter-male combat will only retreat to a favorable distance and wait for the predominating snake to finish his calculation with the female. The weaker male will then attempt to calculate with the female and has a better chance of producing his own offspring.

A huge factor in mating/reproduction of the cottonmouth is geographic variation and the amount of resources readily available to the snake (especially for the female). Their energy budget  is mainly affected by the variation in abundance of prey throughout the seasons.

like mammals, snakes practice in internal fertilization in which the male sperm is introduced directly into the female's reproductive organ, the cloaca. Instead of a penis the male has a pair or copulatory organs called hemipenes. During mating only one pair of hemipenes is actually used. The other is used as a backup!

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