I'm not sure why the common names across the country differ, but it's basically all species and subspecies out west are called gopher snakes, central are bull snakes, east are pine snakes all within the genus Pituophis. Here's where it gets fun, Pine snakes fall within (P. melanoleucus, P. deppei, P. ruthveni), gopher snakes fall within (P. catenifer, P. lineaticollis, P. vertebralis) & Bullsnakes are solely P. catenifer with common names depending on locale. Point being, most herp folks don't care for them being lumped together. To make things even more convoluted, Bullsnakes (regardless of locale) are all P. c. sayi (whereas gopher snakes' subspecies are different based on locale--e.g. pacific gopher, great basin gopher, sonoran gopher, etc...) , so just a subspecies although that's a relatively new change, they used to have full species status (P. sayi).
It would be like saying a coastal cutthroat is the same as a Lahontan (if just going by the bullsnake vs. great basin gopher snake since they're both P. catenifer but different subspecies). If you're saying that a bullsnake is the same as a pinesnake, that would be more akin to saying that a brook trout is the same as a bull trout as they are considered two completely different species.
Back to the actual snakes, some are really chill (this one never hissed, but started to do the tail rattle towards the end of our handling session). Just like with rattlesnakes, there's a pretty wide range, but yeah the most aggressive ones are always gopher snakes and the most chill ones are also always gopher snakes. I don't free-handle rattlesnakes ever (always use a tool of some sorts in the rare instances I do handle them), so there may be some inherent bias there.
