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Good grief I'm afraid I might've stepped on it before I saw it! Cool looking little dude :)
Looks like a cute little baby snapping turtle, you gonna start feeding it to fatten it up for some snapper soup next year ?
Quote from: DelawhereJoe on September 08, 2017, 01:15:25 AM
Looks like a cute little baby snapping turtle, you gonna start feeding it to fatten it up for some snapper soup next year ?
If I thought it was a snapper I would have squashed it.
I looked it over real good and I'm sure it was a mud turtle.
A snapper will destroy a pond and all snappers I have seen are aggressive
and this little fellow did not even try to bite.
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Kbeitz,
Based on the length of the tail I'm thinking it is a common snapper too. Snappers are the only ones I know of with that long tail.
I rescued a small mud turtle on the way to church near Albany Ga many years ago and I named him Spunky. He'd stretch out and swim the length of the aquarium chasing leftover crappie minnows and big crawfish and attack till he killed them. He worked on one crawfish for over an hour till he finally killed it. When he did my 3/4 lb bluegill came over and slurped it down. He was afraid of the live crawfish. Spunky got mad and swam up and bit a half moon out of the bluegill's tail. The bluegill swished his tail so hard he washed Spunky head of heels several loops. I made the mistake of putting some big river mussels in the aquarium and Spunky tried to eat them when they'd open and one closed on his head and drowned him. I was a sad day.
My kids caught a small snapper in a drainage ditch behind our home in Jacksonville NC they played in and gave me one as a pet many years ago and I put it in my 55 gallon aquarium. I was real proud of it then I made the mistake of added a 1 lb bullfrog and he ate my turtle. He also at the 1/3 lb bullfrog we put in there too. Thought the smaller frog had escaped till we saw tips of his toes in the bigger frogs mouth.
When I was a kid, I was riding my bike back from my grandmother's house with my little brother and saw your turtle's big brother, it was the size of a Volkswagen, and took up the whole road.
I was ahead of my brother, so I turned around for him and we took the long way home through the field, because I was afraid the turtle might eat him. Today nobody really believes me when I say how big that turtle was.
That's my turtle story and I'm sticking to it.
While I was stationed at MCLB Albany Ga I lived 1/2 mile from Lake Worth on the Flint River. When we'd get low on meat I would put out trotlines with live bream or whole chicken gizzards for bait and catch big alligator snapping turtles and we'd eat them. I caught one 75 lb turtle once and when I was pulling him in the boat he turned and got the hook in his mouth and bit through an 8/0 stainless steel hook. I got him over in the boat and he got after me and I got up out of his way. Had one foot on the corner of the boat and one on the motor when he snapped at me. I way ready to give him the boat and just go in the lake. He bit the corner off my new upholstered pedestal seat. I finally got around him and got him behind the head and was able to control him till I got him home.
Another time I had a 30 lb turtle debating whether to butcher him or throw him back as usually the ones I caught were 50-75 lbs. He had what looked like a .38 bullet hole in his head that had healed over. I hit a patch of choppy water on the way back and my cricket cage vibrated off the seat, hit him on the head, he snapped at it and knocked it in the lake and sunk. To top it off when he bit at the crickets he missed and bit 2 of my fiberglass crappie poles and crushed them.
If you ever butcher one be sure to cut the chunks of meat out of the skull on either side of the brainstem. Using a long bladed fillet knife works well. On a 75 turtle they will each be as big as a coke can. Cut them crossways into 1/2" steaks, flour and fry them.
I once butchered a big female full of eggs and gave them to my wife. She used them in a batch of cookie dough and the kids took turtle egg brownies to school to all their friends and teachers.
I still prefer softshell turtles. They are much easier to clean and fry up real good.
that looks like a snapper it has the spikes (or what ever you call them)on the top his/her shell SSS ;D
The big snappers around here smell so bad I couldn't imagine eating them unless I was starving. I'd think that nasty smell from rotting whatever on their algae and moss covered shells would get in the meat and taste like an old billy goat.
The snapper lays eggs down by the brook. They never last long,something digs them up. I have never seen a small turtle like that. Most I see are at least a foot long. Them things can move when they get up on their legs.
Ox,
When you get one butchered and out of the shell it is just meat just like beef, pork or venison would be. I will say they are tough to skin. That hide is really thick. There is a ball joint at the "hip" so both hind legs and tail come off a one piece, another ball joint at the neck to get it then each front leg is free floating (No bone or joint to cut or disconnect). When butchered you have 4 pieces of meat - hindquarters, neck & 2 front legs.
When making stew or soup as I remember the meat would fall off the bone before the carrots and potatoes were done. The pieces in the head make good steaks for frying if you save them. With softshells we just flowered and fried them.
My wife used to debone, grind up the turtle and add cheap hamburger for fat and make burgers out of them.
Taste like chicken? Or a little fishy/muddy like crawdad meat? Or do you season the heck out of it so you can't taste the meat's flavor?
I don't remember us seasoning it any different than any other kind of meat or any other specific taste. Just a different kind of meat. Not what I'd call fishy or muddy. Haven't eaten enough crawfish to say it tasted like them or not. I would say the fried softshell turtle tasted very much like chicken but not the alligator snapping turtles.
Sorry I can't describe it better. Sort of like the guy asking what a hawk tasted like and your tell him "About like owl." If he's never eaten either he doesn't have a baseline to measure against.
I swear You guys in the south will eat anything. :D :D :D :D :D :D
Yes, to it being a baby snapper. A large one will make short work of a school of fish.
Perhaps you found it so young/just from the egg it hasn't had a chance to get grumpy yet. You may have to give it some time before it tries to bite off your fingers, like a normal snapping turtle....or its the 1 in a 1,000,000,000 nice snapping turtle.
My daughter worked as an intern at the Kentucky reptile zoo. I have a picture somewhere of her holding an alligator snapping turtle and another employee holding a snapping turtle. The girl holding the snapping turtle had to be more careful as their necks could bend around more to bite.
My dad would catch them out of our pond and give them away. They were mean looking and grumpy.
We used to catch snappers on a trot line at night. We'd put them in a horse watering tank for a couple of weeks with clean water before we butchered them. They taste better after the mud is cleaned out of them. Gary
What surprises me that if this is a snapping turtle is how far away from any
body of water that I found it.
Anybody have an idea how long a Snapping Turtle will live in the wild if it is not killed, hurt, or otherwise disturbed?
Seems to me they should be over 100 years old!
Note; around here, no one eats them that I know of, and most who have fish ponds, SSS!
Doesn't look prehistoric enough for a baby snapping turtle, to me.
They are amazing animals even though they are often a pain. They will catch young ducks and other waterbirds I have been told at times. They "fish" by laying in the water with their mouth open and have a little device on their tongue that wiggles and looks like a worm or grub as a lure. The fish sees it and swims right in, turtle snaps and sushi for dinner. I have caught big alligator snappers who were filled with big river mussels they had eaten. apparently just crush up shells and all. They can travel long distances overland so they inhabit even remote ponds and such.
You have to be careful with any of them but I am told the common smaller (Smooth shelled version) is actually more aggressive than the alligator (Larger, 3 ridges on top of shell) version. From the ones I have handled that seems the case. I hooked 2-3 this year on catfish lines (Bushhooks/limblines) using live bream for bait. I don't think I ever got a hoof free from one and ended up just cutting the hook off and releasing them.
I came across (I'm guessing here) about a 25ish pounder a few years ago walking up a dirt road, at least a mile away from any water source, like Toddspoint stated I threw it in a stock tank to clean it out. I ran out of time so it was let go to live another year, we were in the middle of harvest then but really did want to try turtle. Oh, and yes they can jump, a lot further and faster than you'd think :D.
... said the man with 4 fingers and a nub. :D
:D :D :D Nope still got em all ;D