Turtles Kill and take down full grown duck in my pond this morning.

[Guest TankerHC]

Saw this, this morning. I knew something was takig the ducklings, it happens every year, we start with 17 or 18 and between the Hawks snatching them out of the water and watching them get snatched down right off the surface (I thought is might be the big Bass doing it). This morning around 6:30 I am sitting on my back deck, I hear a duck making a lot of noise, stand up and look over and there are turtles all over this full grown duck. I run into the house and grab the camera, by the time I get outside the duck has pretty much given up and the turtles are taking him. These are Alligator snapping turtles. Never saw it happen to a full grown duck before. The video is 7 minutes long, check out the first minute to see the duck attack going on then move to the 5 minute mark and watch as a full grown duck is taken completely down by turtlles.

[E4 No More]

Sucks to be the duck!

[ShaunM]

I had a pond that got over run by snapping turtles. I built 5 boxes with a ramp. The turtles would crawl up the ramp and fall into the box and get stuck. Took me almost 2 months but I got the pond undercontrol. Turtles can be good but to many is very bad.

[JohnC]

One summer when I was in Jr. High (probably 12), a guy in Millersville invited me and my Dad to come clean up his stock ponds because the snapping turtles were killing all his fish. We'd bring a couple gallons of ice tea and a cooler with food, hunt those suckers and taken lunch breaks. lol

I sniped so many of those things with my little Ruger 10-22! That pond was infested with snapping turtles!

Saddly, we didn't get to finish the job. They started building some Government stuff next door. Just googled it, it was a school and some other stuff.

[Magiccarpetrides]

ouch...yeah i would get rid of those snappers...awful creatures...

[Magiccarpetrides]

Forget what I said...turns out it might be illegal to kill these things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator_snapping_turtle

[JohnC]

Forget what I said...turns out it might be illegal to kill these things.

http://en.wikipedia....snapping_turtle

Alligator snapping turtles are not the same kind living in the local ponds.

http://en.wikipedia....snapping_turtle

They definitely are not endangered because everywhere I go that has a pond or swamp area, there are tons of them!

Edited April 23, 2012 by JohnC

[Guest TankerHC]

Alligator snapping turtles are not the same kind living in the local ponds.

http://en.wikipedia....snapping_turtle

They definitely are not endangered because everywhere I go that has a pond or swamp area, there are tons of them!

These arent common snapping turtles, they are most definitely Alligator Snappers.

[JohnC]

These arent common snapping turtles, they are most definitely Alligator Snappers.

Check out the pictures of the two and maybe you can ID them next time one pops up or crawls out to gets some sun. Those Alligator snappers grow a lot larger and their shell has more tall-pointy armor.

[JAB]

Apparently TWRA is trying to restore alligator snapping turtles to West Tennessee:

http://www.eregulations.com/tennessee/fishing/snapping-turtles/

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I tried to poke about a 2 food diameter snapper with a stick to chase him off a road. He was sleeping in the middle of the road and I was afraid he would get run over. Trying to be a good samaritan and a friend to wildlife. Geez. He got up on surprisingly long legs and chased me back to the car, then stood there by the car door daring me to get back out.

But they can be worse still, as described here--

http://www.menspulpm...rtles-mans.html

“Steel-like jaws clacked away, each bite slashing flesh from my body — I used my knife and my hands, and when they were gone, my bloody stumps — and yet the turtles came — â€

[Sidinman]

Looks to me like it is time to get the rimfire out and do a little thinning.

[Dennis1209]

I don't know which is worse? This afternoon I was walking down my gravel driveway to check the mail, about two hundred yards. The driveway goes right next to my pond. Beautiful mostly sunny day today and it was about 62 degrees and I was sort of day dreaming walking down the drive. I wish someone videoed it, as this old man did the fastest Tennessee two step a dozen times, bad knees and all... Right on the gravel driveway, one more step away from me was a two foot Cotton Mouth sunning itself. It did not move, was not about to move and was NOT coiled up. That is until I located a long stick and tried picking it up. It was not aggressive and slithered its way back into the water. Then I noticed all the rest of the snakes sunning themselves on the banks. As long as the venomous snakes remain non aggressive, I don't have a bone to pick with them. Got the mail, went back in the house and sprayed the hole bottle of "shout" on my drawers and laundered

[peejman]

If the turtles are so hungry that they're going after a mature duck, there's likely more of them than the area can support. You could contact TWRA and see if someone can come take a look.

[MacGyver]

Videos like this are a great argument for hunting. Though we seldom get the chance to see it, death in nature is rarely quick or painless, and often involves getting eaten alive.

[dats82]

Time for some turtle stew

[hornett22]

Id rather have the ducks than the turtles. Id eliminate them.

[JohnC]

Id rather have the ducks than the turtles. Id eliminate them.

What he said^

[subsonic]

Time for some turtle stew

Saw Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern a few weeks back, snapping turtles went in the fryer. He said it was good, like alligator tail.

http://www.travelchannel.com/video/how-to-prepare-snapping-turtle

Edited April 25, 2012 by subsonic

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I haven't had any snapper turtle gumbo since lived in new orleans long ago, but sure would like to have some. That is some really good tasting meat as best can recall. Dunno for sure, but they may have been in the habit of catching them then keeping them penned up for awhile to get some of the swamp muck out of their system.

Saw a great old 1950's black'n'white documentary of a bayou fellow who would catch gigantic snappers solo in his piro boat for a living. Saw it in the wee hours on public TV a few years back. He would tie up the turtles and take em home and put em in a pen half dry and half with a "clean" mudhole. He must have had a dozen or two in his pen at the time of the documentary. Then occasionally he would tie a few up in the back of his pickup truck and tote em to the french quarter fish market in new orleans. I ttried to find that documentary to watch online but no luck. Found reference to it, but only a DVD re-release a few years ago assuming you could find something that obscure for sale somewhere.

Anyway, I don't recall if the documentary explained that the guy was keeping the turtles penned up to starve out some of the swamp muck. Maybe he was just penning them up to even out his income source. But in those parts they were in the habit of starving out crabs and some other stuff before eating them, IIRC.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[JAB]

I have heard of people catching a big snapper and keeping it tied up or penned up for a week or so - feeding it 'clean' food in order to make it taste better - before killing it to eat.

My mom has a story about herself, her grandmother and a snapping turtle. Seems my great grandmother loved eating turtle. She lived on Lookout Mountain and when mom took her to the store, etc. if they happened to see a snapping turtle along the road she would want mom to stop and get it. Mom talks about one particularly 'feisty' one with an unusually long neck that nearly got her when she was trying to catch it for my great grandmother. She finally caught it and tossed it in the trunk of the car. By the time she got my great grandmother back to her house, that snapper had severed the wires to the tail lights.

Mom said that my great grandmother would get the turtle to snap down on a tree limb, etc. then take its head off with an axe. My great grandmother would then sever the bottom plate from the rest of the shell, open it up, clean the turtle, cook it and eat it. Mom said she tried some that my great grandmother had cooked and it was really good. It seems like she said that my great grandmother would pound the meat out then roll it in flour and fry it.

I killed one a couple of years ago and was going to cook it. I found a book that claimed the best method was just to kill it and boil it whole then remove the shell and clean it so I tried that. It did prove easy to clean/remove the skin but the smell while it was boiling was horrible. In fact, it was so bad that by the time all was said and done I couldn't even eat the meat - the thought of that smell turned my stomach. I would kind of like to try it, again, and shell/clean it first the way my great grandmother did but every time I consider it I think of that smell and my stomach starts to churn.

Edited May 7, 2012 by JAB

[Timestepper]

Snapping turtle is good eatin', but I'd never even consider boiling one shell and all. Don't know where you found the book, but man, that don't even sound right!

[DaveS]

Timestepper, My Grandpa (back in the 60's) used to drop snappers into boiling water for a minute or two. It caused the skin on the legs to peel right off, then he would go right on and clean the turtle. I seem to remember him doing catfish the same way, then wiping the "skin" off with a rag. I have only tried this with a turtle one time. It cleaned up pretty easy! Now days I just buy turtle from the fish market along with gator and anything else exotic! Just don't have the gumption to hit the swamps any more!

[Timestepper]

Ok, I can see dropping it in for a minute or two - that makes sense. What I was trying to figure out was why anyone would think this would be a good way to cook snapping turtle (unless it was like really super clean in advance or something). Guess I shoulda' read more closely.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Timestepper

[Moped]

Back when I was a little kid, my grandparent's pond got overrun with the beasts. They had a bout 30 or so ducklings and ended up with 0 in about a two week period. My uncle would take a .222 Remington bolt action and shoot them in the head when they came up to take a breath of air. That .222 would completely decapitate them. They'd usually float in in a day or two. He took out 7 of them and cleaned the pond out for the year. The biggest one I saw had to be 3 feet in diameter and about 18" tall from from belly to top of the shell. These things were huge!!! We caught another making the trip up to the pond from the creek down in the valley (He was only about half that size). Had to be a half mile travel. Got him to snap at the end of a cedar fence post. When he would hit it, it sounded like a gun shot. Ended up killing him with a 12ga.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Moped