The Snapping Turtle

By Al Lowe
Contributor
This turtle is not pretty at all. He does not have any colours of any account, and his shell is quite rough, particularly in small animals. Most of the turtle family can retract themselves right into the shell, with nothing left sticking out. Not so the snapper. He cannot get his head all the way in. His legs are thick, with heavy folds of skin, and they have substantial claws. The tail is fairly long and thick and covered with warty lumps.
The Snapping Turtle's chief to fame is his ability to bite, and bite really hard with jaws of iron. The tips of his jaws are hooked. A snapper can take off your finger with no trouble at all. He seems to have a double personality. If you get near one in the water, it will swim away. But if you come across one on dry land, it will just as soon attack you as not.
The largest turtle in Ontario, it can reach a weight of 40 pounds or so, and a shell length of almost a foot and a half. If also lives a good long time. One, in captivity lived for nearly 60 years.
The snapper lives almost all of its life in the water, in lakes, good sized rivers, and watery swamps. It eats a wide variety of things - small fish (mainly coarse fish like carp and suckers, which it finds on the bottom) insects, crayfish, and at times baby ducks. It is also fond of dead animals, and is one of the best scavengers along the water bottoms.
Quite a few people use these turtles as food. I understand that turtle meat is tasty and makes excellent soup, but that is not from personal expaerience. A lot of people kill snappers in the mistaken belief that they take a lot of game fish - not so. The Snapping Turtle population has gone down quite a bit in the past, partially because of large scale hunting for food, and also the loss of habitat - pollution in lakes and rivers, draining swamps and the like.
How do people hunt snappers? Well, here's one way, in Wisconsin. You go out along a river bank, and find some dark holes in the bank. Then you reach way down in and grab the snapper by the tail. This sounds to me like a good way to lose a few fingers, but apparently it is done often, and is quite successful. Actually, this method is used in the late fall when the turtles are getting ready to hibernate.
And here's another one, called noodlin! You use a long steel rod, and poke it into the reedy mud along a river bank. When it hits a turtle's shell, it goes thunk. Then you reach into the mud, grab the turtle by the tail, and you have the makings of some good soup.
The Snapping Turtle lays its eggs in sand or gravel, usually quite close to the water. The sun warms the eggs, and they are usually there in the sand all summer. When the little turtles hatch out of these ping-pong sized eggs, they head for the water. Now they are prey for all sorts of birds, fish and many mammals. Not a high percentage survive, but since there are often 20 or 30 (or even up to 80) at a time, there seem to be enough to keep the population going.
The Snapping Turtle, Chelydra serpentina, has been on this earth for over 200 million years. Even if he is ugly and has a bad disposition, it looks as though he will be with us for a long time yet.