Ok, Gang.

I pulled 2 Snapping turtles out of my pond yesterday and my wife just told me she got a 3rd one. They are all in a barrel right now with fresh water to flush their systems. Anyone got any good cleaning tips / recipes for them? I have had turtle meat several times and loved it but never tried cleaning them so any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks

I CLEANED ONE A COUPLE YEARS AGO AND IT WAS PRETTY HARD.I HOPE SOMEONE HAS A BETTER WAY.

I have a couple of friends that do it and it's pretty hard and smelly. If you want to learn I would have someone that knows what they are doing show you in person.

I always use chicken recipes for turtle meat!

Thanks, I remember my grandfather telling us to keep them in fresh water and change it every day for a few days to clean them out and reduce the odor. But I was a young kid and that is about all I remember.:( If all else fails there is always the internet. I trust advice on this site more so I thought I would throw a feeler out. Thanks again.

Poke a small hole in a leg and stick an airhose in. Seal as best you can and fill up the turtle. Helps peel some of the skin away from the meat. Other than that, nail them down on their back and start cutting. I'm no pro, we only clean a couple a year, but hope this helps. The airhose cut down our cleaning time from ~45mins to 30 or so.

Also, be careful, even after killing them they will still be able to snap their mouths for an hour or two.

As the new turtle guy around here I have to admit that I don't have much fondness for snapping turtles, but I need to give out an FYI that North American Box Turtles are officially classified now as a threatened species and might soon be considered endangered.

Really? Is that the same little guy I find every time I go into the woods, or must I be thinking of a different turtle?

Could very well be, pondsea. They are the Volkswagen Bug of the Turtle family.

Oops. Don't let the feds know....burp.

Seriously, I find at least one every time I go to my farm. Usually bring home 3 or 4 empty shells for the kids every fall. Maybe I could get some gov't money to subsidize my apparent preserve.

Hey Lumpus. What species is this? I found it in the woods on my property in Red River County.

I'm very fortunate that my father was a very patient and understanding man, otherwise I probably wouldn't be around to write this over 40 years later.

Our family loved snapping turtle -- still does.

I guess I was about 17 when I was out in my dad's relatively new car (6 months old, maybe??). My buddy and I spotted a huge snapper. We threw it in the trunk of the car -- upside down so it couldn't crawl around.

Well, the turtle had a rather loose bladder and really marinated the trunk. The smell never left the car.

That poor car.

To make matters worse, that was the second car I'd "seasoned" for my poor dad. My cousin and I caught and sold night crawlers for spending money, and we always had washtubs and buckets full of them around in our basements and garages. When I was about 12 or 13, my dad took me to one of my favorite walleye spots. When we got back home, I was so excited by my catches of big walleyes, I forgot about the bucket of night crawlers in the trunk of my dad's car. It was mid-July. My dad walked to work most days, so we mainly just used the car on weekends. The next Sunday, on our way to church, the garage door opening was a real epiphany. My bucket of worms had turned into a bucket of stink -- one that never quite left that beautiful black 1957 Ford Fairlane with the gold trim.

Is there a difference between "North American Box Turtles" and what I know as "Eastern Box Turtles?"

We have quite a few Eastern Box Turtles around here.



A few weeks ago, one about six inches in diameter was laying eggs down by my pond. A couple of days later I found it's shell. Something had removed all the meat, and the bottom of the shell was peeled open. I'd never seen this before.

Hopefully they aren't endangered around here. We really enjoy them as frequent visitors around the house and pond.

My grandkids (and me) really enjoy dangling worms from the worm bin in front of them. They voraciously eat them like spaghetti.

Chris - that looks like a Desert Box Turtle, I'd need better pics to be sure

The most common North American Box Turtles include:

* Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) - Most common
* Three-Toed Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina triunguis)
* Gulf Coast Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina major
* Ornate Box Turtle (Terrapene ornata ornata)

The following North American box turtles are typically found in limited geographical ranges and have more specialized needs.

* Florida Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina bauri)
* Mexican Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina mexicana)
* Yucutan Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina yucatana)
* Desert Box Turtle (Terrapene ornata luteola)
* Coahuila Box Turtle (Terrapene coahuila)
* Nayarit (Spotted) Box Turtle (Terrapene nelsoni nelsoni)

Cat, your Eastern Boxies, Terrapene carolina carolina (common Eastern box turtle), cover the largest area, living from Michigan and Maine in the north, and range south to the boundaries of the other subspecies.

Mine is an Ornate.

There aren't many things that can prey upon box turtles, but I'd guess it was a raccoon.

Inflating a turtle huh? Sounds interesting but I'll give it a shot seeing as how I have a couple to clean.

Lumpus,
I don't know if they are North American Box turtles or another species but my area is crawling with them. Of course it doesn't help that everytime we pass one (seems like every weekend) my boys want to pick them up and take them home. I know of at least 6 that have stuck around the house. Natures bug devouring tank!

We have a scarce few box turtles here in Cajun country. They eat mostly berries, mushrooms, and succulent plants, but relish an occasinal insect. High ground for them to make a dry burrow is scarce here, so they have problems with staying wet during the winter. Every specimen I have seen has shell fungus, but are otherwise healthy. They're fine little creatures.

We've been graced by the appearance of a couple of (presumably) eastern box turtles. They seem to enjoy the cool dampness of the timber underbrush.

Probably the biggest problems with Box Turtles now being 'threatened' is that they have several survival disadvantages:

- Long lived, but slow to reach reproductive age (7+ years)
- Extremely limited territorial range (a boxie probably will never leave a radius of a mile from where it was born during its long life - if forcibly relocated it will try and 'home' back and usually refuse to settle in the new area)
- Fussy eating and environment requirements - definitely not a "pet" turtle for beginners
- Slow and prone to being run over by cars (human intrusion into habitat)

Thus if a turtle population dies out in a region, it is virtually impossible for it to become restocked over time. Several Native American indian tribes in New York State hunted boxies as a delicacy food during the 16th & 17th centuries. 300+ years later there are still no box turtles in those affected counties - once they become extinct in an area they'll stay extinct.

Is the little critter I sometimes see in my backyard, or squashed in the middle of the road, at turtle, tortoise, or terrapin?

Probably a turtle, they are more numerous than the few species of North American land tortoises. Terrapin... lol... That's a trigger word that usually starts a flamewar over at Turtle Forums.

Here is what Wiki says (but some folks disagree):

Taxonomy -
Although sometimes superficially similar to sea turtles in shape, having webbed feet and thinner shells than fully terrestrial tortoises, terrapins do not belong to the sea turtle superfamily Chelonioidea. In British English, the species most commonly referred to as terrapins are members of the family Emydidae including the red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) and the slider terrapin (Trachemys dorbignyi). Perhaps confusingly, although the genus to which the box turtles belong, Terrapene, sounds similar to the word terrapin, these turtles are not normally called terrapins.

Usage of the name "terrapin" in British and American English compared -
Different animals are called turtles, tortoises, or terrapins in different varieties of English

The name "terrapin" is unambiguously applied to the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) in both British English and American English; the name originally being used by early European settlers in North America to describe these brackish water reptiles that inhabited neither freshwater habitats nor the sea. However, in American English the name is not routinely applied to other semi-aquatic or freshwater turtles, unlike the situation in British English where any such turtle might be called a terrapin.

Jeff,just now read your post. Even out of my clean pond,I keep the snappers for at least a week in a 55 gal.drum and change the water every other day.They migrate between ponds so there is no telling where they came from;could be from that algae covered pond back my road! As for cleaning,the air hose never worked for me,so I use a snap off blade utility knife.As soon as it's dull,snap it off.

Update.
OK, I cleaned both turtles after keeping them in fresh water for 5 days with water changes everyday. Found some instructions on the internet and tried the two diffrent methods (one per turtle) that seemed the most popular. Cut their heads off early Sat and hung them up to bleed out. After 4 hours I started to clean them. Apparently it takes quite awhile for their nerve endings to die. Anyone ever try to clean an animal that keeps fighting you? Even 4 hours after hanging them and 2 hours after removing their hearts, the heart continued to pulse. Creepy! Anyway, they were not all that hard to clean. I found the easiest way to skin them was to dunk them in boiling water for 1-2 min followed by a cold water bath. Think of a boiled chicken. The boiling water stiffend up the collagen in the skin and made it easier to grasp. It also seemed to help it slide right off. If anyone is interested they are a lot like chicken. The neck and back straps are white meat and the legs are dark meat. French turtle soup was great and even my kids loved it. Took just over an hour to total clean 2 of them but it was worth it.

Now all we need are Buffalo Turtle Wing places.

Theo, your a genius. Now I know how to try the next one I get. I know you can fry them and I bet that idea would taste better than you expect LOL