I think we do a disservice to this subject when we just talk about "turtles". There are so many different species of turtles with so many different forage habits.

I've stocked our lake with painted turtles. People love to watch them and in our area they seldom get over 8" long. If a turtle becomes a problem by eating bait while we are fishing, I move it to a small lake we have about a half a mile away.

Snapping turtles are always removed and destroyed.

We still have a need for a bottom scavenger. I bought 6 immature spiny shoftshell females. Shoftshell turtles tend to not travel overland in our area as snapping turtles do. Therefore, I don't expect them to reproduce and I can control their numbers.

Norm Kopecky