I have spotted a large snapping turtle. Do I need to get rid of him or leave it alone?

Tony,
There have been many discussions on turtles in Questions and Observations .
It depends on the individual pond and pond owners goals.
Cons: He will eat fish off a stringer. Goslings, ducklings and plants are also on his diet. If it is an alligator snapper then he will also eat your fish. I've read of one instance of biteing someone floating on a raft.
Pros: They are cool and ancient creatures that can live to be 100 yrs old. They will keep your pond free of carion, dead fish ect. They eat goslings & ducklings. They are really good in soup or fried!!
I personally wouldn't mind ONE snapper in my pond provided it wasn't an alligator snapper but I won't tolerate any of the smaller painted turtles ... they eat too much forage that I want to go to my fish.
Look here to see the difference between common & alligator snappers:
http://www.chelydra.org/common_alligator.html

my worry would be somebody stepping on him while swimming. painted ones eat mostly vegetation , unless they find dead fish. there cool for a pond, i got 6 7 of them, bout 6 8 in. i made a turtle lift for them , lol

Ken,
Check out the link on my last post. It's a very friendly turtle site.
I agree they're very cool! In small numbers. Kids especially like seeing them. Two ponds close to home as well as the 4 ac one & mom & dads were loaded with them. You could only fish with fast moving artificials. They would attack anything else, even plastic worms & poppers on the surface. Needless to say no fish were caught by my boys at these ponds, only turtles. So don't let them get out of control!

Ric, That is one neat web site.

Dave,
I thought so too. Very intresting stuff!

Ric: I also have seen a lake where the painted turtles were very aggressive at taking bait. It seems to me that this is learned behavior. Over time, I've probably removed about a dozen painted turtles and that seems to have corrected the problem. We still see plenty of turtles but haven't had a problem turtle in quite some time. We are talking about painted turtles (and I'm assuming sliders as well) and not snapping turtles. It's really a matter of keeping every thing in balance and not letting anything take over.

Just to bring this topic up again, I noticed when weed whacking along my pond this past weekend,a soft area long the shore with about five or six 7" to 8" diameter, or larger wtare-filed holes in the bank. Actually, I encountereed a few soft spots along my pond bank with associated water-filled holes. At any rate, when I was working at the one spot, a snapping turle with an 8" shell came out from underneath the bank and was watching me work. Now, in the past, I have blamed some pesky muskrats in my pond for damaging my bank in certain areas, but I have to believe some of the damage is actually being caused by turtles. At best, I might have two, maybe three observed turtles in the pond. Can trutles wreck your bank just as bad as muskrats? How can you tell the difference between culprits? Thanks for any advice or experiences.

Anybody??

The first couple of years we had our pond, we got a nice collection of collapsed burrows I have always blamed on turtles. The typical one would be a semicircle about 5 inches across and 3 inches deep, connecting to the water at each end. There was one bigger one that meandered up the side of the dam, just above the compacted core (that one I dug out in it's entirety and repacked with a spud bar). Entrances were all just below the waterline.

We've never seen any muskrats or other mammalian vermin that could have dug them, but we did have turtles then.

I stopped worrying about the turtles and realized I could back fill the collapsed holes with dirt from the pond bottom faster than the turtles could dig them. I have not seen any new collapsed burrows for a couple of years.

You might check a recent thread about catfish digging "caves" in the pond banks. The digging discussion starts at about the third posting on this thread:

Catfish

Ken

Thanks, Guys! Since a turtle did come out of this soft spot, I am blaming turtles for some of these "caves." I have no catfish. The only other culprit has to be muskrats.