Can you eat them big sliders? I'm very interested in all of this. Please keep on. This thread is awesome.
You can, but a snapper has more meat than a similarly sized slider. The snapper has less shell to deal with and is easier to clean also. My favorite turtle meat comes from softshells, but we caught them very rarely. The prefer shallow fast moving streams, and we always got turtles out of knee to waist deep bogs or slow moving bayous. You aspiring turtle hunters should also know box turtles meat is poisonous.
+1 Years ago (many) my neighbor and I decided to clean some and had to clean 10 or so to have enough meat to cook/eat. I don't remember how we'd caught them but it was a one time occurrence. I remember being surprised at how it tasted the same. I didn't know that. I hadn't planned to eat any but still glad to know.
Sensation, I plan to bait up this weekend and also set some "turtle lines". I'll try to get some pics of the setup and catch...if I catch any. I'm going to take that Aligator Snapper in the picture and release it. His shell is 10 inches from front to back. Sure many would clean/eat it but the Aligator Snapper is not as common ad the "Common" snapping turtle. I also know of a couple of huge ones that were taken out of Chicot State Park in the last year so I thought I'd put one back for mother nature.
Difference between a "Common" snapping turtle and an "Alligator" aka "Loggerhead", is the smooth vs. three rows on their backs. First picture is a common snapping turtle. Second picture is the Alligator snapping turtle.
Here is one of my favorite turtle stories. I was living in Atlanta and had a client in Duluth. I was driving on Peachtree Industrial Blvd. I was about 8 miles north of I-285 on an 8 lane stretch and I come across a huge common snapper. It was a 40 pound turtle. I didn't want it to get hit, so I caught it and hauled it off the road and let it go in a ditch. The damn thing just about bit my fingers off as I was handling it while cross 4 lanes of traffic. The next morning on my drive out to the same client. I see the same turtle smashed and spread all over the road.
