How To Catch A Snapping Turtle Under Ice

February 23, 1986|By John Husar, Chicago Tribune.

QUINCY, ILL. — This has been a chompin` good winter for ice turtling along the Mississippi bottomlands, according to Jerry Rodhouse.

As the Pike County farmer packed six more quarts of delicious snapping turtle meat into his freezer, all fingers and toes remained present and accounted for.

So extends his streak. In 44 years of turtling in the backwaters and farm ponds near his downstream home at Pleasant Hill, Rodhouse has yet to lose an appendage.

``You don`t allow yourself too many errors,`` he chuckled meaningfully.

``Or you won`t have any fingers left to turtle-hunt.``

Turtling in the winter is less risky, anyway. The turtles are just as cold as the water, which, fortuitously, makes them less alert.

``What you do is clear the snow off the ice and go there on a sunny day when the turtles might be inclined to come up out of the mud and just lie at the top of the water below the ice, stretched out, feeling the sun`s rays,``

Rodhouse said.

``I`d say 10 o`clock in the morning is just about right for the angle and warmth of the sun. You see them right there below the ice, or maybe only their shadows. Then you quickly chop a hole big enough for your hand, reach through and grab the tail and hang on.``

He is talking about 25- to 30-pound turtles, which no one hangs onto very long in freezing water, no matter how somnolent the turtle may be.

``Well, there are many ways to anchor them, but what we like to do is cut a slot with a knife right through the tail, then slip through a stick that is strong enough to hold them,`` Rodhouse said. ``The stick, of course, has to be wider than the hole, so it can rest on the ice. Now the turtle can`t get away, so you proceed to cut a wider hole, lifting out the turtle, ice and all.``

Sometimes the turtle is moving when you spot it beneath the ice. ``The thing to do then is estimate where it`s going, chop a hole a little bit ahead and wait for it to swim by,`` Rodhouse said.

Then, of course, you grab--hopefully, at the rear--and hang on, while trying not to stab your hand with the knife.

Rodhouse considers Midwestern turtles a delicacy far more enjoyable than the sea turtles one sees on menus along the Gulf Coast.

``Now, we raise Angus,`` he said. ``And that good ol` Angus meat is probably as good as you can get. But if I had to pick one meat to eat the rest of my life, I`d pick turtle without a second thought.

``The neck is the white meat, a taste not unlike chicken. The tail is a little more like pork. And the front and the back legs, why they`re similar to beef roast. And the soup? Why, if you boil turtle meat, you`ll get a soup that`s as good as anything you can find.

``You can fry the young ones slow and they`ll be nice and tender. The old ones need to be pan-browned. Just cook `em with salt and pepper, add a little garlic if you`d like, any kind of seasoning, then put `em in an oven roaster with some water in the bottom and steam `em at 250 degrees for 2 to 4 hours, depending on the size and toughness. That meat will just fall off the bone.`` Rodhouse figures that most people ignore turtles because they either don`t know how good the meat can be or don`t know what to do with the turtle once they catch one.

``They`re not as fast as most people think,`` he said. But teasing them, especially in warm weather, is like ``playing with a gun.``

Once the head is off, a snapping turtle is harmless, although there are exceptions. Rodhouse tells of friends who lost chickens to fresh turtle heads that were cast aside while turtles were being butchered in the barnyard.

The chickens made the fatal mistake of pecking at that colorful appendage that turtles have above their tongues, an attractant normally for fish and frogs. That appendage triggers a reflex to clamp the jaws tightly shut.

``You`ve got to be careful,`` Rodhouse said. ``Those jaws will work half an hour after the turtle is dead.``

Summertime makes finding turtles easy, especially when the ponds are down. Turtles stay close to water, preferring the water to come to them.

They will burrow into a muddy bank, where their breathing hole generally can be spotted. Probe the mud with a metal rod until the shell is found, then hook the shell with the rod and pull the turtle out.

``That`s when you`ve really got to be careful,`` Rodhouse said. ``That`s when the turtle is fully alert, when you can lose fingers and toes.``

There, of course, are other methods, including a novel one that Rodhouse and his friends use now and then.

They make a pilgrimage to a dredging site along a Mississippi backwater flowage called the Sny, just below Lock and Dam 24 near Belleview.

``This dredge is just pulling out mud. Now, where do turtles go in the wintertime? They go down in the mud. Here you`ve got a million-dollar machine pulling out 30-, 40-pound turtles. They just fall out of the mud. The good ol` boys down there get a lot of fine turtle meat that way.``

Rodhouse and his brother, Rich, had a nice surprise last year while gigging frogs with Rich`s sons. One lad of 10 suddenly found a bare foot planted on the shell of a large snapping turtle and had the presence of mind to stay there and call his dad.

``Rich went over and carefully felt around the shell until he felt the rough side, which indicates the rear. Then he grabbed the tail and we had a nice turtle, maybe 10, 12 pounds.``

One that size will produce three or four pounds of excellent meat, Rodhouse said.

Yum, yum. But next time, they`ll probably go gigging with some shoes.