TURTLES ARE CUTE...
....SOME TURTLES
When I was a kid we lived within walking distance of a small private lake. There was a small creek with plenty of frogs, crayfish, snakes and turtles. This was a perfect place for a boy to have some great adventures.
I have an older brother who was an avid outdoorsman. He was the kid who could not only find critters but he could get them to eat out of his hand. After he moved out I inherited his traps.
He did hunt but mostly he trapped muskrats for the pelts. He didn't teach me much about it because of our seven year age difference, I was his dumb little brother. I guess this is normal but sadly it's still the same even though we are both in out seventies.
I learned everything on my own by trial and error and became good at it. I know it is a gruesome activity but I did it as humanely as possible.
They resembled a large rat and I got up to $7 for a perfect pelt. They were used for elegant fur clothing but they labeled them "water mink" or "river mink", I guess a word with "rat" in it wasn't good for marketing.
I quit using foot traps and expanded my trap line to around forty Conibear traps that are more humane. The bottom fell out of the fur market for some reason so I hung up my traps.
The muskrat population grew in spite of my small enterprise, they multiplied like rabbits.
I ran turtle lines for a while because turtle meat was selling for $5 a pound because it is a Japanese delicacy. Turtle soup is also a redneck delicacy but most people caught their own.
I had a great uncle who hunted snapping turtles. Turtles are cold blooded so if they are cold they can barely move. The ground temperature in Ohio is an average of 52 F and turtles stop moving at 45 F. They hibernate in the mud banks of streams and rivers. My uncle would reach up into the roots and mud feeling for sleeping turtles.
He would pull them out bare handed and throw them up on the bank so I could put them in a burlap bag and hang it from a tree. They were all snapping turtles the meanest turtle I have ever seen. The warmer they get the faster they cam move. Watching one of these monsters run across a hot paved road will make you rethink the rabbit and turtle race.
They have long legs, long claws, a surprisingly long neck and a powerful beak. They can snap their beak in anger which gives them their name. You see people picking up turtles by the shell safely but not these creatures.
Fishing never interested me but living in trout country I have the time to give it a try. On my trips around the country and growing up in the country, I saw a lot of hunting and fishing. It is a sport I understand and see the need for but I don't enjoy hunting and I don't like the taste of wild game.
The business I was in for forty years involved the slaughter and production of animals. The average person has a naive understanding of meat production. They grieve when they find a dead sparrow but they consume an average of 100 pounds of chicken per year.
Many cultures eat meat and a few do not. Telling people they must consume animal protein or wear leather is just as wrong as telling people they can't.
The best steak I have ever had was a rib eye at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. I cleaned up, put on my best behavior and was taken there by a special friend. This place had table cloths, real silverware and linen napkins. I can behave in public given the right motivation.
Everything was a la carte, a baked potato was $9 and the steak was $45, that was twenty years ago. The food was as amazing as my company, I am grateful for such a luxurious gift.
Eat meat or wear leather but realize these animals were raised and processed by hard working people. Whether the animals were raised for food or they are from the wild always be grateful because they come from God.
Genesis 9:3 "Everything that lives and moves will be food....."
