TurtleCrazy.com
World’s Greatest Turtle TrapComing Soon:
An updated 2024 version of my book “The Professional Turtle Harvest”. This is the book that revolutionized turtle harvesting!
Turtles are amazing creatures that serve a valuable niche in nature. However, overpopulations of turtles (especially Snappers) can be very detrimental to Ecosystems, by eating baby waterfowl, and other pond life! Large turtles can consume 40% of the baby waterfowl. This is not country folklore, this is scientific fact. This includes many species of threatened or endangered waterfowl.
I have harvested turtles with virtually every trap devised. For years I used Hoop Nets and they work ok, but are a real pain to use. The traps have to be staked or stretched out and turtles often get tangled in the mesh. When these traps were invented over 100 years ago, they were the best technology available, but trust me, they are far from the best.
Eventually I came up with my own patented design of a collapsible cage trap which catches all sizes and species of aquatic turtles. Using this trap I caught over 1,000 lbs. of snappers and hundreds of painted turtles in a day. Whether you want to harvest turtles overpopulating your pond, or just catch a few for eating, or even do it commercially where legal; why not use the best trap available. I’ve caught snappers up to 60 lbs. with this trap and it will hold up to 6-8 keepable sized snappers. The trap is self supporting. Pull one pin to shake out turtles, pull all 4 to collapse, take down in seconds. I hauled 30-40 in my jon boat.
For a few years, I made and sold this trap. I would get a lot of orders in spring, when people would get fed up with the snappers eating all the baby waterfowl in their ponds. I remember one lady who called me in tears, telling me how every year the beautiful wild swans would hatch out of a nest in her pond, only to get eaten one by one by the hungry snappers.
The best way to Protect Snapping Turtles
Allowing snapping turtle populations to go unchecked is a bad idea. While I would never want snapping turtle populations to be overly depleted, having one species dominate a habitat and consume 40% of hatchlings is not biodiversity, it’s poor wildlife management.
By simply having a 12″ size limit on snappers, you would maintain a healthy, self sustaining population of snappers and still remove some of the larger snapping turtles which do the majority of the damage.
The Professional Turtle Harvest Book
I have decided to re-publish my turtle book, “The Professional Turtle Harvest” by Gene G. Check. This is the book that revolutionized turtle harvesting. It includes plans for the collapsible cage turtle trap which I invented. It really is the best turtle trap in the world! It can be easily made with hand tools. The book also includes a lot of turtle history and facts not found in other books. You will save the cost of this book several times over just by making your first trap.