Turtle Trapping.

[flytyermiller]

I have always trapped turtles, i learnt from my family, and love it, in the past i've been a pretty heavy trapper, and love every second of it. Including the eating!

My question is this, if they are "at risk" or however they are currently classified, why don't we have a slot? most places in north america i have trapped have a 13 inch minimum?

Is it simply that no one cares so it flies under the radar? That's the feeling i get, it's a fairly neglected area, not many people talk about it, i don't even think i've ever seen an OOD article about it even though we all as licence fisherman have a right to it? or am i missing a few old issues?

my biggest is 58lbs. I make my own traps from scratch, including hand tying all of the mesh netting used for my traps.

IF i was given free roam i could, in my area, easily catch dozens in a day. obviously i can't keep that amount, the laws have become more and more regulated, with mandatory harvest reporting and such. But the idea of a 13 inch slot, which is standard most places, is not something i have ever heard discussed?
i want the population to take off, and for numbers to be confirmed so i can go back to trapping more! it's a bit of a dying subset, and i'm fine with that, more for me.

Do you trap?
personally i've only seen the numbers go up. my feeling about the "at risk" statement, is more about lack of data so they are playing it safe, rather than that they are actually at risk.

[frederickwreid]

Didn't I read this post somewhere before? I'm pretty sure there was a turtle thread not that long ago.... In any case, I'm terribly ignorant about turtle trapping. Never done it, never really had the itch to do so... I wouldn't know the first place to start if I had to gut a turtle... interesting stuff all the same.

As for slot sizes, it would be interesting to know if it's not in place because of a need. There can't be that many turtle trappers out there - you say yourself it seems to be a neglected area. I'm sure others here could add thoughts. Never really thought of trapping turtles... *frantically googles 'turtle trapping'

[trappermatt]

I have always trapped turtles, i learnt from my family, and love it, in the past i've been a pretty heavy trapper, and love every second of it. Including the eating!

My question is this, if they are "at risk" or however they are currently classified, why don't we have a slot? most places in north america i have trapped have a 13 inch minimum?

Is it simply that no one cares so it flies under the radar? That's the feeling i get, it's a fairly neglected area, not many people talk about it, i don't even think i've ever seen an OOD article about it even though we all as licence fisherman have a right to it? or am i missing a few old issues?

my biggest is 58lbs. I make my own traps from scratch, including hand tying all of the mesh netting used for my traps.

IF i was given free roam i could, in my area, easily catch dozens in a day. obviously i can't keep that amount, the laws have become more and more regulated, with mandatory harvest reporting and such. But the idea of a 13 inch slot, which is standard most places, is not something i have ever heard discussed?
i want the population to take off, and for numbers to be confirmed so i can go back to trapping more! it's a bit of a dying subset, and i'm fine with that, more for me.

Do you trap?
personally i've only seen the numbers go up. my feeling about the "at risk" statement, is more about lack of data so they are playing it safe, rather than that they are actually at risk.

It's exactly what you think an assumption based on lack of real world data , if you do some reaserch the papers used for the assumption that the common snapper needs protection are available and you wil find they simply extrapolated that because they seen a decline in the two areas they sampled that the whole province is in decline , if they wanted data they should have came and talked to some of us that spend time in the field and know how to catch things , I could get them hundreds of turtles for data collection if they pay me too, as I'm sure other trappers could as well from all over Ontario and then we would have some real world data to make decisions with .

[dutchhunter]

There is no shortage in are area that's for sure. I find the nest sights along old gravel roads and train tracks. We see some very big ones in the ponds I trap beaver from .I wish I had someone to show me the ropes on how to trap and clean cook turtles. I have the property. .Dutch

[Bo D]

I litteraly see hundreds every year, starting normally the end of May, well into June depending on the weather that come up onto the golf course to lay their eggs. Normally they start after a warm rain...

[MikePal]

This is an article from back in 2012 when the MNR announced they had to be reported....

I see there is a caution about eating them:

Currently, an Ontarian with a provincial fishing licence can take up to two snapping turtles a day during the season.

Urquhart said it will be hard for conservation officers to prove those turtles won’t be sold as meat, and difficult for MNR to enforce mandatory reporting.
The government’s decision also ignores evidence from researchers that Ontario snapping turtles may have high levels of PCBs and be unfit to eat, he said.

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/04/25...apping-turtles

[tweedwolfscream]

Turtle trapping is something I'd like to learn more about. In terms of the legal status, snapping turtles are classified as "special concern", which unlike threatened or endangered, does not come with automatic legal protections. If they were threatened or endangered I don't think you could harvest them at all.

I'm not really sure what the thresholds are for establishing these classifications. Perhaps special concern means they face threats, but have not yet demonstrably declined as result of those threats?

In any case, to the original question... there's a catch and possession limit, that's the tool MNR is using to manage harvest numbers. Not sure why a minimum size is objectively a more effective tool? Unless I'm missing some biological quirk about turtle size, like with softshell crabs where above a certain size they stop reproducing?

Here's another question: it's not clear to me from the regs summary, but if you catch a snapping turtle in a trap, are you allowed to release it and not count it towards your limit? Because if not, or if they don't like to encourage that, that would explain why there's no minimum size -- they expect you to keep the 2 you catch, regardless of size.

Now I could be wrong but I thought PCBs were generally associated with industrial pollution, so they'd tend to only be an issue on waterways with urban development, unlike heavy metals. If that's the case then turtles in more "pristine" areas would be free of PCBs, and the argument about them was just an excuse from someone petitioning to ban turtle trapping. On the other hand, snappers are fish-eating predators that can live a LONG time, so it's understandable that contaminants would bioaccumulate in the older ones, whether PCBs or something else. (Maybe that's an argument against a minimum size?)

[flytyermiller]

Turtle trapping is something I'd like to learn more about. In terms of the legal status, snapping turtles are classified as "special concern", which unlike threatened or endangered, does not come with automatic legal protections. If they were threatened or endangered I don't think you could harvest them at all.

I'm not really sure what the thresholds are for establishing these classifications. Perhaps special concern means they face threats, but have not yet demonstrably declined as result of those threats?

In any case, to the original question... there's a catch and possession limit, that's the tool MNR is using to manage harvest numbers. Not sure why a minimum size is objectively a more effective tool? Unless I'm missing some biological quirk about turtle size, like with softshell crabs where above a certain size they stop reproducing?

Here's another question: it's not clear to me from the regs summary, but if you catch a snapping turtle in a trap, are you allowed to release it and not count it towards your limit? Because if not, or if they don't like to encourage that, that would explain why there's no minimum size -- they expect you to keep the 2 you catch, regardless of size.

Now I could be wrong but I thought PCBs were generally associated with industrial pollution, so they'd tend to only be an issue on waterways with urban development, unlike heavy metals. If that's the case then turtles in more "pristine" areas would be free of PCBs, and the argument about them was just an excuse from someone petitioning to ban turtle trapping. On the other hand, snappers are fish-eating predators that can live a LONG time, so it's understandable that contaminants would bioaccumulate in the older ones, whether PCBs or something else. (Maybe that's an argument against a minimum size?)

I don't think i said "more effective" if i did i was misrepresenting how i felt, i thought that adding it for a period of time to recover population densities might help get us to a place where the limits could be raised.
That's likely a more clear statement of intent than anything i wrote in my original post.

I hadn't considered the toxin buildup, except to say that i doubt it's any less a problem across the states where 13inch is a fairly well practiced norm. Not that i'm saying "if the states does it, it must be right" haha it's just where my mind took it's leaps of logic, it seemed fairly simple to me, species population a concern? stop killing babies... Suppose i'm sort of have a moose calf hunt debate with myself in that regard, but simply applying it to turtles.

[flytyermiller]

And thank you for the clarification "special concern". i should have looked it up before posting.

[Gunner 38]

I admit that I don't know anything about turtles or turtle-trapping . --- My question is : Why bother? --- Am I missing something by not eating them ? --- I always saw them as a "SANITATION-CREW" ; cleaning up our waters . To the best of my knowledge , they are one of the few carrion-feeders around . --- I'm not judging people who "harvest" them , I just wonder .