how is the turtle trapping going now that we've warmed up?

The reason I've been so silent on the results to date is after receiving a couple e-mails and PMs telling me that killing most turtles in N TX is illegal, there's not much sense in my publishing what we've done.

What??? That's news to me I'm pretty sure that killing turtles on your own land is perfectly legal. Too many desktop deputy wardens on here.

Only laws are dealing with taking them from private land for commercial sale. Only turtle that is protected is the diamondback terrapin.

Perfectly legal for what he is doing. I used a very similar trap one year when I had an army of turtles eating too much expensive fish feed from under the fish feeder at my hunting lease.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/annual/hunt/nongame/

Cappy, you might try a slanted board attached on one side of the trap to make it more natural and comfortable for them to want to try and sun on the edge.

I looked back at some old pictures and though not a good one, found a picture of mine. There is a flat board across the middle and on each end is a slanted board with some grooves cut in it to make it easy to climb up from each side. They would sun on the board across the middle and fall into the trap when they later decide to slide off. There is no bait used.



Justed found a link to an example of what I use. Might try this if the bait method does not catch them all or if they start tearing up the wire from underneath trying to get to the bait.

http://www.paulfishfarms.com/turtleslammer.htm