Riddle me this?
What color is the meat? Never sawed into one personally. But heard some wild rumors.
Some of the meat is red, not as red as deer meat, but the consistency of deer meat. Some of it is translucent (some say white),
like frog legs, real fine meat and some is a mixture of the 2, about the look of chicken. The front and hind quarters are red meat
transitioning into the clear meat. We don't keep any under 40 lbs because they are all head and shell and they yield little meat,
just seems a waste for the little meat you get. Now the bigger ones, I remember the one in the top pic was 110 lbs, He yielded
65 lbs, of meat (on the bone) after we cleaned him. Every thing is done with him on his back. After bottom shell is off everything
is right there. Skin and cut each leg quarter out then the tail then the neck. A lot of meat in his neck running into his head.
Now everything is separated from the shell. Cut the feet off at the joints then you have to skin the hide off each piece like a deer.
You can't pull the hide from the meat , it has to be skinned. You can clean a big logger head pretty quick.
They are very simple to clean. If you look at the pics you see his bottom shell connects to the top by just a little piece on both sides.
You cut that with a hatchet then skin the bottom shell off, takes about a minute.
I mainly catch them on lines tied to a tree along an old natural bayou in the swamp. I bait a hook with a piece of carp and gently push
it into the sediment a few inches... I also was taught by my grandfather how to pole them out of their caves with a hook pole during
the cold winter months when they are hibernating. They dig holes in the bank and they pile on top of one another to hibernate.
If you notice on the pic of Myles shell, there are 3 rows of "spurs" on his back. if you catch a large one and his spurs are tall and pointed,
there are probably not many turtles in the area. If you catch one that his spurs are worn down and rounded off, there is a good population. If you catch one that the rows of spurs are slap worn down , then you have a lot of logger heads in the area. When they
are hibernating they pile on top of one another and that's what wears them spurs down. The more turtles in a hole the more they wear
each others spurs down .
