Steve Corl, his grandchildren and friends plan to have an old-fashioned cooter stew after catching three large snapping turtles at a pond in the Gold Hill area.
The turtles weighed from just over 23 pounds to more than 28 pounds.
Corl said he used fish parts on a steel hook connected by about 2 feet of wire to a gallon milk jug handle. They put the bait in the pond a little before 10 p.m. and checked the jugs the next day.
They had baited 42 hooks and only caught three turtles ó but they were big ones.
“It’s very seldom that you get ones that big,” he said.
Corl said he keeps the turtles alive about two weeks in a tub with fresh water, changing it every couple of days, as the turtles clear out all that’s inside them. Then they scald the turtles in a pot of hot water and cut out the meat.
Corl, 54, said he’s been perfecting the turtle harvest since he was 11. “I’ve never been bit,” he said, noting that a turtle can still snap three or four hours after its head is cut off.