Of Gobblers, River Cooters and Alligators!

A recent cool spring morning found me laying for a long bearded Gobbler in a river swamp on the banks of the St. Johns River.

I had found the Toms strut sign two days earlier on a sand spoil pile and I knew he'd be roosting in the swamp within ear shot of his strut zone.

Unfortunately, the morning dawned partly overcast and just a bit breezy, not good conditions for gobbling and this morning would be true to form. Actually, the gobbler only gobbled one time that I ever heard and it was from the ground. He never gobbled on the limb despite my owling along with several excited cutts and cackles at fly down.

Once I heard him gobble I knew it was only a matter of time before he would be strutting in front of me on the little sand hill. I stopped calling at him and changed to the soft purrs and clucks of a contented feeding hen. I had my video camera rolling when he stepped out of the cabbage palm hammock. He immediately saw my hen decoy and broke into a half strut. He cautiously made his way towards the decoy as a wary old gobbler will do.

Against my better judgement, I could not  resist a few soft purs and clucks to try to pull one more gobble out of him for the camera. About 15 yds or so from the decoy the old gobbler realized something was not right with the motionless hen and turned around to come to my calling. Things were pretty touch and go there for a minute as he approached to within 10 yds, head stretched high looking for the source of the calling. Anytime you let a bird get that close you run a real risk of him escaping.  Absolutely no movement goes unseen. A tight choked turkey guns patter at such close range is very small and a turkeys head is always moving. Its a very difficult target to hit, especially if he spooks to flee. A body shot is about all you can hope for if your in a tight spot. IF the woods are open you might be able to let him get out to 20 where you have a better pattern before shooting but he'll be hauling the mail!

I got lucky with the shot and just caught him with part of the load and put him down. He was beautiful tom and make for another great hunt, all on video

Well, I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Turtles like to crawl up from the river to lay their eggs on the sandy spoil pile and as usual there were numerous nests that had been dug into and eaten by various varmits. Probably, mostly by Coons.

I was doing some tracking in the sand to see if I could tell if all the strut sign was from one gobbler or if maybe there was another bird in the area. As I neared the weeds down towards the water I noticed a large turtle shell. It caught my attention and I slipped over to investigate. The shell was upside down and i immediately saw a golf ball size spot in the center of the shell that had been broken and crushed in. This however was not the cause of his demise. It was from a previous gator attack and had healed up. When I picked the shell up I immediately noticed two broken off alligator teeth in the top of the shell. Incredible!

Studying the shell it was obvious the turtle had survived many encounters with large alligators. There were lines of dots where rows of teeth had pocked the hard shell. Along the radius ed areas of the shell there were gouged lined where the gator's teeth slid down the shell.

The broken off gator teeth were absolutely amazing. I decided to keep the shell, clean it up and spray it with some clear polyurethane. It really shinned up great and is an interesting conversation piece.

The River Cooter is a basking turtle are often sold as pets. Anytime you are on the river in the middle part of the day you are liable to see them perched on logs sunning. The females are larger than the males and can live to more than 40 years of age.

They mate during May and June and seek out an open sandy location 50-100' from the water to bury their clutch of 10-25 eggs. With a lot of luck, 90-100 days later they will hatch.  While the species is highly herbivorous, river cooters will eat anything, plant or animal, dead or alive.

Judging by all the scars from the alligators this turtle must have been around for quite some time and survived countless attacks. I think I'll call him Lucky!

Keep your eyes open, you never know what interesting things you'll stumble across in the woods!

Best of hunts,
Larry S.