Gopher is another name for a burrowing land turtle that was a popular food, until it has become almost extinct. In Journey to Matecumbe by Robert Lewis Taylor, he describes how they were collected along the way from a stagecoach traveling between Gainesville which is in North Florida (don’t let anyone tell you different) to Tampa, just after the Great War. The Gopher was prized by city folk as a culinary delight and a staple in the diet of the rural population. “We had an entertainment all the way because of the driver’s “gopher grabbing.” None of the passengers had ever seen anything like it. Without slowing down, he’d leap from the seat like an acrobat, snatch up a gopher (which were all over everywhere, and not prairie gophers at all, but ordinary land turtles) then toss it up onto the baggage rack overhead. These animals were worth twenty-five cents a piece; they were fat and tasty, so people said, and darkies were crazy about them. It had got to be a regular fad in the cities.
The driver told us he usually made more from gopher-grabbing than he did off his salary, and better, it kept him exercised and healthy. He looked fine, but worn down a little toward the end of the trip, which took two days and a night.” pp 199
Now gopher turtles are on the endangered list, and woe be unto you if that fine new home you had planned to be constructed in the Great State of Florida happens to have a gopher turtle hole on it. You are not allowed to disturb the turtle or try to relocate it. So what’s a person to do? This answer should enrage animal activist, the Game and Fish Commission, the SPCA and any other governmental agencies as well as us common folk. A trip to the local building supply store by the property owner to obtain a couple bags of ready-mix to be mixed in a wheelbarrow and poured into the gopher hole, seals the animals fate. And, yes, this is the accepted answer to the problem. It’s about the dumbest action I can think of and the one who “practices” this should be tossed into the lake with a couple lengths of chain and concrete blocks attached to his or her legs to give them a taste of what it feels like to be entombed in water or otherwise!
A fictional account of gopher turtle hunting by Florida Indians is similar to the method used by Florida Crackers to get this four-legged chicken for food for his hungry family. The Cracker takes a length of ordinary garden hose, and a coke bottle with him when he is in the pines cutting pulpwood. When he comes across a fresh turtle burrow, he runs the length of hose into the hole then carefully pours a bit of gasoline from the bottle into the hose. Then, placing his mouth over the hose end, he blows the gas and fumes into the burrow. With axe in hand, he waits to see what emerges, which can be all matter of animals, including snakes, coons, possums, and hopefully the turtle. If he’s lucky and a turtle is found, he just flips it over on its shell and leaves it there until he’s ready to go home. Back at home, the turtle can be kept easily and since it feeds on vegetation can be kept until needed to feed the family.
Maryland terrapins are not turtles at all, but in the 1920's were considered a delicacy and shipped by the thousands to New York. They were bedded in sea-grass or wet hay to keep them fresh. The best restaurants sold Maryland terrapin, the recipes of which are still in some of the better cookbooks.
Cooters are the turtles you see sunning themselves on a log or along the edge of Florida’s backwater. On land they’re slow moving but in water the move with amazing speed. Being air dependent, once one submerges, you only have to be patient to capture him when he surfaces for air. A much rarer variety is the soft-shelled turtle which, as expected, has a soft shell and the turtle itself is much flatter than the other varieties.
You can find cooters served at a restaurant in Cross Creek, Florida, (a small town just below Gainesville, home of the Florida’s Gators) breaded and fried in the best of Southern tradition. Cross Creek was made famous by Marjorie Rawlings (of Yearling fame). Rawlings published a book of recipes of the area.
When the rainy season arrives in Florida, turtles some five to ten pounds in size, about as big as a good sized dishpan, are on the move and unfortunately get smashed by traffic as they wander across the roads. These are the cooters that find their way onto the Cross Creek Restaurant menu. (Not the road-kill, but those that nevertheless came to the same end.)
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Sea turtles, especially the Green Sea Turtles, are another matter. They are still highly prized as food by island people and those who live along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. While listed as endangered, this doesn’t mean much to people who need food. (They just might consider themselves as endangered species as well.)
Being on the list also doesn’t protect the turtle eggs or the hatchlings from animal predators. Much is made about people not disturbing the nest and how the newly hatched turtles go toward any light source, mistaking it for the moon is the popular “legend”. An any rate cities along the coast make a big thing about putting out the lights along the beach areas or in shielding them. It’s a matter of question if this actually results in any more hatchlings reaching the water.
Nature is cruel. Once the eggs are laid and covered by the she turtle who makes her way back to the water, racoons hastily dig the up with abandon. Then after the appropriate time to hatch, the emerging turtles must crawl the fifty feet or so back to water’s edge. Gulls and other birds see this as a morel prepared especially for them and eat not a few. Then once in the water the baby turtle must fend for itself and hopefully will not be considered just another part of the food chain by fish and birds including pelicans and other diving birds.
If you visit a Florida beach in the months of June through October, you will probably come across four stakes in the ground tied together with a bit of yellow plastic strapping. A “official” warning is attached which declares this to be the spot where turtle eggs are to be found. Racoons, being rather intelligent animals, can’t read but they sure are good observers, and seem to be drawn to these markings as if to a dining table. For this reason, you find a wire mesh embedded in the sand around some nesting sites. All the good hearted turtle-watchers (humans that is) have done is make it difficult for the coon who knows most of the tricks of man. Assuming the wire does protect the eggs until hatching, the small fry must still run the gauntlet to the sea. It’s amazing any survive.
A company thought that they would try their hand at raising turtles and actually did a pretty good job of it until the government got involved. Seems that once endangered, always endangered from the environmentalist and Government watchdogs, and regardless of the source, the company could not harvest their charges. A perfectly good facility sits unused in the Caribbean as testament to man’s perpetual folly.
Our country cannot return to the pristine world of Billy Bartram’s Florida or John Lawson’s Carolina. That’s the challenge that faces us all, but incompetent government officials, meddling environmentalist and feel-gooders do little to preserve and protect, and instead enrage those who care for the land and respect Nature.
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