How Lo(cal) Can You Go? Is Eating Turtles OK?
Who could possibly find anything bad to say about eating locally? After all, what’s the downside to dining on wild blackberries, dandelion greens, home-grown tomatoes and fresh-caught alligator snapping turtles?
Wait, what was that last one again?
Well, here in this corner of Northwest Florida I call home (and they don’t call it the “Redneck Riviera” for nothing), that’s a discussion that’s been raging this week. Seems a family from Jay, an inland (i.e., far from the touristy beaches) community, recently caught a 100-pound alligator snapping turtle … and decided to eat it.
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“We’re from the woods, and we live off the land,” Gary Phillips, brother of the man who caught the turtle, was quoted saying in an article in the Pensacola News Journal. “A lot of people are making a big deal about this, but you’ve got to eat. I wish people could understand how it is to live out here … There’s not a Circle K or a McDonald’s you can run to.”
The family’s decision to make a meal of Goliath, as the turtle was briefly named, probably wouldn’t have raised any hackles had the News Journal not first published a photo and article about the initial catch. That started a snowballing effect of responses from readers, one of whom even offered the Phillips family $500 if they set the turtle free.
Instead, the Phillips chose to send Goliath to a taxidermist, who plans to send the meat back to the family. The meat will probably be enough to feed the family for well more than a week, Phillips said.
It’s important to note here that alligator snapping turtles in Florida are neither endangered nor threatened, and that locals have made meals of such creatures for generations. So is this acceptable locavorism or not? Personally, I wouldn’t eat Goliath, but turtle eating’s never been part of my heritage. And Goliath probably enjoyed a much happier, and longer, life than those store-bought chickens one reader suggested the family should eat instead.
What do you think? How lo(cal) are you willing to go?
Shirley, Your article brought back many memories of when I lived in Milton, south of Jay. One thing people enjoyed was mullett. It is very good if cooked correctly. We shouldn’t be too critical, but I too would have let Goliath free.
I suppose there wasn’t a hunting license appropriate for trapping the turtle to eat, as there is for turkey and deer? I don’t really know how those work, but there is a very healthy ‘eat the hunt and take care of where it lives’ contingent here in NWFL.
Otto, you bet: mullet’s a big-time favorite around here! Actually, I didn’t post this to be critical but rather as, pardon the expression, food for thought. After all, what is local eating? Is it just gardening? Or are hunting, fishing and turtle trapping part of the picture too? Michael Pollan asked the same question in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and concluded that, despite some misgivings about his wild boar-hunting adventure, his wild-harvested/hunted meal was the most satisfying of the three types he wrote about.
Sarah, you’re right: many of the people who hunt around here eat what they hunt. Again, I couldn’t do it, but there’s a valid argument to be made that well regulated hunting is actually more sustainable than factory farming.
As I said, food for thought …
Ummm… what? People who propose living off the land OPPOSE eating turtles…?
I mean… how exactly could someone propose a natural and environmentally friendly option like getting your own meals and oppose killing animals? That is the only way one can survive off the land. I mean, I hate to tell you, but fish are still animals. Snails are animals. All the little things that you’re eating to get your protein and feel good about yourself are still animals. What’s more, human interference in many areas has led to the EXPLOSION of turtle populations. There are simply too many of them. It takes a decent (generally large) predator to take down a turtle, as they’ve gotta muscle through the shell. We don’t allow any major predators around our population areas whenever possible. As a result any pond you go to around here (NC) will be stuffed with turtles in the summer time. These turtles wreak havoc on the fish and aquatic plant populations. They’re not meant to be present in such large numbers.
I hate to tell the hippie false-survivalists environmentalist wackos, but the only way you’re really going to live off the land is to from time to time take big game. I guess it’s a lot different in florida but here in NC if you’re a hunter and you don’t eat your catch other hunters will get more pissed off than the enviro-nazis. They make no distinction between the two groups, whereas hunters see these indolent members of their fraternity as frauds and as wasting the wildlife. At the very least, here, you’re expected to see that the meat’s used - even if you don’t eat it yourself there are all kinds of programs which take game meat and donate it to the homeless.
If you champion self-sufficiency and oppose the eating of large game (including 100 pound turtles; by the way, turtles are some of the tastiest, easiest to get wild game. In fact, they don’t taste gamey at all; the bulk of the meat tastes almost indistinguishable (and looks the same) from chicken breast), you’re a hypocrite and chances are you’re still hitting up the grocery store for your protein.
There is absolutely no question that hunting for your meat is more humane. The factory-farms which provide the meat in the grocery stores put animals in conditions that are, compared to their natural state, deplorable. It is a myth that the animals are “better off” because they’ve always got a meal. Their brains are DESIGNED for survival in the wild, and to subject them to mass farm raising is the deepest form of animal cruelty. Animals expect to be hunted and killed, they don’t expect to be put in a wire cage that’s barely larger than their bodies and fed from a trough. Take the desolate feeling of living in a tiny cramped apartment, working in a tiny cramped cubicle, and eating bland reprocessed food, and multiply that by a thousand. That’s what a farm-raised chicken’s life is like.
Hunting is the only way to really live a natural and sustainable life. On top of that, if you’re really an environmentalist, hunters contribute more to wildlife protection than all enviro-nazi groups put together. You see, unlike environmentalists for whom animals are just these things that are out in the woods away from the city somewhere, just this ephemeral idea which must be protected, to hunters they are a way of life. They are sustenance, they are recreation, they are the only guarantee that if and when modern society fails the hunter will still be able to provide for the welfare of his family and friends. We, more than anyone, have a vested interest in keeping the wildlife populations flourishing. We, who have watched our game grow year by year and seen its patterns and the effects of ecological changes, know better than any environmentalist the fragility of the natural world. And, unlike the millions who simply send a check to some gaggle of hypocrites like PETA (the k-9 grim reapers) nearly every hunter (at least around here) actually puts some of his own sweat into the work of protecting the environment, and actually gets something done.
So, yeah, I would have eaten the turtle, and it would’a been finger licking good
By the way, I think that turtles would fall under fishing regulations. I’ve never really checked but, since you generally catch them with a hook and bobber or with a water-based trap, it would only make sense. I haven’t heard of many people shooting turtles