Wildlife in the late 90s / 04BoxNOneBigTurtle
Bill Maloney
2/11/2004

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04BoxNOneBigTurtle

04BoxNOneBigTurtle.jpg

When I would come down to the pond in the morning there would always be several turtles sunning themselves on these downed tree trunks. But there sometimes was one turtle that was much larger than the rest. It was very shy and extremely observant and would slip into the water even if you were a couple of hundred feet away. I made up my mind to get it on film to see what it was and on this day with a 300mm lens stalked as close as I could which was still a good 75 feet away. I had to continually keep a tree and bush within it's line of sight of me to keep it from slipping back into the water. Once in position I carefully poked out from behind the tree and got off 2 frames before he apparently heard me and dove back into the pond. On closer look I'm not so sure it's a snapper as the shell does have clearly defined square sections. It might just be a very big very old box turtle, but I could be wrong. If I can ever get a head shot I could tell for sure.