I like everything about it.

Thank you for your great eye, and for posting it!

you come back with something totally different.

Back in my noodling days, we always looked for bubbles, a dark oval, and would approach from downstream. Downstream the side you grab, upstream the side the turtle grabs.

I didn't like being the one in the water because I had an irrational fear of leeches. I guess that came from the movie "The African Queen." So I was happy to be the one on the shore to gather the turtle thrown up on the shore. I loved the smell and the feel of burlap sacks.

My mother loved turtle soup, but didn't want to kill and clean them. Instead of taking them to our parents we'd take them to our neighbors for their dining pleasure. They'd pay for them. 50 cents was OK, it was good money to a grade school kid in the 50's. Sometimes we couldn't find a buyer and had to return the snapper back to the creek.

Here's how you kill a snapper. You need a stick and a hatchet. You goad the snapper to grab the stick. you pull the stick to give you a good shot with the hatchet. It takes a long time for the head and the body to die, and that provides much entertainment for the dogs. I guess there was a conflict between fear and food when it comes to snapping turtles.

This is what mom's soup looked like: From Restaurants.com

I don't think so. Pull a live snapping turtle into the kayak with me and my D300....I don't think so.LOL
You're a better man than I Gunga Din.
I do like turtle soup but haven't had it in ages.

I'm no longer young.