>>One reason that bog turtles go unnoticed is because they are a very small turtle that hides in sphagnum moss, sedges and mud for the vast majority of their lives. They are hard to find even when you know they are there and the time of year is right. That farmer was dumbstruck when I held up an adult male boggie after only 20 minutes of searching. But then, he had never had any reason to go slogging through the wet portions of his cow pasture either.
>>I am absolutely certain that there are countless small plots of land like that with colonies of bog turtles in them.

Good I hope there are huge numbers of them in small plots of land that are going unnoticed.
That's probably exactly why people here don't know that yellow mud turtles are native here because they're small & hiding in the mud, moss, & whatever they can find to hide in.

My DH tells me that there are lots of muds living in a pond on the public golf course. That's the only place I know of where there are any to be found. I've heard that there are lots of cattle stock tanks & cattle ponds south of town but those would all be on private land. Other than those areas, there isn't any water around here.
Because it's not illegal here to collect turtles from the wild I'm glad that people don't know about the muds. They take too many boxes from the wild, if they saw the muds they'd be taking them too.
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PHRatz

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