KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL (Tennessee) 09 July 06 A shelluva hunting day - 3 spaniels sniff out and retrieve box turtles for population study (Morgan Simmons)
Oak Ridge: It took Sparky five minutes to find the first box turtle. No sooner had the 7-year-old bird dog delivered the reptile to John Rucker's hand than Buster came trotting through the woods, proudly carrying another turtle.
"We got ourselves a double," Rucker said.
Rucker owns Sparky, Buster and Jake - three Boykin spaniels trained to sniff out and retrieve box turtles. During the fall and winter, Rucker and his dogs hunt pheasant in Montana. When summer rolls around, they look for Eastern box turtles, a well-known species that may be in trouble.
Last week Rucker and his dogs hunted turtles at the University of Tennessee Arboretum, a 250-acre research facility in Oak Ridge.
The Clinch River Environmental Studies Organization - a joint project between the Department of Energy and Anderson County and Oak Ridge schools that trains high school students in biological fieldwork - invited them down to look for box turtles in a 25-acre tract of woods scheduled to be logged this fall. In the years to come, Rucker and his dogs will return to the area to re-assess the turtle population in light of the logging operation.
The turtle hunt started at 9 a.m. while the woods were still shady and cool.
Sparky, Buster and Jake were out front, with Rucker following close behind. At the end of the procession were six CRESO students. Every time a dog found a box turtle, the students marked the location with a flag and rushed the turtle back to a study station. After recording such data as the turtle's size, sex and age, the students gave each specimen a number and released it at the capture site.
Of the three Boykin spaniels, Sparky and Buster had the most experience and found the most box turtles. They quartered in front of Rucker with their tails wagging and their noses pressed to the ground.
"These are heavy-duty field-trial dogs that have been hunted on pheasants," Rucker said. "Basically, they're transferring that same intensity to this game."
Rucker didn't set out to turn his Boykin spaniels into turtle dogs. One day, when he and Buster were out in the field, they came across a box turtle feeding on a mushroom. Buster just sniffed that first turtle, but a little while later, he located two more box turtles and delivered them both to Rucker's hand.
With a little praise from Rucker, Buster turned into a top-notch turtle dog. Before long, Sparky learned, too.
"The physics of what they do with their noses is still a mystery to me," Rucker said.
A retired high school English teacher, Rucker spent nine years commercial fishing in Alaska. He now lives in upper East Tennessee near the Holston River. Box turtles, along with fishing and pheasant hunting, are his passion.
On a typical day, Rucker's dogs might find 40 box turtles. By contrast, students with the CRESO project do well to locate 20 box turtles all summer.
Rucker and his dogs have hunted box turtles extensively in Virginia and North Carolina, and the results have been troubling. Not only is he finding fewer box turtles in these states, he also is finding fewer juvenile turtles that would indicate a healthy population.
Rucker said that from what he has observed, East Tennessee's box turtle population is in better shape than North Carolina's or Virginia's.
"My contention is that this region is the last stronghold for the Eastern box turtle in the Southeast," he said.
Tennessee law makes it illegal to import, possess or sell any turtle, tortoise or terrapin species as a pet. This level of protection is higher than most states and stems in part from research conducted by the Tennessee Aquarium and the Knoxville Zoo.
The dogs located most of the box turtles in moist, low-lying areas with thick vegetation. Once, while working the ridgeline, Buster winded a box turtle on an updraft coming from a ravine. Like a heat-guided missile, the 8-year-old spaniel vectored in on the scent, which belonged to an adult male wandering beside a maple tree.
Being well-trained retrievers, the Boykin spaniels delivered the turtles to Rucker unharmed. Except for a coating of drool, there was no way to tell that turtles had been in their mouths.
The bulk of a box turtles' diet consists of slugs, snails and earthworms. Rucker believes that loss of habitat, along with climate change, is reducing their numbers at an alarming rate.
"The Southeast is losing its moisture," he said. "The box turtle is probably the most loved reptile in America, and it may be on the verge of extinction."
By the end of the first hour, the dogs had found 12 box turtles. The good news was that four of the turtles were juveniles. They were the size of hockey pucks and maybe 10 years old, judging from the growth rings on their shells.
The spaniels fanned out along the steep mountainsides. Experience had taught them to sniff around fallen trees, where box turtles tend to congregate. The dogs were reading the habitat, and Rucker was reading the dogs.
"I can recognize their body posture in a heartbeat," Rucker said. "I'm amazed every day I'm with them in the field."
A shelluva hunting day

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