NEWS JOURNAL (Wilmington, Delaware) This hunter provides turtles for ...

NEWS JOURNAL (Wilmington, Delaware) 07 May 06 This hunter provides turtles for your soup (Betsy Price)
A good day for Victor Bryson is a hot day. The hotter the better.
Because that's when the snapping turtles come up from the bottom of the Christina River, head for the shallow water of marshes and bury themselves under a thin layer of mud to cool off.
Then proggers like Bryson step carefully through the marshes, carrying a long thin metal stick with a spike on one end and a hook on the other. He gently pokes the pointed tip into the mush and when he hits a turtle, he flips the prog and uses the hook to bring the turtle to the surface.
Bryson, 48, of Old New Castle, has been doing this for 35 years. He's been doing it since becoming entranced by the river when he was 13 and an uncle introduced him and his brothers to its joys and mysteries.
"It was full of snapping turtles, muskrat, fish. It was like something we'd never seen, and it was something we never grew out of."
He catches snapping turtles in the summer, traps muskrats in the winter, recycles scrap metal and works occasionally as a form carpenter.
"I make a living at it, but my lifestyle isn't very expensive," Bryson says. "The house we live in, we don't owe a lot of money on. I'm always busy. I'm always doing something to make money."
He eats the meat of the muskrat -- his favorite recipe is plain old fried muskrat -- and sells the fur to a dealer in New Jersey.
He starts his turtle season by finding 88 pounds of turtle meat for the Fort Penn Historical Society's annual dinner at the fire hall.
After that, he catches turtles and saves the meat until he has enough to take to market in Maryland, usually about 300 to 400 pounds. There, he sells it to a company that supplies a lot of the turtle meat to the rest of the country and now even exports some overseas.
He'll catch about 6,000 pounds of turtle meat a year, and says he doesn't have to worry about reducing the snapping turtle population.
"The state kind of regulates the turtle season, so it's closed while turtles are laying their eggs," he says. "I personally very seldom keep a female snapper, and I never keep a turtle under 10 to 12 pounds."
The average turtle in these parts is about 14 to 15 pounds, about the width of a hefty pie plate, he says.
Bryson has no intention of retiring.
"I hope you see me walking in a ditch catching snapping turtles when I'm 90 years old."
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