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TURTLE DOGS
People often ask me how I trained by Boykins Spaniels, Buster, Sparky and Jake, to be "turtle dogs". I tell them that it happened entirely spontaneously. I live within a half mile of the border of Cherokee National Forest in upper east Tennessee. Back in the late 1990's, I was seeing eastern box turtles each time I went naturalizing, looking for wild flower or bird-watching. Buster, who is now seven years old, was just turning a year old at the time, and was ready to retrieve anything in which I expressed an interest. One day as we walked past a brightly colored male turtle which was eating a mushroom, I merely remarked, "Buster, what's that?" Buster sniffed it curiously, and we continued our walk. Not 100 years further down the trail, I was amazed when Buster ran up to me with a different turtle, closed up tight, in his mouth. Trained to be soft-mouthed, Buster let it fall into my open hands. I praised him, and as soon as he was out of sign, I hid it in the leaves and continued walking. In less than five minutes, he returned with another turtle. That early June morning, just after a rain, Buster brought me about a dozen turtles, and on that day, for me, a new sport was born.
Buster brought me turtles just as fast as he could find them all that summer, and I began to engrave a tiny number in the bottom of each shell, with a battery-powered engraving tool. I kept a crude map of the location of each capture, catching some of the individuals several times a month. I became fascinated by everything related to these contemporaries of the dinosaurs, among the oldest living creatures on earth. As I handled both young and old turtles, I became humbled with the realization that these individuals would be alive long after I am gone.
By the next summer, I acquired another Boykins Spaniel puppy, Sparky. He immediately began to mimic Buster's behavior. Within a few weeks, I was hearing not one but two loudly popping noses as the turtle dogs investigated every rotting log, honeysuckle thicket, and blackberry patch. They began to work as a team, making long, parallel casts, working entire mountainsides, sometimes scoring "doubles".
Our best "bag" was 47 turtles in a single six hour outing. Now, my third Boykin has been bitten by the turtle bug. At the mere speaking of the "t" word, three pairs of yellow eyes burn like glowing embers. When I walk onto the front porch in the stillness of the morning in my chest waders and wading shoes with the fly rod in my hand, not a single Boykin snout will protrude from a dog house. Yet if the green day pack is on my back, three svelte turtle researches glide into view and begin stretching, snorting to clear nasal passages, and scratching in the dirt with their hind feet, throwing pine needles and other debris into the air. I often have a turtle in my hand before I have left the yard, and I eagerly check to see if it is a numbered "recapture" or a "new" turtle.
With my dogs, I may handle more turtles in a day than another person, relying on his or her vision, with in a month. In one study area, I have 402 turtles numbered and happed. I hope to pass the 500 mark in the summer of 2005. Areas of East Tennessee appear to support densities of several turtles per acre, perhaps approximating pre-industrial populations. In all North Carolina study areas, I am seeing very different population dynamics. In comparison to all three Tennessee study areas, North Carolina appears to have a scarcity of young turtles, a gender imbalance, and far fewer turtles per acre. North Carolina's population is in decline, and the turtle dogs have proven it as no other researchers could have. The eastern box turtle is a much loved species, and is the official state reptile of both states. The loss of a well diversified gene pool in an area which formerly had a good population of turtles, makes a strong statement of environmental degradation.
As I write these words in early April, I am seeing avian migrants arriving daily. The earliest ones, the male blue-grey gnatcatchers, pine warblers, red-winged blackbirds and brown thrashers, are already staking out territories as their complex vocalizations advertise, "I'm looking for a wife". So, any morning now, one of my boys will trot proudly up to me with the first turtle of the season. I'm betting it will be number one, two or three since these individuals all live within 100 feet of the house. Yet, I'm constantly surprised by the behavior of these ultimate survivors.
© John Rucker
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A shelluva hunting day - Knoxville News
3 spaniels sniff out and retrieve box turtles for population study
By MORGAN SIMMONS, simmonsm@knews.com
July 9, 2006
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."
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