Chris Moore and Austin Rush were working at Green Top Sporting Goods in Ashland, Virginia on Aug. 17 when a man walked into the store and said he had a large snapping turtle he’d like to have weighed. It was a first for Moore.
“He’d called the store earlier and said he had a huge turtle that might be a state record,” Moore tells Outdoor Life. “So, when he walked in later, we were expecting him … But we’d never had anyone come in to weigh a turtle before. They usually bring us big fish.”
Trapper Winston Marshall holds up the giant snapping turtle he nicknamed ‘Godzilla.’
Photo via Facebook
Moore explains that the man who caught the turtle works a nuisance wildlife trapper. He’d trapped the snapper in a backwater stretch of the James River, and he brought it into the store in a large trash can.
“I never saw one that big, and we stayed away from the front end of him,” Moore says. “The turtle was snapping at the trash can, looking pretty mean, [and] showing us he was boss.”
The trapper, Winston Marshall of Nuisance Wildlife Services, carefully picked up the turtle by its shell, right behind its large, menacing head. The three men tied a line around it and hung it carefully from the store’s certified scales. It weighed 57 pounds, with a shell length of roughly 18 inches. And although Virginia hasn’t ever maintained records for giant snapping turtles, Marshall still wanted someone with the state to come look at it.
Virginia wildlife officials say the snapping turtle is a new record and the first of its kind.
Photo via Facebook
“We filled out a card for the trapper with detailed information about the turtle and signed our names to it as witnesses to it being weighed and measured,” says Rush. “Then Marshall left, and I believe he got with a state agency office that following Monday.”
Sure enough, on Sept. 5, the Virginia Division of Wildlife Resources announced the first-ever snapping turtle record on social media.
“Although DWR typically does not maintain size records for turtles, this one will definitely be recorded as the official state record,” the DWR wrote on Facebook. For comparison, the agency said that common snappers in the state typically weigh around 25 to 30 pounds, or roughly half of what ‘Godzilla’ weighed.
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Common freshwater snapping turtles are found throughout the eastern U.S., as well as in Canada. In U.S. waters, they are second in size only to alligator snapping turtles, which can weigh up to 250 pounds. Harvesting common snapping turtles in Virginia is legal, but only for residents.
“Huge thank you to the folks at Green Top Sporting Goods for weighing in this magnificent animal,” the DWR said in the Facebook post. “Godzilla was released back where it was captured in Henrico County to live out his days prowling the waters of Curles Neck Plantation.”
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