EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

Its true!

I received a frantic call from a friend I haven’t heard from in months yesterday. Another friend of his son’s rare African Spurred Tortoise escape its pen and had disappeared into a nearby creek bottom. You know the giant ones at the zoo? That’s the one but its still growing and only coming in around 100 lbs. lol
He asked me if I had a dog that could find it and went on to tell me about the turtle and the situation after my 50 questions.
I figured I would give it a try since it was a family pet, not to mention the thing is worth between 5 and 7 grand!  :o
I explained to him that the track would be at least 30 hours old before I got their and she wouldn’t be able to trail it but I would come out and give it a try anyway. After all, how hard could a 100 pound turtle be to find and how for could it get anyway right?
I know my dog and she will hunt/trail anything I ask her to even though she is mostly used as a blood trailer so I figured…just maybe. Its worth a shot at being a hero and I didnt have anything else to do.

Upon my arrival and after introductions I was ready to get started. I let Macy my 9 pound blood trailing wiener dog out of the truck and just let her run around for a minute.
One of the searchers that stuck around to watch her work said out load, “you gotta be kidding me”.
I knew what he was talking about but I said, “I know turtle hunting right”? He said “no” you are using a wiener dog! I said what else would you hunt turtles with? Lol.
 I called her inside the turtles pen, pointed at the ground and asked her to “find it” so she could get a good smell of what I wanted her to find and she went to buzzing that pen like a machine! Nose to the ground, running up under shrubbery, inside the oversized dog hose that the turtle stayed in. When I figures she had a good wiff of turtle, I pointed to the gate with another command and she was off! Cutting big zigzags through their yard hunting her butt off. She covered the huge yard pretty quick and disappeared in the woods so I went to join her but not until I casually asked that guy what he thought she was hunting. lol He said “well Ill be damned”!  “If anything can find that turtle I bet that wiener dog can!”
Well to make a long story short, she didn’t find the dang thing. She hunted her tail off for the next 3 hours while I cute grids through the woods in hopes of getting her on it. She managed to tree a possum and bay another one in its hole but that was it.
O well I tried. How many folks get the opportunity to track a $5000 dollar turtle anyway? Lol

How far can a blasted 100 pound tortoise walk in 30 hours without any particular place to go? That creek bottom is so thick my 9 pound wiener dog was having a hard time with it. The turtle is almost as big around as a truck tire and well………moves as slow as a turtle!  :D

I may give it another try in the daylight because I think it’s still fairly close by.

Any advice you tortoise hunters can give me would be greatly appreciated!  O0

LMAO :D :D

So did someone leave the gate open or what? I don't figure that a tortoise would be too great of an escape artist!!

Yep! They forgot to latch it and I guess it pushed it open. Man I tell ya. I would love to catch that thing just to get pictures with it!
Reccon I should tye it like a hog if we find it? lol.

If this was in LA or south Mississippi and close to many of the ole boys I know down there... you might start checkin soup and gumbo pots, they'd think their ship just came in if they found him. .. lol

Good story BoarNinja..

LMAO! I believe it!

LMAO! That's good stuff...

Boar Ninja,

If it were a really fast moving Ninja Turtle, I would have sent you with my greyhound the other day. Since it is a slow moving turtle, I really can't help you. Perhaps your weiner dog is working the track too fast. Try a Bassett Hound.

Cheers
M

Or a Blue Tick :o

i beleive mandi and cris are right !

i wouldnt worry about tying him down , when you leg and  flip him on his back he aint goin nowhere lol

what you gonna use for a catch dog ? a straight ear dog aint gonna work . i suggest a tail dog  !!!! rotflmao

i beleive mandis right !

i wouldnt worry about tying him down , when you leg and  flip him on his back he aint goin nowhere lol

what you gonna use for a catch dog ? a straight ear dog aint gonna work . i suggest a tail dog  !!!! rotflmao

Ninja,
Sounds like you have a heck of a trailing dog. I hope your friends find their lost turtle, I bet there is a kid in some deep trouble at that house. Brother you do have a way with words, I shared this story with my family and everyone enjoyed it to say the least.....

not sure how fast a 100lb turtle is,but if it got to water in the creek it can haul a$$. we had a 6ft iguana that never moved faster that molasses till that one day he got out.... then he moved like lightning ....my wife called screaming it was quite funny

So thats what you where talkin' about ninja, well thats an expensive tortise, and one that size could be in the next county in a matter of an hour or two!! But with the changing of the seasons, he won't last the next cool front.

Oh and its African spur-thighed tortise ;)

Well just make sure you leave your catch dog at the house
That could just get awkward

Good effort ninja.  At least you didn't get out run. :D ;D

Turtle Ninja!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;D

What would you know about it quiter?   ;D

Funny, but not true.  I've seen my dogs keep up with a turtle before.  And remember, the turtle won the race.   ;)

Cutter(Josh) thats cold, even the ninja don't make blows that low ;P  Just for that I'm gonna go catch a hog with Hank......besides you should be happy I did cause you got a deal!!!

True that.  LOL   ;D

Good news!
I just got a call from the turtle's owner. They neighbors found it in their yard about 300 yards away alive and well!

The exact opposite direction we were all hunting for it! About the same thing that usually happens to me hog hunting I guess! Lol She must have crawled the fence line and found the one and only small gap she could have gotten through from what they tell me. So much for logic when it come to turtle. lol

I sure am glad he found it even though I was looking forward to having another go at it with my wiener dog this evening.

Dude, you creeping me out.  Stop posting that kind of stuff.  popo

I gotta say that I'm a little disappointed that you let a turtle outninja you ninja..  :D

My apologies Josh. I forget my comments do not accommodate the warped minded sometimes. I will do better in the future.  :D

No wonder you did not find the tortoise. You used the WRONG DOG everybody knows that you use Chihuahuas not Wiener Dogs! You just take the Chihuahua to the area look the dog in the eye and say "Yo quero tortuga shell." You will know when the tortoise is found because there will be a loud gong sound.

LMAO! Yeah, Good thing my handle is not TurtleNinja! I would be shamed clean off this board.  rolleyes

That is by far the best story the last few days....

Well I had thought of a good NinjaTurtle joke but I kept it to myself lol..

i'm just glad you didnt have to leg him all by yourself , that could'a got western !

Ok here it is. I could not resist.

(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss267/sppaddict44/TURTLE%20ITEMS/smileytheshinobitortoise.gif)

(http://i638.photobucket.com/albums/uu110/Rougemylips/Turtles/SlowTurtleSmiley.gif)

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e105/CommentCrazyGirl/Smiley%20Animals/Fish%20Other/thsmiley_emoticons_schildkroete.gif)

Lmao that last one is priceless

That was a funny story  :o and glad it had a good ending for the turtle owner.  You never know what you will read on here.

Great story my friend, and good way to turn the computer on for a Friday morning!!!!!  LMAO!

I wish you could have found it w/ your dog, that would have been so cool! i get that same reaction of "you gotta be kidding me" when I unload my tracking dog, a Jagdterrier. People around here are expecting to see a Lab or hound of some type, but I like tracking w/ a smaller dog. I have friends in the UBT (United Blood Trackers organization) that make big money tracking in bow hunting only states, or states that have big deer shot by bowhunters (Ohio, Illinois, Iowa) and all they use is the wire haired weiner dog. ( I can't spell the real name -Daschand or something like that!)

I wish I could have found it with her also! She would have been famous around these parts! lol
Little Macy is nothing special but she sure gets the job done! The only thing I don’t like about her size is all the time I have to spend plucking cactus thorns out of her chest after a tracking job out West. She could care less about them on the job but after the deer is found she wants them out!
I already have some pretty neat stories about her. I like hearing about the success of your friend’s dog too! The right ones can really get the job done and be pretty dang good at it.

hahaha ninja what a funny story. Thanks for sharing as always.