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Transcription: [00:22:19]

{SPEAKER name="Daphne Crosby"}
Uh yes, uh, basically a .22 rifle with a short-range uh, uh, light-load cartridges there. Uh, that's real good. Back when we, uh, when we shot the coons out you, you, you, you didn't waste your ammunition because you probably got one box of cartridges every six months, you made your shots count.
[00:22:40]
And you always shot your coon, uh, in the head, or you wouldn't mess up the other part the meats and all that. If you couldn't, if you couldn't hit a coon in the head with a .22 rifle at night by flashlight they wouldn't let you shoot coon.

[00:22:53]

[[Laughter]]

[00:22:57]

{SPEAKER name="Neal Pattman"}
Well we started the discussion this morning by talking about barbecue and then we went through various kinds of uh, fish fries and making Brunswick stew and the last little bit here we've been talking about preparing wild game.
[00:23:09]
And these are all, uh, all kinds of food and such that are uh, typical to south Georgia, things that come from the land and are also a part of the, the way of life and the area there. And it's unique to that part of the country,
[00:23:20]
and we have the food booths back here where some of the ways of preparing vegetables and canning and so forth are going on back there for demonstration, and over here we have home-made smoked sausage, Mr. Fred Bentley from down in Mitchell county is making that over there.
[00:23:34]
So you want to be sure to see some of these things while you're here in this area today. Daphne, you want to..?
[00:23:37]

{SPEAKER name="Daphne Crosby"}
Uh we've mentioned, uh, some time ago we mentioned the gopher, the turtle, the preparation of the turtle. We never did eat those very much but uh, you ladies have cooked turtle, is that right?

[00:23:53]

{SPEAKER name="Peggy Miller & Martha Barrs"}
Yes, yes.

[00:23:54]

{SPEAKER name="Daphne Crosby"}
Okay, this is a very dangerous amphibious type uh.... Whatever animal, yeah animal. He had a, he had a very big head on him like your fist there and he had his mouth come to a point. It was very sharp. And did y'all say he always went there?
[00:24:16]
If you ever let a snapping turtle bite you there he wouldn't turn loose till it thundered. So you waited 'til just before it was coming up around there, maybe a thunder cloud before you went turtle hunting.
[00:24:27]
The way we caught these turtles, we would take a stick with us about the size of a broom handle. We would agitate this turtle until he snapped and when he hung onto that stick we'd drag him to the house, and then we would proceed to pull him out,
[00:24:41]
pull his neck way out and chop it off with an axe and we would go through the cleaning and therefore the cooking procedure. Now this turtle was a very tough mongrel animal, whatever we say in here.

[00:24:56]

{SPEAKER name="Neal Pattman"}
Reptile.

[00:24:57]


{SPEAKER name="Daphne Crosby"}
Reptile. Okay uh, course you couldn't eat the head, uh, you had to throw it away somewhere, and we had various dogs and had chickens at that time running around outside the yard, in the chicken yard, and what have you.
[00:25:12]
You had to be very careful, uh, after having cut the heads off of these snapping turtles, we called them locker-head turtles, they would, I know one, at one time there and I never was allowed to do it anymore, we cut a head off of one of these snapping turtles in the backyard there near the barn yard
[00:25:37]
and we threw the head out in the edge of, edge of the field in the cotton patch. Three days later, now this is serious, this really happens, three days later the old hen and biddies were out there scratching around and the hen just went wild screaming and tearing on and went out and seen what was wrong with them. This turtle head had her by the leg, and had been cut off from the turtle for three days. Seriously, they will do that.

[00:25:58]

{SPEAKER name="Martha Barrs"}
Definitely. I'd like to say too that a turtle has several different tastes of meat. In fact, they may, you may take one bite it may taste like turtle. You take another bite it may taste like fish, the next bite might taste like pork and the next one may taste like beef.

[00:26:12]

{SPEAKER name="Daphne Crosby"}
Very much so, you get all-

[00:26:15]

[[Cross talk]]

[00:26:17]

{SPEAKER name="Peggy Miller"}
That's right

[[Cross talk]]

[00:26:18]

{SPEAKER name="Martha Barrs"}
Now some of you ladies might want to know how to prepare that and I'll tell you how I do, and the other ladies may do the same way. Anyway, I do boil this meat, and then I take it out of the boiling water, which I have added a little salt, and then I take it out of there,
[00:26:35]
I flour it and browned it and then lay it over in my pressure cooker and I put, make, a brown gravy, and put over it. And it's similar to roasting gravy whenever I get through with it. And the reason I do this is sometimes you get some of the larger ones and they are a little tough so I put them in my pressure cooker for a few minutes.

[00:26:55]

{SPEAKER name="Neal Pattman"}
Well now one person I interviewed down in south Georgia about cooking turtle they said what you do is you, you take the meat and the shell and you put them in a pressure cooker and you cook it for two days and you take it out and you throw away the meat and eat the shell.

[00:27:10]

[[Laughter]]

[00:27:13]

{SPEAKER name="Peggy Miller"}
Martha too would make a hash out of that.

[00:27:15]

{SPEAKER name="Martha Barrs"}
We did.

[00:27:16]

{SPEAKER name="Peggy Miller"}
Yes.

[00:27:16]

{SPEAKER name="Martha Barrs"}
We always made like a beef stew, a hash.

[00:27:18]

{SPEAKER name="Peggy Miller"}
That's right.

[00:27:19]

{SPEAKER name="Martha Barrs"}
With the onions and..

[00:27:21]

{SPEAKER name="Peggy Miller"}
Potatoes.

[00:27:22]

{SPEAKER name="Martha Barrs"}
Potatoes and all that in it.

[00:27:23]

{SPEAKER name="Peggy Miller"}
Hot sauce, a little hot pepper and cook that and let it simmer for about an hour low, and that is some good eating.