Coon are digging up the nests as fast as they lay them .But according to the DNR we are the problem with over harvest .Time to delist Coon to bring back the turtles

yes turtle nest are being dug up here fast also , see lots of Seagal, and crow doing this also

Coyotes also

In the Philippines the natives did it with the sea turtle eggs in one place I lived. You could walk the beach and see where the huge nest has been pillaged then a campfire built and emperidor bottles scattered.

As they have forever

I just had our Michigan Natural Features Inventory head Herpitologist on my place last week. She was setting turtle traps for Spotted Turtles, a very rare-for-my-area turtle on the states Endangered/Thereatened list. She told me studies are proving that over wide areas of the state, 'coons are destroying nearly 99% of the turtle nests. Some species like Blanding's Turtles, over wide areas, have nearly zero reproduction rates soley because of Raccoon depredation of nests. She caught quite a few Blanding's on my place, with several young ones caught and tagged. No Spotted Turtles were captured on my place, but she did catch one about a mile south in the same marsh complex. I find their research fasinating.

Those researchers amuse me. Many are bona-fide bunny huggers that hate outdoorsman yet they want to protect things like turtles when outdoorsman have been doing it forever.

I know what you mean. As far as this lady, I never heard a peep out her that led me to believe she was an anti, and we talked at length about my life-long habit of trapping and eating turtles that I picked up from my father, who was also a lover of fried Snapping Turtle. She spoke of the 'coon problem and even said they should be controled. When I mentioned Delta Waterfowls trapping program that benifited ducks, she voiced the opinion that it would be great if they had the money to do the same to control Raccoons.