The Times-Tribune
CORBIN — By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor
At Corbin’s Arena Saturday, Ernie Brown Jr. posed cheek to beak with a 35-pound snapping turtle.
Brown was among those exhibitors at the Kentucky Sportsmen’s Outdoor Recreation Expo this weekend.
And for what will become obvious reasons, most people just call him Turtleman.
In his hometown of Lebanon, Kentucky, Brown gets paid to remove turtles from mud holes and shallow ponds, where the unwelcome reptiles can wreak havoc on small animals and livestock.
Brown’s record is clearing 33 turtles from a single pond in a single day. And he does it with just his bare hands.
“You’ll see these bubbles and you dive on top of those bubbles. You gotta get on them bubbles. Without them bubbles, you can’t catch ‘em, you can’t see ‘em,” he said. “...You pull him out of the mud, and it’s a tug of war from there.”
Brown says he caught his first snapping turtle at age 7.
“We’d run out of food and my Uncle Phillip showed me how to do it and these bunch of bubbles come up and I said ‘I wanna do it, I wanna do it’ so he put me on this turtle’s back,” he said. “I reached down in that water, and it took me about an hour and a half to get him out. And when I did, I was hooked ever since.”
In 1988, someone gave Brown the nickname Turtleman, and it’s stuck ever since, too.
Today Brown sells a line of “Snapper-licious” T-shirts and is most distinguishable by his signature “rebel Indian yell” — an oscillating screech that can’t properly be described in words (just check out his videos online at www.turtle-man.com.)
He also leads turtle hunting expeditions from about May through September, and appears at hunting expos and other shows throughout the rest of the year.
He said he’s been bitten 28 times in 38 years — requiring multiple stitches on his hands and including one bad bite in the butt — but he’s still got all his fingers and toes.
“That just goes with turtle hunting,” he said of the bites. “Thing I hate the most is getting stung by the bees, little-bitty ol’ bees, water bugs.”
Before becoming Turtleman, Brown held a series of other odd jobs.
“I’ve built buildings like this (Arena) and been a construction worker, been a milkman, milked cows for 11 years, a farmer man, cut wood, cut logs, did wood work, made whiskey barrels and wine barrels... I’ve done it all,” he said.
After catching a turtle — usually by yanking it out of the water by its tail — he’ll either eat it or release it into another pond where it won’t be considered as pesky to the pond owner.
“I don’t kill them all, I’m not a slayer like some people are, I like taking care of them,” he said.
“We eat a few of them and the rest of them I’ll turn loose, make ‘em famous,” he added. “I write down on their shell and tag ‘em where they been... that way in the future it’s like a time machine. When I’m dead and gone, somebody else will catch ‘em and say ‘looky here, Turtleman caught this snapping turtle.’”
On Saturday at the Arena, the Turtleman showed off one of his captured snapping turtles, sold T-shirts, and gave a few dances to the accompaniment of a banjo player.
“It’s just a sport to me and a hobby, and I just like making people happy really,” he said. “That’s what the Turtleman’s all about, seeing little kids happy and laughing, and people laughing, that just makes me happy... I don’t drink or do drugs or nothing like that. I’m just high on life. Crazy, but you can’t help but like me. That’s the Turtleman.”
