Dead snapping turtles in medium pond

The first time we had otters in our pond they ate the snapping turtles before the red-ear turtles or fish

They could have committed suicide...

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metro ATL subdivision pond.

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Some kid with a pellet gun

Where are you finding them dead? By where the people are? If so as said I'd say most likely human's killed them like the BB gun idea above. If floating in the pond somewhere random, hard to say but could be the above also.

I'd think most snapping turtles would be pretty tough to kill with a pellet rifle? Unless it was a damn good one?

And the people who own the property on that side have cameras so if there were kids shooting them, it wouldn't have been in that area or they'd have seen them.

Thanks. We have so many sliders, they could use a good culling in my opinion. Can't throw a worm out for a bluegill without a slider getting it. But no dead sliders found yet, only the snappers so far.

We used to have a pet slider and a musk turtle in an aquarium for years, decades. The slider escaped while in its outdoor basking container and never saw it again.

The musk turtle eventually got really lethargic and sickly, we lived in Athens so my wife took it to UGA and it had something like a turtle flu, and it ended up perking back up after an injection. Once it got healthy, we released it into a pond.