If you were to go out hunting a large shark like in Jaws would you take a firearm?

Elephant guns?

ElephantGun.jpg


Aarond

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In order to hunt a shark you have to get in one of those little teeney boats that make you puke before you get out of the car while looking at the ocean. As long as sharks refuse to live in Silver Lake next to my home, I refuse to give them the courtesy of a hunt.
 
In the summer of 1950, leaving Hong Kong on a passenger freighter, we rounded Formosa enroute to Japan. Offshore was a fleet of fishing boats. I'd guess maybe thirty-footers.

Extending forward at the bow was a narrow walkway of some six feet, with a railing. A man with a harpoon stood at the front.

One of the boats had a torpedo-shaped fish tied alongside of maybe twenty feet in length. No idea what it was; too big for tuna or dolphin--but the idea of a harpoon would work, if you really wanted shark meat for supper along with your shark-fin soup. :)
 
Art, that was likely a basking shark. They are harmless plankton eaters that cruise the surface making them easy prey for a harpooner. The US banned harvest of them long ago but the orientals still kill them.
 
Ah, thanks, Doyle.

That was an interesting trip. Passenger freighter; from Manila to various ports in the PI; HK and then four ports in Japan.

Saw a four-master ship under full sail, not long out of HK. The purser told me that it was the last original commercially operated four-master sailing ship in the world.

Two days out of Yokohama, the Korean War broke out. Spooky.

We saw whales, but no great white sharks. :D
 
Your post reminds me of an episode of the 1970s/early 80s Aussie TV drama "Patrol Boat", in which one of the sailors is charged with murdering a fellow sailor. IIRC was positioned on a high point of the boat with either a .303 or .308 rifle (I can't remember which) and his job was actually as shark-watch while his colleagues went for a dip in known infested waters (how times have changed!).

In the episode, he thought he saw a shark and fired. Alas, 'twas no shark.
 
Scuba divers went from black suits (seal-like) to yellow, along the California coast. Some called it "yum-yum yellow", based on a lack of change in frequency of shark attacks. However, the term may have originally arisen from the color of the WW II "Mae West" flotation vests of aviators.
 
Someone on another forum just picked up an old harpoon gun .8 bore and it would also shoot an 8 bore cartridge ! :eek:

Those who have shot some sharks say big bore is better !

HK made a special revolver that would shoot under water . Look it up on www.hkpro.com
 
A dozen or so years back at the Soldier of Fortune magazine convention in Las Vegas, a bit of excess of Liquid Enthusiasm led to testing the capability of a 1911 in the swimming pool. Worked just fine.

I don't know when the 12-gauge "bang stick" was first conceived. Forty or more years back, anyway.
 
Probably my Moison Nagunt M-1930 bold-action (whatever thats supposed to mean) sniper rifle I got at the store for $69.99 a few years back. Shoots a 762 X 55 32 cal shell at at lest 1000 miles an hour IDK maybe more.

Should kill a big whale like a shark no problem. I hate whales, seafood makes me break out all over but I heard whales were smart. Well the big nasty one in jaws sure didnt look to smart to me!






;)
 
Should kill a big whale like a shark no problem. I hate whales, seafood makes me break out all over but I heard whales were smart. Well the big nasty one in jaws sure didnt look to smart to me!
Click to expand...

Some of y'all should never step foot off dry land, really. A whale is a mammal and a shark is a fish. I've seen basking sharks bigger than the 26' boat I was in, porpoises, whales, sea turtles the size of dinner tables, mola mola's that may have weighed 600lbs, manta's and other creatures.

I've caught a lot of them on rod and reel but to this day I have never felt the need to shoot a fish, it just wouldn't be needed. Heck if you got a tail rope on it, you could just drag it backwards and drown it be quicker than shooting it and waiting for it to die.
 
Shifting emphasis: A bunch of years back, a 13-year-old boy was shark fishing from the beach at Corpus Christi. He caught a mako of some 400+ pounds. He explained that he'd seen the shark a good ways out, so he swam out and tossed the bait near the shark. Swam back to shore, and the rest is history.

I never saw a basking shark in the Gulf of Mexico, but fishing the blue water is great. Never know what will turn up. Sea turtles, yeah, and manta rays from eight to twelve feet across. Offshore drilling for oil and gas is the best thing that ever happened for offshore fishermen.
 
A Mako from the beach of that size would be rare to say the least.

I use to go out with some guys on an old 35' Trojan with twin 454 engines. That boat was so slow that we'd just stay out for 3 days or so and just fish all day and night. One night I had a live bait freelined out behind the boat on a long steel leader when it just started screaming. After two hours the fish finally came to the stern, it was 6-7ft of PO'd Mako. The only person awake was a fellow that had been drinking since we left the dock. He grabbed the gaff and billy club to try and boat the fish. I looked at him and told him he was crazy, that fish will eat me, you and the boat if you pull it on the deck. Before he could do something stupid I cut the line.
 
Since I look like Richard Dreyfus as he appeared in Jaws (I've been asked if I am him in Cracker Barrel several times) - that makes me qualified to opine.

Mythbusters (obviously a reliable source) found that the the Oxygen tank explosion was busted. Wouldn't happen reliably. Second, they found IIRC that higher power rifle rounds broke up at the water's surface and would not be useful.

I recommend staying out of the water and if a Mayor in a zoot suit says it is fine to swim - go inland several miles.
 
I live about a mile off the beach, it amazes me that people are so afraid of sharks yet don't realize they are swimming with them on vacation. You can stand on the pier and watch the sharks meander through the surfers and up the beach. I've seen people get panic'd and run for the hills seeing a porpoise fin cut the water but don't realize there was a shark a lot closer to them.

Occasionally you'll get a sandshark or dogfish nip a person but I'd venture to guess 90% of the "shark" bites are bluefish taking a nibble. Heck, I'd rather get nipped by a bluefish or small shark than popped by a stingray. And if you get stung by a jellyfish, I'm going to pee on you or someone is.
 
I've seen aerial photos of the beach outside of Corpus, with what could be called a "migration" of hundreds of sharks--in and around waders and swimmers on vacation.

SFAIK, the upper west coast of Florida has had more shark-chomps than elsewhere in the US. But, SFAIK.
 
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