Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1896 — SPORT FOR DARING MEN. [ARTICLE]

SPORT FOR DARING MEN.

Shark Hunting Off Cuba as Described by a Native. If there is any one who has tired of the tame sport of shooting deer, moose, panthers, wildcats, brown and grizzly bears, and of catching little trout, black bass, and salmon, and has a longing for sport with a swing to it, let him go to Cuba. Besides the chances of being captured, or shot by Spaniards as a spy, he will find there a sport which for real danger is unequalled, even by the hilling of a roaring wounded tiger, the charge of a herd of angered elephants, and beside which even wounded bull moose are no longer charming. According to n Cuban now in Brooklyn, shark fishing is a sport to be dreamed about. The Cuban shark fishermen take chunks of beef and throw them overboard out beyond the reefs, where the dorsal fins of Sharks are to be seen entting the water with a vicious swish, like the plunge of a modern rifle bullet into a stream. Instantly there is a rush, fit to make ordinarily brave men blanch, for the eagerness of the sharks to rend the bloody meat is something to think twice about. Now is the time of the sportsman to do as the Cuban fisherman does. Stripping off his light clothes, grasping a long keen knife, he leaps among the fish, and thrusts the knife to the nearest shark’s heart A quick wrench opens a wound that spurts blood, and then the sport, fairly begins. It Is death to a man who then loses Ids nerve. There Is hope for the buck-feverish man who is facing a wounded tiger, but none for the man among the sharks. The Cuban expert watches bis ■chances, and as the sharks, attracted by the blood, come to tear their mate to pieces, he -KtrTkes them one by one, and soon the water is filled with sharks flapping their last tn the water red with Moofl. When a slrai'k comes for him, be glides to one side., and as the shark rushes past: on Its side he strikes It ■dead. Bags of twenty-live or thirty mniFCtitlng sharks may be ‘captured thus in a few ndnuftes. The teeth are the trophies. To get them the head Is boiled in a big iron soap caldron. A tooth of a healthy Shark is ivory White, with a hard, porcelain finish, and could be worn as a trophy. There are-several rows of these teeth. One row of them cut out would look like a saw, the teeth being obtusely triangular, each exposed edge of a single tooth being cut Into minute teeth. The sharks ’lflto a man’s leg off, and do not tear it Off, ns is generally supposed. Indians make long strings out of these teeth for beads, that the squaws may think much of the hunters, and one would suppose that a wtririg of them would not be unacceptable to a paleface’s sweetheart. The sharks may be taken in a variety of other ways. Itlfles, spears, harpoons, lassoes (snares), or fishhooks a foot long. And they are taken often in nets, but not because the netter wants to taki them, as tpey tear and tangle the nets for rods.