I'm watching Jeremy Wade chasing bull sharks and big Alligator Gar and White Sturgeons on, "Animal Planet."

I'm wondering if anyone here has shot a really big fish, especially an Alligator Gar, which has armored plates for scales. So have Arapaima, in South America.

Assuming that it's legal to shoot a fish where you live, at least in self defense or to save a friend under attack, have you shot fish?

How much power is required to penetrate a big gar's hide and kill it? Will a .22 ricochet off of those scales?

Hey: Jeremy was just injured onscreen by a sharp scale on a gar, and said that Indians here used gar scales to make arrow points!

I read Elmer Keith's account of shooting sharks from a boat. He said that his own design of hard lead SWC.44 Magnum bullets penetrated well, but that factory ammo SP and HP bullets bounced off the fish or failed to penetrate enough or were deflected by water.

Who here has shot sharks?

All answers should include the type and model of gun and all ammo details, as well as where the bullet(s) struck the fish and detailed results. Don't forget to note barrel length.

In fact, let's include cases where a knife or machete was used in this role.

I guess barrel length depends on the size of the fish you want to shoot in it. I don't know all of the measurements for barrels but suspect they are mostly measured by the gallon.

Sorry TS

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SWCA #2306
DAV in honor of POP

Shot a big carp once. Saw it rolling in a brushpile in the crick, shot it with a Ruger Single Six 6.5"bbl, .22 Magnum, through the gills. I was about 5'9" tall; could hold the fish by the gills with my forearm horizontal, and the tail laid flat on the ground. Had a double-fisted-size egg bag in her. Gave the meat to a lady at work, she said she and her husband ate for three or four days off of it. Probably woulda been close or over the state record, but not only would it have not counted without being caught on fishing tackle, I think it was illegal to take fish by bullet--probably still is.

I remember reading about some south Texas Indians using gar scales for bird and small-game points. Acebow

Can I have your autograph?

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

When I was a kid, long ago, a friend and I used to shoot Gars, quite a few, in drainage canals and ditches the biggest Gar maybe 3'. I don't recall a bullet, .22 rifles were what we used, ever ricochetting although for sure some did miss!
Steve W

Elmer Keith used to talk about shooting sharks with his 4" M29 .44 magnum. His bullets were cast very hard and didn't expand in the water and he said he just "held a foot low and a foot forward of the fin". He said high velocity bullets expanded too much and didn't penetrate in water very well.

I had a Universal M1 carbine once. The previous owner shot fish with it when salt water fishing. I do not remember other details. I also once saw and handled a homemade 22 rifle used to shoot fish on a tuna boat. It had a door bolt for a bolt.

I thought Alligator Gar were protected. Shooting a fish in water is difficult because of the refraction of the light. When I was a kid and the trout weren't biting we used to try and shoot them with air rifles but could never hit one though.

Back in the 1960's my uncle would shoot sharks with a .303 British Enfield jungle carbine; the sharks were reeled in close to his boat, then he shot them in the head.

That was many years ago, not something I would do today.

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"Life is short, hunt hard"

When I was a kid, I tried shooting Carp with a bow, never did get one.

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Don

I have to add to my post# the Gars we shot were only a couple of inches deep if not right at the surface. Gars break the surface often gulping air. That was muddy water, you wouldn't even know they were there otherwise.
Google"Louisiana bowfishing" for lots of sites on Gars and Redfish
Steve W

the only fish i shot were with a spear gun called a 48 special mainly shot mangrove snapper,hog snapper, grouper, and sometimes a mutton snapper

Not sure about gar or sharks, but have shot a few line caught carp/channel cats in my day, with Ruger .22 pistols from shore... Made them lots easier to bring in on the beach or levee.....

Alligator Gar is not protected (not sure if it ever was) and it's a so called "sport fish" around here. Well, in TX and OK at least.

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Jorge

Aloha,

Google Bang stick or Power Head.

Pretty much many local boy divers have one.

The one made by McNair is the Best, no longer made.

I have seen a video on cable of a 7' oceanic deep water shark

hit by a McNair. Almost took the head off. McNairs are messy.

Most scuba divers I know have banged at least one

Much too aggressive shark.

Many sharks have learned Not to bother local divers.

They will get a 3 prong spear in the gills when they get too close.

Aggressive sharks are banged only as a last resort.

No, but I once hit a swimming snake with a rock. Broke it's neck. I guess; hard to know where neck ends and body begins.

When I was kid we use to shoot gar with 22s. Gars don't have
bladder to suspend in water. That's why they come to surface
for air bubble. Back then Gas company had foot bridges all
over the creeks for line inspectors. We would get on a bridge
and shoot straight down. The gars we shot were the long Nose
and short nose variety.

As I've related before, I grew up about7 miles from the ocean in SoCal and started deep sea fishing when I was 12 or so. Back then, seeing a shark was about a daily occurrence and somebody would lose a fish to a shark or seal about every 5-10 trips out. The skippers thought nothing of shooting seals (OK, sea lions) with 30-30s or an old 30-06. Sharks usually received a load of shot. The sharks were mostly blues but I remember the skipper shooting at least one small hammer head or bonnet head. The sharks rarely showed any complaint except for the moment of impact. Once wounded the other sharks would sometimes come in and eat them. Usually, once there was any blood in the water, they would just move the boat a mile or so. Guns were old pumps for the most part. Tommy Rothery (A well known skipper out of San Diego) told me that, as a rule, they shot Wahoo with a 22 auto pistol before bringing them on board. He said all the captains who sport fished Mexico did, although many used 22 rifles.

Back in the 70s, we would go shooting off a bluff, overlooking Sulphur River, below Lake Wright Patman. We noticed that gar were coming to the suface. I would guess that maybe oxygen levels were low in the river. It was late summer and the spillway gates were probably closed. We were armed with .44 magnums, loaded with big, cast SWCs and 8-9 grains of Unique. At ranges of probably 30-75 feet we would shoot them. If you missed they disappeared. If you hit, they would go belly up and sink. We made a game of it, My buddy beat me, 14 to 13. I'm not sure if we actually hit them or knocked them out from a near miss. We never saw those conditions again.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

I think Elmer Keith shot one of every creature on the planet, didn't he?

I recall a Reader's Digest article many years ago about a big city detective (New York?) who broke a case about a woman who died from a gun shot wound. Turns out she was killed by a shot from a medium bore (.30 caliber) rifle, and no one could figure out who shot her. The detective was able to figure out that a fisherman shooting at a fish (shark) from his boat missed, and the round skipped off the surface of the water and struck the poor victim. Once his theory narrowed down the search parameters, the other detectives were soon able to find the shooter, who was indeed a fisherman (on a boat) who was shooting at sharks just as the detective had theorized. I quit shooting at stuff in the water (except snakes) after reading that article.

Regards,

Dave

A buddy of mine in Kona hooked a big tiger shark that came to the boat green (not tired.)

He proceeded to empty his Glock 22 into it, tied it off, and headed in.

That beast was delicious on the grill, with a little teriyaki seasoning....equal to any swordfish, IMO.

Use to shoot sharks with an M1 Garand on the flats near Key West.

In Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea used CO2 tipped spear, (like a hypodermic needle) to kill Black tip reef sharks. You pierce them, CO2 is released, inflates them and they rise to the surface where other sharks would go into a feeding frenzy tearing them apart. We were group called "guerrilla divers".

Here is a Hammerhead I took with speargun off of Ajman, UAE. Spearguns are illegal there, but if you are friends with the local Sheik, no problem. It was his speargun. I make potato guns for these guys. They fire them mortar like over the 20 foot walls of their palace on to the poor peasants in the the open air market, and fire them from the deck of their yachts on to the poor peasants on the beach.

Attached Images

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Many years ago we used to shoot carp on the Big Horn River in northern Wyoming. They weren't real big, mostly around 5 pounds and seldom bigger than 10. We would walk along the high banks maybe 20-30 feet above the water and could shoot nearly straight down on them.

I used several guns over the years but the best one was a 45/70 Sharps using the old 500 gr. Lyman round nose infantry bullet and a case full of black powder. Penetration was much better than we got with high velocity cartridges and even better than with the hard cast revolver rounds. There wasn't much by way of entertainment up in that country in those days so we just made our fun any way we could!

I've posted these before, they're taken from my old scrapbook from the great barrier reef days ('84-'98).
Lasso Tiger sharks by chumming them up on a 1000lb black marlin carcass. Then we shot the sharks with either a .303 or a 12ga slug. Both worked fine, place the shot in line with the dorsal fin, just behind the eyes.

The two hanging here combined weight 1700lbs.

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Halfway and one more step

Ernest Hemingway tried to shoot a shark (I think) once.
Shot himself in the leg, or legs, with a .22 pistol, instead.

I also read he had a Thompson in the Bahamas and used to work
sharks over with it.
(Just saying "Thompson" to some novelists these days is likely to get
you charged with "micro-aggression.")

Things have changed, and not for the better IMO.