Hunting the Famous

Hunting Sayings and Quotes

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The agency counts six species as overfished, meaning their numbers are depleted: Some sharks are endangered, and many more are in trouble. Maintaining stable stocks is crucial for delicate marine ecosystems, which need large predators to keep the food chain in balance. T he popularity of shark fishing as a pastime can be traced back to a man and a movie.

"Your Safari Starts Here"

The man was the late Frank Mundus. Recreational shark hunting exploded after Jaws. Like Mundus, Quartiano got his start on Montauk, hooking a thresher shark when he was around 8 years old. In , when he was 10, he moved to South Florida to join his father after his parents divorced. Because of regulations, he now mostly catches and releases his quarry, mailing information about its physical characteristics to NOAA Fisheries after tagging the fish with a plastic dart, a signal to other anglers that it has been previously caught.

Some of his customers are happy with that same outcome; for others, the kill is the thrill, as it remains for Quartiano. O bsessing over sharks as toothy commodities ignores their great variety, as well as the important role they play in marine ecosystems. There are about species, ranging in size from cigar to school bus.

Pull out all the sharks, and midsize fish species will flourish, overfeeding on smaller swimmers that act as reef cleaners. Moreover, sharks typically feast on weaker or sicker members of schools, in effect culling out disease and encouraging a more robust ecosystem. After Jaws , commercial shark fishing increased too, as demand grew for shark meat and fins to be used for fillets and shark fin soup. Finning is illegal now, but oil from shark livers still ends up in everyday products such as cosmetics and sunscreen.

By the late s, surveys began to show the toll on the bigger species. The agency subsequently tweaked the rules for commercial outfits, which had been catching sharks by the hundreds using longlines dropped deep into the ocean. In , it began requiring commercial operations in the Atlantic Ocean to obtain a specific limited permit.

The agency issued only , and no new ones have been granted since; as of , the number had dropped to due to permit holders leaving the industry. In addition, NOAA Fisheries has also implemented rules on how many sharks can be kept on each commercial trip. For example, NOAA revised the limit earlier this year from 25 sharks per vessel per trip to just three. He notes the agency nowadays has a better sense of which species are sustainably managed compared to the ones that are overfished.

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The regulations, he says, have worked, over time reducing the number of sharks killed. Still, the largest of them remain in trouble due to the volume of recreational angling. S port fishing boomed throughout the s, when prevailing sentiment dictated the only good shark was a dead one. Charter-boat businesses and kill tournaments enjoyed increasing success.

Miami media especially loved chronicling the feats of Mark the Shark. Quartiano became a local celebrity. The negative effects were overlooked, but in , a study estimated that recreational catches of large coastal sharks were greater than commercial catches in 15 of the 21 years that encompassed through In tournaments and on charter trips, the biggest sharks commanded the most attention.

But culling the big ones harms breeding populations.

Most sharks only reach sexual maturity late in life; even then, they produce few offspring, a problem for such a slow-growing species. Regulators have increasingly turned their attention to the impact of recreational fishing. Contest operators also keep records of anglers and the fish they catch, and there are rules about which species can be kept.

And starting this year, the agency requires circle hooks — rounded hooks that curve backward — for commercial and recreational use alike. Recreational anglers must also watch a video online that teaches them to identify the 21 species of sharks that are illegal to keep.

It was an old gun, created sometime in the late s and handed down through my family until it landed in my hands back in the s.

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I might give it to my nephew if he ever moves out of California. From first through fifth grade, my dad would bring me up to his deer stand just before dawn. My dad would fill two big thermoses, one with coffee for him and one with hot cocoa for me. I would lay down on and sleep under a mound of Army surplus wool blankets.

The stand was six feet by six feet and had a small wood stove and an open window that looked over the field. It was built out of old barn wood and tarpaper walls and the roof was tin with canvas overlay; the canvas was thick and covered with old moss. All of this was to keep it quiet in the rain; I figured out the noise-canceling quality built into this old stand when I was in the SEAL teams. He was a pretty smart cookie and taught me some good stuff.

The U.S. protects alpha predators, but its most famous shark hunter isn't out of business yet

Now, most deer stands were up 20 or 30 feet in trees built from two-by-sixes and plywood, and if you were lucky, it had sides to keep out the cold. These stands were often homemade out of whatever a farmer could hobble together. This brings up a good note to the FNGs: The danger of mishandling firearms is an important lesson learned the hard way, like never pee on an electric fence — but that is another story for another time. In the s, companies started making some really cool metal prebuilt stands.

These new-fangled stands would use a fulcrum point and straps so you could actually use them to climb up a tree, no ladders necessary.

It also has floor to ceiling ports in the corners. Price aside, this is probably the best stand I have ever seen; the shooting ports, positions and construction are just about perfect. Heck, the only thing that would make this thing better is adding a Lazy Boy on swivels so you can swing around to any of the degree view shooting positions.

Kind of like the mounted gun turrets on top of our Humvees, but redneck-style. More importantly, y ou only need one tree, unlike homemade stands where you need a cluster. I also appreciate the safety arm that also acts as a gun rest: But suck it up buttercup:

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