Crocodile Hunting and Relocating by Harpoon

These Colombian crocodiles are endangered species.
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       American crocodiles live in Cuba, Central America, and the southern tip of Florida but are particularly abundant in Lake Ticamaya, a shallow muddy lake about a mile wide filled with islets and patches of cattail. This lake is in northern Honduras, a Central American country, and crocodiles gather on its rocks, beaches, and islets in such large numbers that seventy-five were in sight at one time.

       Even a small crocodile can be dangerous if it is only wounded and can hide in the muddy water. Many men have had narrow escapes from such angered crocodiles when hunting them without harpoons. Crocodile hunting is usually done at night by shining a bright light in the animal's eyes and shooting at the eyes. But Lake Ticamaya crocodiles are so numerous that they are hunted in the daytime. As crocodiles walk on the bottom of shallow lakes, searching for food, they stir up bubbles of marsh gas from the bottom ooze. The native Carib hunters know a crocodile's size and speed from the position and spacing of the bubbles.

       When a crocodile realizes that it is being followed by a dugout, it stops walking on the bottom and swims by powerful sidewise strokes of its tail. Its legs and webbed feet, folded against its body, leave no bubble trail. The crocoldile will dash wildly in circles, figure eights, and straight lines either at the surface or in the murky water. It will lie motionless on the bottom for minutes at a time or until prodded and then start its wild thrashing again. Both the harpooner and the boatman need skill and attention to keep on the trail.

       A small crocodile can easily be towed ashore by the dugout once the harpoon is lodged securely. But if the crocodile is more than ten feet long, it will tow the hunters all around the lake instead. Then one man must get into the chest-deep water and, with the hundred-foot harpoon line, tow the animal to shore. There it can be quickly killed with least damage to its skin and skull or relocated to an area far from men.

       The large crocodiles have been caught by these methods measuring as large as eleven feet two inches long and they weighed more than half a ton. A crocodile of this size would eat peccaries, deer, turtles, fish, birds, and many smaller crocodiles (a crocodile's worst enemy besides man is probably larger crocodiles). Crocodiles snap their powerful jaws at anything that comes in range‚ food, men, the harpoon rope. Ordinarily, once they grasp their prey in their vise-like jaws, crocodiles spin around rapidly in the water until the prey drowns or is torn apart. Worsham.

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