Forest and Stream 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1913. 
VOL. LXXX.—No. 26 
127 Franklin St., New York 
Strange Hunting in the Sea 
T he wanderer, especially the newspaper 
correspondent, comes across strange men 
and strange sports, the more strange the 
further he travels from the beaten tracks of the 
automobile and the Pullman. Chinese fishing 
with cormorants, Samoans killing sharks with 
knives made from the teeth of other sharks, 
Totonaca Indians slaying jaguars with fire- 
hardened wooden spears, and Chiapanecos plant¬ 
ing the same sort of sticks in hidden pits to 
impale deer driven upon them by beaters—all 
these are curious in their way, but I believe the 
most peculiar hunting trip I ever went on was 
after octopi, along the rock-lined coasts of 
Manzanillo harbor, on the west coast of Mexico. 
Some might consider this, or these, for there 
were two of them, in the light of fishing ex¬ 
cursions. but, in reality, one was a trapping trip 
and the other real hunting. The first was with 
a Japanese, who said he was a fisherman, and 
that his name was I. Saki. What his first name 
is I never knew, for he asked that I call him 
“plain Saki, as American men call each other, 
by their last names.” 
Apparently he was a simple fisherman, in 
the employ of the Japanese fishing company 
which controls the vastly valuable concession of 
the fishing and fresh-water food preparation at 
Manzanillo, but his knowledge of the sea was 
uncanny, and I have an opinion of. what his 
position would be in the Japanese navy, had 
his emperor occasion to call on him. But that 
is another story. On the March morning in 
question, accompanied by a Japanese oarsman, 
we started in an ordinary, American-made row¬ 
boat, from the little landing at the Santiago 
Hacienda on the Bahia de San Juan, a tributary 
estuary to the main harbor of Manzanillo. 
Saki, who, it appears had taken a liking to 
me when I gave him a tow one hot afternoon 
behind a motorboat in the main harbor, had 
provided lunch, and besides this, the boat con¬ 
tained only a waterglass, m.erely a bamboo tube 
six inches in diameter and bottomed with glass; 
a grappling hook and rope, and a queer, three- 
bladed, handled affair, which looked something 
like a steel potato masher about three feet long. 
He had informed me that we were going after 
octopi, first in Spanish, and then, finding that 
I also spoke a little English, he spoke as fluenly 
in that language as in Spanish. 
I have found that it is best to ask an Ori¬ 
ental few question's, so we talked about the 
weather, the all-year-round weather of Man- 
By HARRY H. DUNN 
Photograph by the Author. 
zanillo, how octopi arc prepared for the mar¬ 
ket—everything in short, but the hunting in 
hand. Now, the coast of the Bay of San Juan 
as well as Manzanillo Bay proper, is largely 
submerged coral rock, ranging from a few 
inches under the blue water to fifty feet, when 
the floor becomes sandy, or of broken coral 
fragments. Along this edge we rowed slowly, 
pausing the first time above a tangled mass of 
dark rock. Saki peered over the edge of the 
boat, through the water glass, into the shallow 
sea, shook his head and the boatman rowed 
along. 
Again we stopped, the bam'ooo tube was put 
over the side, and again we moved on. I was 
a bit mystified, but, as I had a comfortable seat 
in the stern, and umbrella over my head, a 
bottle (of cold tea) at my feet, I kept on saying 
nothing. We went through the process once 
more, and then I noticed, on the shore opposite 
each place where we stopped, three sticks, each 
about three or four feet long, set up in a rude 
tripod, evidently marking the ■ places for the 
halts. But why the stops? 
The answer came at the fourth “station” of 
sticks. Saki. staring through his glass, made 
a motion to his rower. The latter handed him 
the grappling hook and the rope. Over the 
side it.went, and both men laid hold on the 
rope. Up it came, hand over hand, after a 
moment’s feeling about on the bottom, and with 
it three arms, each about two feet long, lashing 
wildly in the air, clutching now and again the 
rope, then throwing themselves about as if seek¬ 
ing what they might grasp. 
At the lower end of these arms appeared a 
baked clay jar, with a rope handle, into which 
the grappling hook had caught. Within the jar, 
a parrot-like beak, backed by two enormous 
glassy, unpupiled eyes—the body of the cuttle¬ 
fish to which the arms belonged. Gripping the 
outside of the jar were four more arms, but two 
OCTOPUS, 
Showing underside of body and the “suckers” or tentacles with which the devilfish seizes its prey. 
