Labor Day Shamer
It's been a busy year and I just haven't had a whole lot of time to go fossil hunting, but I did manage to get out there on Labor Day to do some much deserved, and anticipated, searching around.
The day began with me waking up on a couch at the in-laws house with a killer headache and aching muscles/bones. Apparently I got a little carried away the night before and started wrestling with my father-in-law. I'd like to say I won the little battle, but couldn't be sure and the way I was feeling suggested otherwise. I was feeling so crappy that I even contemplated not going tooth hunting, which is really saying something.
I managed to rally, however, and met up with a buddy of mine to go hunting. We drove out to our friend's house and had some hot dogs and cookies for lunch. While we were eating, I couldn't help but notice the plethora of big megs (and some in beautiful condition) just laying around the kitchen. He explained that he had found those teeth over the last 30 years by searching around a creek at low tide. He said that all we had to do was start feeling around the bottom of the creek and "we'll find something!" Again, even with the evidence of big teeth around, I was skeptical. We waited for low tide and jumped in. My buddy and I started walking down the creek looking for teeth but couldn't find anything. He got bored and decided to go back to the dock to throw the cast net for shrimp, but I kept looking.
Finally, after about an hour of walking around and not finding anything, I started heading back towards the dock. As I started walking down the creek I started feeling around the bottom for anything interesting. At one point in the creek, I started noticing some coarse sand and some phosphate nodules. I started getting excited and began scooping up the gravel material. After a couple handfuls in I pulled up a 1" little angy. The next handful yielded a 1" mako in pretty good shape, consecutive handfuls yielded small but nice teeth in every grab. I kept moving slowly down toward the dock while fumbling along the bottom with my hands until I felt something promising on the bottom. The first meg I pulled up was broken, but it was good to know that they were there. Next, I pulled up about 2/3 of a meg with great serrations, but yet again it was just another broken meg to add to my collection. A few feet away I found another chunk of meg (at this point I was excited, but still felt like I would never find that perfect meg - every meg I find is broken, chipped, etc.).
It was at this point that my buddy came back and asked "you finding anything?" Knowing what I know now, I would have said "No.... but you should try to catch a couple more pounds of shrimp for dinner." Me being the good friend that I am, however, said "Yeah... and check this out... I just found this tooth" as I pulled up another meg that I had just found as he walked up. It was a 3 1/2" meg with a little damage but overall an pretty nice little tooth. He started feeling around about 5 feet from me and pulled up a 5" meg with some root damage. A few minutes later he said "Oh man..... this feels really promising!" and he pulls up a pristine 4" meg - 5 feet from me!
I found one last 1 1/2" mako and then called it a day. Upon getting back to the dock my buddy and I started checking out the haul. He took a look at the pieces of meg that I found and realized that they were in fact pieces of the same tooth. I got pretty excited at this point, as it increased the value of the find exponentially. The tooth measured in at 5 1/4" with great serrations, it's just a shame that the tooth is broken, but at least I found both the pieces.
All in all it was a fun and successful trip, but I sure would have enjoyed finding that pristine meg that my buddy found. Oh well... I know I'm getting close to that perfect tooth. One day!
Until next time...... happy hunting!