Central VA River Hunting

[SailingAlongToo]

This past Sunday my wife, my buddy, his son and I went hunting / collecting on the Pamunkey River here in Central VA for about 6 hours. Air temp was a bit chilly when we put the boat in but we timed it perfectly to be on the last 2 hours of the outgoing tide. That would give us about 5-6 hours of good collecting time during the end of the waning, slack and beginning of the waxing tide. This was one of those days where it actually worked out perfectly for the tide, water levels and the weather as the sun was out and it warmed up quickly.

Since the tide was still going out we went upstream first to an area that is accessible in higher water and usually produces a decent volume and variety of teeth and some bones. Although many of the teeth here are smaller in size, my wife's biggest tooth ever came from this location about 18 months ago, so it does produce nice sized teeth including pre-megs. We collected there for about 2 hours and did well in volume and did pretty good in quality too. My buddy found about 4/5 of a cetacean ear bone here along with some teeth. His son found some teeth (plus the pristine 1 1/8" hemi that was my first find of the day and gave to him) and a complete bird bone about 3 1/2" long. Not a bad start for the day and the sun was shining bright.

As the tide was getting slack we motored down river about 6-7 miles to an area that has a decent beach (mucky in some spots but walkable) for several hundred yards. We collected along this beach the rest of the day with good results. My wife found a decent porpoise / dolphin tooth with root, I of course was the only one to find a Meg, albeit small, it's still a Meg, and my buddy's son found a nice Mako tooth which was right at 2" long and 1 1/4" wide at the root.

All in all, I think the 4 of us came away with well over 100 teeth of various shark species, 4 or 5 shark vertebrae, several cetacean vertebrae, the ear bone, the bird bone and various other items.

Here are a few photos. I will upload more after we finish cleaning.

[Vieira]

Sounds like a very nice hunting trip

Best regards

[sseth]

Beautiful Mako tooth.

[ynot]

Sounds like a good day with some nice finds!!

Thanks for sharing the day with Us,

Tony

[Troodon]

Nice haul and great specimens

[Fossildude19]

You did well.

Thanks for posting your finds.

Regards,

[Tomwith3girls]

Sounds like a lot of fun. Pretty Mako!

[jcbshark]

Nice finds, I like that lower Mako

[mrieder79]

Surface megs are always magical. Great job and thanks for sharing!