A Close Encounter at Dungeness
A duck hunter narrowly escapes a twelve-foot shark after wading into the bay to retrieve his prize.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
On last Sunday morning, Mr. A. Amund, a man employed in building a scow for E. H. McAlmond, went down to the bay duck hunting. After killing several ducks, he wounded one fine large mallard, which floundered around in the water near the shore. Mr. Amund waded out after the duck, and had nearly secured it when he saw a monster shark coming for him at a speed that made his hair raise. He turned and homed back toward the shore, and had hardly got safely upon it when the shark arrived too, coming with such force as to run aground. Mr. Amund secured his gun, and, though somewhat excited, managed to pump lead into him at a lively rate. He almost settled the monster, then got a long rope and when the tide came in he managed to get it ashore. It is about twelve feet long and is the largest specimen that has been seen in these waters.
“He saw a monster shark coming for him at a speed that made his hair raise.”
While shark sightings are rare in the Salish Sea, the waters around the Dungeness Spit remain a place of unexpected encounters with nature. The story highlights a time when the region's abundant wild resources were still wild enough to offer physical danger to the solitary laborer.
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