I remember reading an old Cracked article about overpowered hunting weapons. The Punt Gun was no. 1 on the list, and I remember this line: "So what is this thing for? Assassinating Continents? Mugging the moon? Nope. Ducks."
Memory is a powerful thing, boy. The quote is more of a paraphrase. To be specific, here's sauce: www.cracked.com/article_19038_the-7-most-stupidly-overpowered-hunting-weapons.html
Your later on j mod panzer 3 because even the germans, inventers of the 800mm (31.5 inch) rail artillary nuke gun thought 50mm was a bit too much for killing tanks at the start of ww2. (I know it was originally designed for it and they put the 37 in cuz it wasnt ready but just go with it)
Thanks for a very interesting video, I didn't know such guns existed! As regards the details of the gun name, "canardière" being a feminine word in french, the adjective "carryable" should be "portative" (with -VE at the end) and not the masculine adjective "portatif", normally... Fun fact now, in french, of course, "canard" means duck (not to be mixed with "connard" meaning "prick"...), but the slang verb "canarder" (to "duckize") means to intensively shoot a relatively large amount of ammunition at something.
i imagine it was a typo no one bothered to correct as it was being sold to english speaking Americans anyway. however, i would like to hear the opinion of a historian familiar with the subjects as french grammar at the time may have been less strict, amongst other things.
No, I'm french, and I can assure you positively that at this time french grammar was exactly the same regarding this, if not stricter. Maybe a marketing idea from an American of the time, though...
slugs are made of lead so I dont think so, even with steel slugs I believe it lacks enough pressure and velocity to penetrate any kind of vehicle armor
@@HaraldSjellose watch taofledermaus and what their shred into pieces with shotguns and lead ammo. But most importantly, most tanks in the thirties could actually be penetrated fairly easily.
To be a little nerdy (we live in the fens where punt guns were used), almost all punt guns were shot prone (rope breached or not). Punts are curious boats, they are flat bottomed & have no keel. Most original punt guns were muzzle loaders. This meant you fired one shot & returned to shore. The shooter loaded the gun, lay prone, and aimed the whole punt using small paddles like ping pong paddles. After firing the punt would skim backwards over the water absorbing the recoil because, having little draft, punts experience very little friction on the water.
Punts, (the boat) are generally punted, hence the name 😂😁 you punt it with a long pole, like 20ft long, stand on the back of the punt with the pole, push it down to the bottom and push yourself along. You can still go punting in many places in England, Oxford and Cambridge being the most famous I would think.
Punt guns were illegal by around 1920 here.. "punting" as an activity is a nice day out on the river.. take a bottle of wine and a picnic and punt around on a nice day. Good times! i.imgur.com/4pSXEak.jpg
@@executor0145 Similar, yeah, but not really the same. It basically acts like a mix of the rolling block and bolt action systems, the only other gun with a similar mechanism is the PTRD, which has a self-ejecting system, despite being a single-shot bolt action Anti-Tank rifle.
I think he'd only do a single video with it lol, to test it out....can't really fire anything but loose buckshot from these guns im afraid, not designed to fire wax projectiles and the shells are super rare and don't last as long as a plastic shell due to them being made out of paper.
Its actions like these that keep me coming back. One day i wanna build a falling block big bore or like the action of the wall gun with just a big steel block.
lol i live in quebec city (old french colony) and there is a boulevard called "la Canardière" i understand now where it sort of come from :D!!! thanks!
On a wildlife refuge today 12 ga is as large as you can use. This brought on the 3.5 inch mag when steel shot was being developed. It simply fires a larger amount of shot to compensate for the weight of the less effective steel shot. Known as road flares or roman candles they didn't become too popular. I had one friend that went to the 10ga at our duck club. James A. Michener wrote about market hunting and the punt guns in his novel Chesapeake. Great book and informative. Punt gunning was also done at night when the birds were rafted up and sleeping. Think about going into a restaurant today and having duck for dinner and spitting out the lead shot as you eat.
I cannot watch on this thompsons on background anymore. They are there long enough to deserve their own series of videos about tommy-guns. Yes this not forgotten weapon at all, but it is always nice to listen something about guns from Ian and to see all the way that the weapon had from start to an end.
I remember reading a book about Chesapeake bay and its history and the punt gun was banned and part of its history was how the last punt gun was hidden over and over from the park rangers-great piece of history
Damned be the consequences of that joke. And I know... I know... The soldiers and people weren't the problem, but instead the problem was/is the leaders that didn't/don't believe in risk.
Not only the leaders. Maybe the more than hundred differents wars we fought against maybe every european nations at a time, when they were not allied vs us. And yes, theses jokes do have consequences on french people opinions of americans peoples. Not every american peoples are "joking" and for us, it is hard to be mocked on our military past, wich is in every other places in the world very well known, especially by a country we helped getting it independance and who started it's history thousand years after ours. I've respected the average american peoples during my early life, i've alway respected us military troops (because curiously after some nato training they are not the one who bash french people, don't know why) , but since a decade... it's hard for us to tolerate french bashing. Just sayin.
James Michener described the use of punt guns in his novel "Chesapeake". Market hunting just about wiped out the Canvasback around the turn of the century. Ducks harvested in the lower Chesapeake Bay were sold in Baltimore by the barrel.
Michael Berthelsen You've just demonstrated that the same thing can be done in English as well, something tells me it can probably be done in most languages.
Spiderslay3r Yeah, but it's not a common thing to do in 'good' English. Correctly, you'd describe what it does in English. 'Ducker' isn't considered an official word in English, I just created it, and people can sort of understand from context what it means. In French, it's proper French to say 'Canardière' for 'the thing that does [something, here 'kills'] ducks' the 'proper' English equivalent. It's not the same thing being able to make up words, and having a standardized grammatical conjugation function to describe something as a verb acting on an object as the noun.
There used to be a couple of these at the Texas Ranger Musuem in Waco, Texas. The also have numerous other historic weapons including many of the weapons used by Bonnie and Clyde. The museum is well worth the price of admission.
Years ago, I was at an auction and saw a punt gun there. The owner of the estate told us that they used to float in the waterways down in the Great Swamp in NJ and hunt ducks in what they call "sneak boats" and just place the butt plate of the gun against the REAR of the boat to kill as many ducks on the water as possible. They said they used small pieces of sheet lead for ammo when it was available. When they had no lead, they used nails and screws.
holy crap I ride through the great swamp all the time it's like five minutes away! That is so weird! Of course nowadays I think i'd get in trouble for toting that thing lol...
Hi Ian, Canardiere means duck shooter, we actually have a verb in French, canarder, which is actually the equivalent of "spray" as in shooting a lot of lead kinda all over the place. Thought the francophile you are would be interested to know that. ;) Love the show, keep up the good work and do not hesitate to contact me when in need of translation or anything else, always happy to help mate.
A lot of our modern hunting laws and national parks were created to shut down commercial hunters. Teddy Roosevelt particularly hated them. Partly because of conservationism, partly because he felt that hunting should be a recreational sport reserved for wealthy gentlemen
In french we have an expression we have that means getting shot by a large amount of projectiles. The word is canarder, no doubt in origine from this type of gun
The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum on Harkers Island in North Carolina is an interesting place to visit for more information on the coastal history of this region and guns like this. The 31st Annual Decoy Festival will be held nearby on December 1st and 2nd, 2018. Some amazing artistry on display and for purchase.
Ian, there's a novel by James Mitchner called 'Cheasapeake' which covers these guns rather extensively in a semi-fictional way. Great read for history lovers and gun lovers alike.
One of my dads friends found one while diving, and donated it to a museum. Then he got a letter thanking him, and threatening lawsuit if he did it again, because of salvage laws.
I bet it's really pleasant to shoot. I have a Rossi coach gun [about 6 pounds] that I would load with 3 inch nitromags 1-13/16 oz #2 shot and I would fire both barrels at once. It's a joy not being recoil sensitive. Lead shot is becoming much harder to find above #4 though. Unless you count buckshot.
The Portable Duck Cannon, Fantastic, It begs the question if something like this could kill anything bigger like a Elephant however the thickness of its hide might afford it some protection.
The waterfowl version of fishing with dynamite. Not very sportsmanlike, but think of what a different world it was back when this gun would have been used. Nobody thought we could possibly decimate wildlife the way we have.
If the punt was anything like the ones used on the fens (where I grew up) you would not fire that from the shoulder unless you wanted a ducking as they were a might small and unstable to be standing in. Anyway the procedure was to lie prone in the bottom of the punt and paddle into position using hand paddles or just hands, when within ideal shooting distance for maximum size of bag you fired your shot which would drive the punts backwards, most of the punt guns were strapped down so that all the aiming was by pointing the whole punt .
I would love to see Ian review a Marlin Super Goose bolt action 10 gauge. Mostly because I have one, and not a lot of people have seen them. It is massive!
Hi. I am always excited for your videos. This just came to my mind, how would they proof a gun if its in an obsolete caliber? Would they just refuse to proof it?
