I remember being fascinated by stories in Outdoor Life magazine showing the old punt guns and talking about how they contributed to the extinction of the passenger pigeon.
Hey isn't that one of those newer high tech stealth gunboats ? Imagine the feeling of the enemy at the sight of a magnificent fleet of 1,000 of those !!!
@kjun13 wasn't meant for hunting in the sportsman sense, this was hunting to feed a community, the punt gun was a tool of the trade, as much a tool of water fowlers as the pole, hook, and net was to a fisherman.
disagree with you there Peri. Puntgunning is far more akin to something like woodland deer stalking. Stealth and fieldcraft are absolutely key to success. The range of a puntgun is not a great deal more than that of 12g shotgun, you simply have more shot providing a larger pattern. (say 5ft as opposed to a 1ft 'dinner plate' sized pattern for a 12g) As a side note @other comments, this film was a setup piece recorded for the Royal Armouries and the shot was fired using only powder and wadding.
Keyhaven - Col. Peter Hawker - I have his diares. He probably shot more birds than anyone, even from the windows of his coach from Keyhaven to London. Try that on the A30 these days.They used 2 punt guns, one a percussian cap the other a flintlock both side by side. The percussion killed some and the flintlock a second or later more. It was not unusual for men to freeze to death in their punts. Well worth a read.
I am forced to wonder about the use and purpose of a punt gun. I don't what sort of shot spread it had nor its effective range. But considering the bore and length. I would suspect a well aimed shot could take out all but an entire flock of most bird species. And any single bird hit center would likely be effectively vaporized.
Aren't you meant to have it primed when you push off? Surely if you sat up like that in the middle of the estuary to put the cap on you'd scare everything in a mile radians?
With battery chicken farms the way they are, and how turkeys are raised on some big farms, a short, wild and free life is better. The way they butcher chickens, isn't better than a quick blast from that punt gun.
Ew, a muzzle-loading scattergun? When I think of cool British guns the Sten comes immediately to mind, not a monstrously impractical shotgun. I'm an American so I have a couple of impractical shotguns anyways, I just want the Sten more... or an SMLE MkIII, though a "Jungle Carbine" would do in a pinch. Or anything from Accuracy International. Et cetera.
Okay, this thing is just fucking ridiculous. This isn't hunting, it's attempted genocide. This is like hunting flies with a bazooka. (which sounds awesome :D)
It's a 1-guage shotgun, meaning it fires roughly 1 pound of lead birdshot. With a pattern that can be over 6ft/about 2m across, they were used to shoot entire groups of birds on the water.
I would think that any edible meat on a bird that was hit by that thing would be far from edible afterwards. And how would they retrieve it? Wouldn't it be waterlogged and, as you said yourself, a puree? P.S. the commenter who I replied to initially did say that it was specifically used for getting feathers for ladies' hats.
It's wildfowl, it floats on water like when they swim. The range was about 80 yards, and the pattern was massive. It wasn't for just one bird but for dozens. Big shots were rare.
Haha well they clearly knew how to hunt properly back then. Were the feet of the wildfowl the only thing left? I bet if these people were around today they would take .50 caliber explosive rounds to hunt rabbits.
its just regular bird shot. the idea behind a puntgun was to shoot a flock of birds at once instead of one at a time. its like using a riding lawn mower instead of a weed eater to mow your lawn.
yep ducks are real dangerous. need a really big gun. espeacialy when they poop on the porch.of corse now days there really dangerouse to jets, and if it wernt for leagle duck hunters there wouldnt be near as many of them .ducks not jets.
