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I had not heard. My best wishes for you going forward.
JR

Stan way back in the sixties I went over to Smith Island to visit a distant cousin. After a few days the locals knew who I was and one asked me if I ever heard a big marsh gun holler, his words. Thinking he meant a big ten I responded by telling him I had shot my grandfathers ten once and found it awesome. Awesome is such a great word when you are growing up. He laughed and called it a pop gun. His gun was much bigger he said. Awesome I thought.

My cousin let him know that we'd go with him if he would let us. So we were going to go that night. Near dark the Feds came onto the island so no joy. Two nights later he took me and I watched him harvest more ducks with his big gun than I killed most months or years.

His big gun was a punt gun with about a three inch bore. He loaded it with a small bag of black powder, wadding and a paper bag of Lawrence lead shot. I'd guess six ounces or more. He said It would misfire once in a while but it went off perfectly that night. An hour later we had picked up all the ducks and were loaded again. Second shot killed another bunch of ducks but not as many.

We spent half the morning dropping off a pair of ducks here and a single there so that it seemed like I had met every old couple and every widow on the island. None were sold or went to waste for that matter. I was told that his punt gun was lost overboard a few years later but I highly doubt that. Most likely he hid it well so the Feds could not find it and started the rumor himself. He's been dead 40 years and my cousin nearly as long. But what I would give to hear a big gun in the marsh again.

Great experience K Jon, thanks for sharing that memory. I'd love to have seen one of those guns roar in the night on a big marsh!...Geo

Thanks for relating that, KY Jon. Seeing a punt gun in action is on my bucket list, has been for many years. I have been trying to run down an issue of Sporting Clays magazine that I foolishly let get away about 16-18 years ago, maybe longer. A friend gave it to me to read a story in it, about an old punt gunner on the eastern shore, and what happened to him the night the big punt gun jumped out of it's mooring under recoil, broke his jaw and knocked him out of his little boat into the icy water. Wonderful story. I'd give a "purty" to get ahold of that issue again. He claimed he had killed 1000 ducks with that one shot, and the game warden and a kid picked up over 700 of them two days later when the ice thawed on the bay.

SRH

When the Chesapeake bay freezes over some of the spring fed creeks will still have open areas. I've seen open areas about half acre in size that would have more a thousand ducks in them easily. Looked like they put the last five hundred in with a shoe horn. I could easily see a big marsh gun killing or wounding most of them. A amateur claps his hands and tries to shoot into the mass as it takes off. No way you could kill many with the closer birds absorbing most of the shot. A pro would whistle which would cause th ducks to become alert, not alarmed, so they just put their heads up.

Don't ask how I know because even though he is long dead I guard some people secrets. And people over on Smith Island are still very funny about strangers and keeping their secrets. Awesome and terrible now that I am older.

When I started duck hunting baiting was legal if it was 500 yards from your spot. The Feds stopped that. The old timers would still bait until the season started but do so a mile away. They would put a cedar pole with the top still green over the bait. Then when the season came they would put that pole among their decoys. Ducks would come to the pole which had marked the bait. The Feds would come and check the hunters for bait but never find any.

Worked well until the Feds figured it out. Then they would just watch them put out the bait before season, then they would either write them up or get real nasty and have corn in their little scoop they used to dredge the decoys for the bait later when hunting.