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Well, this article is in German, but if you cannot read, look at least at the wonderful 15 pictures of the old waterfowling man!

Punt Gun

Cheers,
Gunwolf

Ausgezeichnete!
I'd hate to downrange of that! Talk about market hunting.
Karl

that picture has been used a lot- its in the likbrary of congress collection -- Rio used a doctored version in their advertising a couple years ago. i think i first saw it in Walsh's "Outlaw Gunner"

if you search on "punt gun 1923" you will find several descriptions in English


http://www.vintag.es/2013/07/punt-gun-washington-dc-1923.html

search Bing for a German to English translator and cut and paste the verbiage into that to read it

If you Google Luger Le Canardier you will find modern portable 12ga SxS version capable of firing two 12ga 89mm cartridges at the same time.

Since you don't show any inclination to own even one lousy double gun Jagermeister, Google and tire-kicking is about as close as you will come to having one, isn't it?

Wow! What is your problem Keith. Everybody on this site knows your feelings. Block his posts so you dont have to see them and get on with your life.

Well 12brd, I just have this aversion to Liberal Left fakes, internet frauds, and guys who support anti-gun politicians. Even worse are those like Jagermeister who repeatedly lied to us about guns he doesn't own, and who posts frequently incorrect information about guns or reloading when they have no actual experience with them.

I'm glad you know my feelings. If I simply block his posts, he can continue to get away with his bullshit. Sorry it bothers you. Deal with it.

He is sending you his support. You should say thank you.

I have heard a punt gun go off once in my lifetime. It was awesome. Wish you all could hear it. Oh to be alive in the 1880's, when they were many working the Chesapeake Bay. Ducks rafting in the thousands, bay full of shell fish, clams, oysters and fish. The plastic semi auto not even a thought, no pump guns, no repeaters. Just a double gun and the rare big punt guns.

I had a friend in the UK who built his own punt gun, had it proofed and used it once a year (one shot on ducks) His goose gun is an 8 bore Greener and he used it all the time. Brits show common sense once in a while.

bill

Not all big smoothbore guns are punt guns. Some are wall or rampart guns. Gil

When I was a kid on the Shannon during the forties and fifties there was still at least one punt gunner plying his trade. The results were visible in several poultry and fish dealers around Limerick all through the Winter. In the mid to late fifties I used to hunt ducks near the cottage of the very last of these characters. His punt and gun would be drawn up on the foreshore near his front door. That very gun is now in the Limerick Museum. What a monster. About 20 years ago there was an article in �Shooting Times� the U.K. magazine, about a guy who built his own multi barreled muzzle loading punt gun. Used it on the Severan estuary. Obviously a project and a pastime for nutters. C�est la vie.

How I wish that I could.

There was an article many, many years ago in the Sporting Clays magazine, as I recall, about a punt gunner who claimed to have killed over 1000 ducks with a single shot, on the bay. The gun jumped loose of it's "moorings", recoiled into him, and broke his jaw, knocking him from his punt into the bay. He was rescued by a game warden who went out two mornings later and picked up over 700 ducks that were dead and frozen in the ice. Great story. I wish so much I had saved it.

SRH

There are still a few punt gunners in the U.K. One book that gives a lot about the sport is The Complete Wilfowler by Stanley Duncan and Guy Thorn. First editions are hard come by but it has been reprinted. Lagopus.....

I'm not sure, if this is a good wish. As written in the article, Slights dog was totally deaf because of the gun's immense noise over it's head...!

Cheers,
Gunwolf

In 1987 I picked up a copy of this book in a used book store in the French Quarter, Shanghai, China. It was an interesting store, full of books from past foreigners who had lived in Shanghai during its heyday.

I remember in about the same year seeing a Chinese man with a single break action shotgun with a barrel length way over 4 feet huntng ducks on the Yongjiang river just outside Ningbo (Ningbo is a days train ride south of Shanghai). I have no idea what guage it might have been. The ducks as I recall were widgeon and teal.

Deaf dogs have been around for longer than I have. We had several due to Cutts compensators and shooting right over the dogs head. I had a Chessie who was particularly nasty if you shot over his head and did not kill anything. Hated the sound of the gun but loved retrieving. Was a duck retrieving machine who would tirelessly got after wounded birds, even wounded Geese which a lot of dogs learn to hate.

The concussion from that punt gun blast could be felt in your stomach, in your bones. The noise was even louder coming on a cold morning, on the water. It just rolled and echoed back as a fainter shadow of itself. Of course everything on the water sounds louder, when everything is dead silent. The entire island knew at once what happened. Kind of a shared secret.

That punt gun was reported "lost" later and not recovered. I don't believe it. Most likely, the story was started because the Feds were sniffing around and some explanation had to be supplied. Reports of men dragging hooks, trying to recover something on the bottoms could have been a massive misdirection. Watermen are clannish towards outsiders but will help each other out without even being asked. Guess they figure it could be them looking for something next time and the more help the better.

Deaf Dogs: Floyd's Snap was as deaf as a post her last two years having been shot over all her life. We were able to extend her hunting career for two more years through use of GPS tracking collars. She couldn't hear a whistle or hear a command but more than once we found her in the thick, 200 yards away, on point. Damn good dog and we miss her. Gil

I was lucky to watch a demo of a punt gun up at Magee marsh in the late 70s. what a thundering roar when she fired the targets where old bleach bottles floating in a small pond. Every bottle sank, and I swore the boat went back a good 4 feet. The smoke from the black powder seemed to stay low on the water well after the shot. I think I'll never forget that demo.

Rich

Not related t punt guns, but some years back I was at an antique tractor show in Missouri. They were getting ready for a short parade on the grounds. Approximately 100 yards form where my wife & I were sitting in the bleachers was a 1918 Rumbley Oil Pull 30-60. I truly wanted to watch how they started it but had turned to look at something else when it occurred. My wife & I both commented on the feel in our chest when it started, she even said it hurt her heart. this hd a two cylinder engine with as I recall a 10" bore by 12" stroke for 1885 CID. Would pull a 10 bottom plow @ about 2 1/2 MPH.
Jon I can certainly understand you "Feeling" that punt gun go off. The noise of the Rumbley was really quite mild, but you cold feel every one of its 375 RMP strokes in your chest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDs_P-Oz4GY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MwOhNlmUYI


2-piper, you start them with a flat belt. We would use a flat belt on the farm to run a couple old machines. I watched a 20-40 and a 30-60 being started about 15 years ago up in Canada. You might enjoy these two videos of them starting one and then gang plowing with five of them pulling 60 plus plows. With that Stan could knock off for lunch having plowed for the week. Of course he would need about 15 sons to help him.

This is an interesting read if you like punt gunning.
http://www.puntgunning.co.uk/home

Interesting story but when I hear of 700-1000 ducks being killed with one shot, I'm happy their use has been legislated away. Everything about them is the antithesis of what makes hunting interesting to me and how I feel about wildlife.

Canvasback that was no hunting, that was a man making a living. And what you would call a hunter would bait ducks to concentrate them then take as many a he could. Sportsman hunting as you know it was a fabrication when what had been about feeding your family became a gentlemans sport. Before it was about the bag limit. Just look at some of those old duck hunting photos with 50-100 ducks displayed in them.

Now that's what I call COMMITMENT! Great read.

Yup, Jon, well familiar with that. I have family photos of a farm wagon piled high with ducks taken in a day's shooting in southern Manitoba at the turn of the last century. When my grandfather and his brothers went shooting from the family farm, it was to fill the larder. I just don't like to romanticize their methods.

Modern slaughterhouses are damn efficient too!

What I did love about the website Thruxton linked us to was the wild eyed fanaticism of the guy building the gun and boat. HE thinks his quest is perfectly reasonable. The craziness of the fact that he built a building in which to build his gun and boat is entirely lost on him. Love people like that.

A bit off topic but I have been spending some time recently on the 400 acre estate of the Massey family of Massey-Ferguson. Main house, 9 different free standing homes for the staff, generating dam, lit & paved runway with hanger, stables etc etc etc. Built in the 1920's. Current owner is a polo fanatic. Anyway, there clearly was good money to be made in the farm machinery business in the first half of the last century.

I, too, enjoy hearing about those with unbridled enthusiasm and The Knack to do something which many would think not too terribly important, but on the other hand, what many folks do is not too terribly important, but not nearly as much fun. Gil

Jon;
Sure enjoyed those videos. What I saw in starting the 30-60 though was the man put his foot on a spoke of the fly wheel & rolled it over, didn't see any flat belt involved. I have hand cranked a model D JD with a 6 3/4" bore by 7" stroke for 501 CID. Unless your name is Hercules you'll open the compression relief valves. I feel sure the Rumley had them also & of course it had a much larger flywheel for better leverage. The Rumley had higher compression ratio than would normally burn kerosene so they had a water injection system to cool the fuel entering the cylinder. Love to hear those ole 2 cylinders with opposed crank run, especially under a good load. My greatest remembrance of them is of course the John Deere's which were built from the 1920's up to 1960.
PS; For some of you nit pickers we are talking "Double Barrels" here.

Wouldn't do for me to get my hands on a real punt gun for awhile, as much corn as I've got in the bins. Temptation might just get the best of me.

SRH

My own opinion is that punt guns went out of vogue due to Browning and other semi-auto guns. Way easier to aim an A-5 than to try to aim a boat!...Geo

About 40 years ago, I built a scull boat for duck hunting. Both the boat and my boatbuilding skills were half-fast if you know what I mean. Gil

You misspelled that, Gil I think you meant half-ast.

SRH

I spelled it right. It's all in how it's pronounced. Gil

Yeah. I've got a bad drawl.

SRH

Bad drawl or not, Stan....as a serious waterfowl hunter, you need a gun like this for your collection. But if you shoot it, I hope you have no rotator cuff or other shoulder problems, for sure. Or migraines.

2-Piper, I enjoyed watching them start and run those monsters as well. Old John Deere always have a place in my heart. We have a hit and miss engine when I was a boy. It was just about as much fun as a boy could have to watch that monster get started and run. I know the 20-40 and 30-60 could be started by standing on the flywheel under ideal conditions. Most of those old machines just aren't going to start easily and the flat belt give you a far longer window to get them going. I suspect after tow or three times trying to leg it up into starting you give it up.

Using a hand crank to start a tractor was something I had to do a lot as a kid in the Winter time. Every man in my family repeatedly told us "kids" to be very careful when doing it. It it kicked back you could quickly get your arm broken. Almost as bad is if the crank did not disengage cleanly while you were holding onto to it. It would pull you along until you pulled off the crank. Another way to break your hand.

Stan, I know you would be too tempered to hear a punt gun roar. Me too. Heck I be just as happy to shoot a flock of black birds, grackles or politicians with one. The last might be the least objectionable to others.

I made a layout boat using a hull of a flat bottom sailing boat. It drew about four inches of water when I was in it, very low profile. Push poled it out to where I shot birds on the river. Had 6" boards to deflect waves. It was death on divers, off a grass bed, on the river. It was also a near death trap if any rough water had happened while I was going out or back in. I did it for years and would never allow my own boy to do it today. Funny how you get when yo get older, wiser or just more afraid.

It took a pretty good man to crank a Farmall M with the hand crank. It had lots of compression, and the dangerous way was to push the crank down, then pull it up really fast and hard. Grandaddy told me never to do that, as it was too dangerous. Our M would crank just by pulling up on the crank, with half a turn, you might say.

Many a man was killed when they forgot to put the transmission in neutral before cranking it with the hand crank. If it was in a forward gear, and the tractor was parked under a shed, it pinned many a man against the wall and crushed him when it cranked.

SRH

And this is how the English do it ....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb0-br7hTw0
Which neatly brings the subject back to shotguns !

An infernal percussion engine... Gil

My experience with hand starting a tractor was mostly limited to the flywheel method on the John Deere's. This was quite safe. In later years I acquired a JD model L (about 10 HP) & model M (about 20 HP). Both of these had vertical engines & used a handcrank up front. By this time I had already been taught the "ONLY" way to properly crank an engine was to pull upward only, never go around as if Winding It Up. If it kicks back that's when you end up with a broken arm or wrist.

Jon, when they started that 30-60 I mentioned there was nothing belted to it, I just didn't see how they did it, probably by the flywheel method. Yes the belting method is a very good one when dealing with old engines today, have seen it done numerous times though on much smaller tractors. When these old monsters were actually being used to farm with though, that's not how they started them.

Some of the older,pre- Diesel, Caterpillars were started by standing on the track & sticking a crow bar into a hole around the rim of the exposed flywheel. That always seemed particularly dangerous to me, but apparently it worked.
When I was in my teens I used to help a neighbor saw his winter wood with what we called a Cut-Off or Pole Saw. It was belted to a Fairbanks Morse engine, though this one was throttle governed rather than hit & miss. At one point I had a small Hercules (1 3/4 HP) hit & miss engine. Never actually used it for anything, would just fire it up occasionally to hear it run. Finally sold it.

I have some of those starter cartridges which Eley made. I took one to bits and there is just a powder load but the 'powder' was in the form if short dark brown cylindrical stuff about 1mm. diameter by about 3mm. long. Lagopus.....

Lagopus;
I once saw a British Field Marshal early diesel tractor. This had a single horizontal cylinder with crosswise crankshaft. these was two methods of starting it, one was with a 12 gauge blank shell inserted into the cylinder head.
The other method was you lifted a lever which held the valve open & placed it on the rim of the flywheel which had a spiral groove cut into its periphery. A different hollow plug was now removed from the head. A piece of paper was rolled up & placed in the plug & lit. With paper burning plug was reinserted, a crank was placed in the fly wheel & turned like crazy. As the spiral groove led the lever off the flywheel, it then dropped putting it back on compression. Momentum f the flywheel would bring the piston over center "!" time, it either started or didn't. The gentleman showing it started it by this method while I was there. t fired up on his 2nd attempt. As I recall was in the 40 HP range. Very interesting tractor, not many of them in the US.

Not a punt gun, but this is how sounds 1000 grams of blackpowder:

http://www.hunting-heritage.com/blog/index.php/2016/12/31/happy-new-year-2017-big-bore-from-1811/

Have a look at the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixgT2kSoTK4&feature=youtu.be

Cheers,
Gunwolf

Don't think I have ever seen it addressed but, because the purpose of a punt gun was singlefold, that being to kill as many ducks as possible with a single shot, am I correct in assuming that they were cylinder bored .......... with no choke at all? Or, was some choke necessary in order to "reach" the rafts of ducks they were sculling up on?

SRH

Stan-
I have seen them in a couple museums in Maryland where the barrels were flattened to make a wider pattern.
Black powder loads suggested included a rag for a wad, and pebbles, nuts, and nail stubs for projectiles.

I have a scull boat here, and when I was sculling regularly, it was no difficulty getting alongside a raft. (L,S,&B BrantII) Open water ducks just aren't super wary.

There are some sculling videos on youtube.

I like it because you can "Spot and Stalk" your quarry.

I haven't re-read this thread, but also remember that this style of gunning was performed to great effect in the SPRING, just another reason it was outlawed.

Most were muzzle loaders and I don't think the breech loaders had choke either. Load was a very coarse grain black powder, oakum wadding; which was teased out hemp rope into fibres, and large shot equivalent to buck shot. 20 to 30 ducks at a shot would be considered good work. According to the British Association for Shooting & Conservation (B.A.S.C.)survey punt gunners average 7 trips a season and average 4 shots a season for an average of 16 birds. I strongly doubt the previous post mentioning 1,000 plus birds as it would mean that every pellet just about would have to find a vital spot with none missing a bird. http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/features/punt-gunning-15129 Lagopus.....

When I scull, there is a lot going on.

I usually come in from upwind, which can be quite a task without a tow craft.

Then, we approach to about 40 yards, presenting the needle-like nose of the boat to the birds. The boat is 13" tall, and about 40" wide. Battleship gray, with contrasting wave lines.

The front gunner is laying back with just the bill of his cap above the gunwall.

Here's where it gets tricky.

I need to maneuver the boat 90 degrees to the gunners side for me to be able to shoot also.

We use the birds running up into the wind, as well as our position, to NOT FLOCK SHOOT. or Not drown in the process either.

A large raft can cover you with birds as they panic.

It takes some discipline to scull for more than a mile, and then not blow the shot.

A punt gun would cut a wide swath through the raft for sure.
You'd spend the rest of an afternoon chasing cripples.

Fun sounding tactic CZ. Depending, I could image it could be tough to slow the scull boat down if the wind is pushing a bit.

edit to add, I think it would be a good thing for historical connection to have a national random draw permit system for a small hand full of punt gun hunts in areas that have good count projections.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but you want the raft up and running for mass slaughter. Not "Sitting ducks".

Old guys used a lateen sail on their sculls to get up-wind, and then stowed it, using it as a spray shield, as the stalk was/is commenced.

13" is not a lot of freeboard.

It's trophy waterfowling when applied today.
Scary, unique, and you target Bull Cans, etc. in the mid afternoon sun.
Here's a great video showing the maneuvering and the shooting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIhsi_evFK0

Substitute a punt gun for 2 12 ga's.

I wear a Stearns floatation suit, and of course always have a guy on a radio.
It's a little easier these days, because the radio man can troll for walleye's while I scull.

You gotta like "old school" to do it.

Great video, CZ. I really enjoyed that, and another one where they sculled up on a raft of blackjacks. It looks like a way of chasing ducks I would greatly enjoy. Two things I noted, and both from my experiences trying to sneak up on ducks in a low profile boat.

First, divers are not nearly as cautious as puddle ducks. I drift and jump shoot woodies and you would never, ever, in a million tries, slip up that close to a bunch of woodies on open water with no cover. If I didn't drift creeks and rivers that were twisting and turning, providing me cover to close the distance, I wouldn't kill any.

Second, that guy in the front is very trusting of the man behind him with a loaded gun. I don't know of but possibly two men I would allow to have a loaded gun behind me. It can be supremely dangerous in the excitement of a drove of ducks rising off the water.

I usually drift alone, and scull this little rig with one half of a kayak paddle which is tied by a short length of camo rope to my belt. My gun is in my left hand, muzzles up, safety off. I scull with my right hand keeping the boat in position for me to shoot at a rise from about the 8 o'clock to about 12 o'clock positions (I'm right handed), as I let the current carry me. When the ducks rise I drop the paddle in the creek and mount the gun as quickly as possible. None of this is as easy as it sounds, and the devil is in the details. Much can go wrong, but it is all very sporting and fun. If you can picture this, a left hand curve is ideal. I will go around the curve, not pointed directly downstream, but a little catty-whonkered to the right, ideally allowing me a shot or two to my 10 o'clock.

My one man rig.





But ................ punt gunning fascinates me.

SRH

FWIW< I live in an area where market gunning flourished.
I've seen the tally sheets and price lists for the sale of harvested game. I don't think it was a big money maker.

Other opportunities (at least in this region) reduced/eliminated it's necessity.

I'm sure there was always a market for fresh shot game, but I think by 1920, the shipping of barrels full of salted/iced canvasbacks, was in the rear view mirror.

When I hunt my local marsh, I remember the earlier writings of a man that shot canvasbacks and rails on the very fields I see as having been diked and drained for food production. By 1930, cooperative flood control was in full swing.

No more celery beds at the end of my road.

I enjoyed the video too, CZ. Big water diver duck, and they got a cripple to pop back up. I'm with Stan about that back gunner worry, and I'm glad you mentioned turning the boat for the shot, but boy what a tough one depending how the pile moves around and the boat handles. It did look a bit like the back gunner wasn't on his most comfortable shooting position. Trolling for Walleye's and radios, old school?, made me smile.

I'd also suspect that domesticated livestock availability to the market had a fair bit to do with a shrinking market for game as a retail food source. Thanks again for the video link.

I confess to adapting to the times.
Bobbing like a cork, not being able to see over the swells, while trying to outsmart a raft of ducks is a primordial experience.
Michigan has enough water that you can make it as ...invigorating?... as you wish.
A radio seems a small concession.

Nothing to do with punt guns or waterfowl, but just the boom of a heavy black powder charge. I have over the years seen several anvils shot. Tried it once myself with about a 98 b anvil. Was a bit conservative with my powder & only lifted it about 3 feet. I was in a "Hollow" nestled between two hills & she still echoed down the valley. At a local $th of July fireworks show we had an older gentleman who would shoot the anvil out in the middle of a footbal field every year. He would lift his around 8-10 feet. The most spectacular I ever saw it done though was at an antique tractor & engine show. They carried their anvils out into an open field away from the crowd & set her off. When that top anvil reached its peak it was a mere speck up in the air, hard to even see. Wen she came down it buried itself in the ground & would have to dug out. That was spectacular. I can definitely imagine the sound of that big punt gun going off over water.

A few years ago, a neighbor of a friend's RSA farm invited the members of the RSA to come over to his pond to "take a shot". On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, "take a shot" means to bring a punt gun and kill some ducks. Hundreds of ducks from the RSA (regulated shooting area) had taken up residence on the neighbor's pond after having problems with the quality of water on the RSA ponds. My eight gauges were all 100 miles away, at home, but we showed up with what we had, no punt guns unfortunately. We did the best we could by surrounding the pond and having a good supply of ammunition. I would have paid a big buck for a punt gun that day.

I'm with you 110%. Glad that day has been long gone. The guns are interesting and I can understand that (I love "buffalo rifles" but not the results of historic buffalo hunting).

Wait a minute there. I thought shooting at migratory birds with anything bigger than 10 gauge was illegal. Whatever one may think of the law, if indeed that is the law, it must be respected. Well at least laws aimed at conservation of.

RSA are not migratory water fowl but birds raised and released. Just like a released pheasant does not count against a wild bag limit a bird released and shot on a RSA is not considered migratory and may be shot with what you want subject to current state laws.

I'm not sure how a game warden would interpret the use of an eight gauge on RSA birds. I would assume Jon is correct, but I'm not sure.

Are RSA birds controlled by the wildlife agency? If not then they are just livestock and you should be able to dispense of them as you please.

And how is one to prove that a dead duck is not a wild dead duck to an irate game warden?

The same way you let a game warden know that you are not night shooting deer when you are riding around your, and your neighbors', land at night with night vision and thermal hog hunting equipment. You call them before you start and tell them ahead of time what you are doing.

People who intentionally break the game laws don't do that, and game wardens know that.

SRH

In MD all raised wildfowl are supposed to be distinguished from wild birds by having one rear toe removed and should also be banded so they can track where they were raised in case of disease outbreak. At least those were the rules several years ago when I had a RSA.

I had impounded about thirty acres, flooded it and was trying to grow both catfish and Crawfish as a cash crop. Then in the Fall we were going to release several hundred Mallards with the plan to harvest them and many other which were being released in the area. What I got was a lot of well fed oseprey and eagles eating my catfish. Then the ratcoons and mink feasted on the crawfish. An early freeze did not help shooting ducks until we put out ice eaters. Then that worked out well for us. The Game wardens checked every bird we shot to see if the bands were ours and not state bands which would count as "wild" birds in the bag limit. The down side was constant state supervision in the RSA meant you did not dare shoot a single bird you were not suspend. Hard thing when we had Black Ducks constantly landing in the decoys after we had our limit of them. And feeding our birds to keep them coming back such that we did not bait wild birds was a nightmare. Glad I got out of that mess. By the way we only used nontoxic shot because we would also shoot wild birds in season. I guess if I were going to use a Punt gun I'd yes Bismuth shot but there better not be any Bkack Ducks in those Mallards. . MD is a pain to hunt in regulation wise.