doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com loads used for waterfowl in 1874

With shelled corn strung out in a line along the bank near the water's edge, and aligned with the blind, several can be taken with one shot. Archibald Rutledge wrote of using that same tactic for his "help" to kill several turkeys at one shot, for the table. And it doesn't take a punt gun to do it.

If punt guns had been responsible for the duck decline there'd be a lot more surviving specimens than there are.

SRH

Punt guns were used to shoot groups of ducks on the water.

As I recall in one of Nash Buckingham's stories he mentioned Fred Kimble having killed some 200 ducks using his 6 gauge muzzle loading "Choke Bored" Single on the wing, not sitting on the water. Takes a Lot of Ducks to do that, but there were a lot of ducks in his day. He wasn't accompanied by a "Loader" with a sparte gun either, did it all by himself.

Although Kimble has been called a Market Hunter, my understanding is that he wasn't one.

The five shot repeater, loss of nesting and winter habitat, bad weather in nesting season and Spring hunting had more to do with duck population declines than a few punt guns. Think about how many there were. A couple thousand nationwide. They only work with extreme concentrations of birds, for a single daily shot.

I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay and from what I was told by old timers, local watermen, who were boys or young men when punt guns were legal, there were maybe a few dozen total working the Bay. Most had names line Big Sally or Lori. And that Bay is 100 miles long. So figure 2/3 on the Easternshore and 1/3 on the Western shore and rivers. That�s about one working gun every ten miles North to South or 100 miles of shoreline if you�ve ever been in those marshes you know his twisty they are. You are not using a punt gun on two dozen ducks rafted up, you need fifty to a hundred at the low end. More ducks fell to pump guns than punt gun by a wide margin.

Of course they were. I was referring to the use of a shoulder fired shotgun.

SRH