Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Punt guns!

A brief history of the punt gun.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/guns/punt-gun-history/

I want one!

One of my friends was able to acquire two of them private treaty from a local seller a few years back. Remarkable items, unbelievably large heavy and unwieldy. So unlike shotguns of today.

They were popular here on Long Island at the turn of the century.The market hunters would supply New York City restaurants and hotel's with waterfowl.Big business back then.

They have a bunch of them on display at the Chesapeake Bay Museum in St. Michaels, MD. They are definitely badass. They even have a couple of the punt boats with the guns resting in their cradle on the boats. Some of these things are 10' to 15' long and I think that they're from the late 1800's and early 1900's. I can't remember how much powder and shot they pour down them, but it's gotta be a lot. Back in the day, the geese and duck population was over the top and they could kill up to 50 geese with one shot if they could paddle into the right position and get close enough without getting found out.

That's a neat museum. That one blind boat there with essentially zero freeboard, you can keep that one, I spent enough time on a submarine.

Punt gun? Sounds like Tucker Carlson getting fired.

3 ounces of powder and 1 and a half pounds of shot.

That be be a great crowd dispersal device.

If you ain’t read Michener’s “Chesapeake”, he goes into these things pretty well. The reason for the Watermen to use them, and the reasons why the G&F departments wanting them outlawed.
Great for killing large amounts of waterfowl for market. But like most things, it’s easily overdone.
You guys that know me, know I don’t read much fiction, but “Chesapeake” And “Space” are two of the best books written.
Both are great reading.
7mm

If you have a Lab or a Chesapeake, "The Watermen" chapter is a must read.

Chesapeake is definitely one of my favourite books.

Battery guns killed a lot more than punt guns and could be reloaded in the boat. The old market gunners lived a tough life

I've read Chesapeake any number of times. I love it.

Uncontrolled market hunting has done some real damage to our wildlife. The big guns devastated the ducks and geese on the east coast rivers and bays. The hunters about drove the whitetail to extinction. There were a number of states with less than 1000 deer surviving at the turn of the century.
And, they did drive the passenger pigeon to extinction. It wasn't the shooting that killed off the pigeons, though. Their numbers and reproduction rate could have withstood shooting indefinitely. What put them under was when hunters started haunting the nesting sites. The birds would fly out to feed and then return in vast numbers just before dark. The hunters would blast away. They didn't kill that many but they chased the birds from their nesting sites. They had no place to go and didn't reset any eggs. An entire generation was lost in 1 year. It only took a few years and numbers dropped beyond recovery.

For years it was believed that market hunters killed off the buffalo, too, but that's been pretty much disproven. It was disease, not bullets that killed them.