I saw this on a tv program. It was described as an “English hunt gun,” that is carefully regulated in the US. It had an 8’ foot barrel and a 2" bore. It used a pound of gunpowder. I guess it was a shotgut, assuming it was real, but the alleged purpose of it was for bringing down a whole flock of ducks at one time.
Haven’t found much on it. Anyone???
There’s a “punt gun” on exhibit at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA, and that’s what the label said it was for. It was rested on a rowboat so the “hunter” could get close enough to the flock resting on the water to have some hope of hitting it.
Link: http://users.wpi.edu/~jforgeng/CollectionIQP/artifact.pl?anum=499
Video of Punt gun in action
That would be my bet.
You lot actually shoot ducks on the water?
I would have thought that was not on the up & up, sportingwise.
Grandfather had a punt gun that used rarely on those occasions that the lagoon behind the homestead was flooded over summer. It wouldn’t have been fired in 50 years. Apparently was a terrible thing to keep in working order andif it worked you brought down so many ducks you got sick of eating them.
Aha! Bad ears. Punt gun, not hunt gun.
A punt gun is not for sport, it is a means for commercial harvest of waterfowl. Of course if you have one you must be very careful that nobody else on the lake has one.
This.
When you think about it, when you fire off a shot from any regular gun all the birds around are going to take off and scarper. The punt gun was developed to kill as many birds as possible with one shot.
Here’s a dioramaof a Punt gun hunter in action at the Royal Armoury in Leeds. The had a pair of the guns on display by themselves, too. HUGE.
