Posted on 04/28/2009 12:28:47 PM PDT by Notoriously Conservative
A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations. Punt guns were usually custom-designed and so varied widely, but could have bore diameters exceeding 2 inches and fire over a pound (0.5 kilos) of shot at a time. A single shot could kill over 50 waterfowl resting on the water's surface. They were too big to hold and the recoil so large that they were mounted directly on the punts used for hunting, hence their name. Hunters would maneuver their punts quietly into line and range of the flock using poles or oars to avoid startling them. Generally the gun was fixed to the punt; thus the hunter would maneuver the entire boat in order to aim the gun. The guns were significantly powerful, and the punts themselves significantly small, that firing the gun often propelled the punt backwards several inches or more. To improve efficiency, hunters could work in fleets of up to around ten punts.
In the United States, this practice depleted stocks of wild waterfowl and by the 1860s most states had banned the practice. The Lacey Act of 1900 banned the transport of wild game across state lines, and the practice of market hunting was outlawed by a series of federal laws in 1918. In the United Kingdom, a 1995 survey showed fewer than 50 active punt guns still in use. UK law limits punt guns to a bore diameter of 1.75 inches (1 1/8 pounder).
(Excerpt) Read more at notoriouslyconservative.com ...
What a wuss. Can’t even shoulder that pea shooter.
It’s merely a cannon shaped like a gun
“Give the ducks a whiff of the grape.”
Uhhhh...around these parts, we call that a cannon. Sheesh!
Is there any meat left to eat on the birds after this?
Talk about home defense!
Or the MOAG (mother of air guns). 
I want one!
Weapon of choice for gang bangers....according to DiFi.
Is that little air cannon yours? If so, how did you make it?
Yes ... they would have been charged with No.4 or No.6 shot, and were designed to spread the charge over a very large pattern. Pattern density wouldn't have been much greater than a normal shotgun. Pattern size, OTOH, was huge. Thus they were able, per the article, to kill ~50 birds with one shot.
http://www.xinventions.com/main/spud/home.htm
Give me a high volume air supply like a Sullair trailer mounted air compressor used for construction sites, a yard of schedule 80 PVC pipe and fittings, some electric pilot valve quick discharge valves and various common materials from welding rods to ashtrays and I could build a home defense system that would penetrate ballistic material, car doors or create a last stop defensive sytem.
Or a mobile unit with a remote operated tube slaved to a video camera. Land of the Free at work when all the guns are being collected.
I never knew what a punt gun was. I knew that they were illegal, because the hunting regulations that came out every year said they were. I knew that I didn’t have one of whatever they were, so I was good to go....
A few years back, I stopped over in London for a couple of days on the way home from a business trip. Visited the Tower of Londaon and the Tower Museum. They have a punt gun there, mounted on a punt. The real deal, not a mock-up.
If anyone here has the opportunity to visit the Tower Museum, especially the weapons throughout history rooms, I recommend it highly. You will nor be disappointed.....
My grandfather hunted with one of these in the Verdigris River bottoms before the war in Indian Territory. They also hunted crows with barrels of pea gravel and dynamite suspended in roost trees. Crows were a nickel a head bounty back then.
He remembered passenger pidgeons blackening the sky.
Subsistence hunting was not meant for large populations. Fossil energy has allowed populations to blossom in the last century.
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