I saw of couple of these at an old historical village in New Jersey about 40 years ago and had never heard of them before that. Read Richard Meinhertzhagen’s Diary, he talks about using them when hunting with his brother. He also talks a lot about many other very interesting things that make his Diary a must read for conservatives.
My friends dad was an illegal market hunter for ducks during the depression. He had a browning A5 instead of a punt gun and plied his trade on the great South Bay on Long Island. He supplied south shore restaurants with ducks. ( he also captained a fishing trawler for many decades…him and his buddies were sea cowboys doing whatever needed to be done to feed his family including rum running in the 20s)
He died in ‘79 and spoke of punt guns of his youth and how they were used
Thank you for that video!
There is a punt gun diorama at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, but I have never seen one actually fired!
James Mitchner’s “Chesapeake” has a good chapter of harvesting geese using these. The hunter used hand paddles to “aim” the gun (cannon?).
My Grandfather was a commercial / sustenance hunter in I.T. on the Verdigris River. He used a punt gun. He also hunted crows for bounty locating a rookery and detonating a barrel filled with pea gravel and some dynamite.
Fyi, PUNT GUNS & “gunning skiffs” are still LEGAL for waterfowl hunting in the UK & in some Latin American nations.
(I’ve emailed back & forth, for a while now, with a Brit who built his own BREECH-LOADING Punt Gun & the gunning skiff to carry it from scratch. - He hunts ducks/geese with it & has taken many.)
Btw, the last time that I was in DC the Smithsonian’s American History Museum had a great exhibit on “The Big Guns”.
Note: I became interested in punt-gunning after reading James A Michener’s & John Moll’s book, THE WATERMEN.-
Yours, TMN78247
Actually they were fired from boats made specifically for that purpose called ... wait for it ... punts.
The name of the gun is derived from the boat.
Another swing and a miss from American Shooting Urinal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_(boat)