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Responding to email notices you receive.
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IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed
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Posted 08/15/2025
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Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."
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Addendum: 01/10/2026
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Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....
Hey, Rich (WebSlave), do you have one of these yet?
- Thread starter hhmoore
- Start date
JCCS
Well-known member
Those old duck guns are so damn cool, they'd actually attach them to the boat and they were muzzle loaded with basically anything you had laying around for shot. My uncle had one without the "stock" that had come off of his father's boat.
Chris
Chris
Wow! Just what kind of ducks were they after with a gun like that? Pterodactyl style? And I certainly wouldn't want to mess with any guy who could lug that thing around and throw it up to their shoulder to fire it, neither. 
JCCS
Well-known member
It's more for an "efficient" style of duck hunting. Lure the ducks in to where they're sitting around with the decoys, point, and blast. Different time period from modern duck hunters.
Chris
Chris
Pythonbreeder99
New member
And I certainly wouldn't want to mess with any guy who could lug that thing around and throw it up to their shoulder to fire it, neither.
I got a feeling by the time he finished firing he'd probably be pretty harmless
I dont think the phrase "Here Hold My Beer" was used much in the 19th Century
Punt Guns are indeed WILD!
Punt Guns are indeed WILD!
JCCS
Well-known member
They were meant for flocks of duck, and the spread encompassed such a large area that the duck would only be hit by one or two pieces of "shot". I've heard of 10-15 ducks being killed in one shot with those.
Chris
Chris
snowgyre
Well-known member
A little bit of history for folks, especially since I'm teaching wildlife ecology and management to undergraduates this fall and actually used this video in class.
The gun in the video is what is known as a "punt gun." It was named after the English punt, which is a type of low-slung boat that the gun had to be mounted on in order to be fired because it was too bulky. Some punt guns were capable of firing up to five pounds of shot at a single time.
Punt guns were used almost exclusively for market hunting during the 1700s-1800s. Market hunting was back in the day when wildlife was considered a commercial resource, and because open-market principles applied to wildlife (aka the rarer the animal, the more expensive it became, so the more it was hunted, which led to several extinctions) technology like this absolutely decimated wildlife populations.
Decreased wildlife populations led folks in Washington to pass the now somewhat infamous Lacey Act in 1900, which prohibited the trade of wildlife and wildlife parts across state lines. This effectively shut down market hunting, and thus began the era of state and federal management. Now wildlife is held in trust for the public by state governments (for nonmigratory species) and the Feds (for migratory species, such as ducks). The reason migratory species are handled by the Feds is because they're an international resource and are managed with agreements with Canada and Mexico (the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 allows this).
There ya go, history of the punt gun in a nutshell.
The gun in the video is what is known as a "punt gun." It was named after the English punt, which is a type of low-slung boat that the gun had to be mounted on in order to be fired because it was too bulky. Some punt guns were capable of firing up to five pounds of shot at a single time.
Punt guns were used almost exclusively for market hunting during the 1700s-1800s. Market hunting was back in the day when wildlife was considered a commercial resource, and because open-market principles applied to wildlife (aka the rarer the animal, the more expensive it became, so the more it was hunted, which led to several extinctions) technology like this absolutely decimated wildlife populations.
Decreased wildlife populations led folks in Washington to pass the now somewhat infamous Lacey Act in 1900, which prohibited the trade of wildlife and wildlife parts across state lines. This effectively shut down market hunting, and thus began the era of state and federal management. Now wildlife is held in trust for the public by state governments (for nonmigratory species) and the Feds (for migratory species, such as ducks). The reason migratory species are handled by the Feds is because they're an international resource and are managed with agreements with Canada and Mexico (the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 allows this).
There ya go, history of the punt gun in a nutshell.