Free Republic

Everyone likes to shoot big guns that goes boom. We’re talking a gun that you can shoulder and fire not a howitzer. Back in the days of “commercial harvesting” you can hear large guns roaring in the marshes as waterfowl drop like rain. The use of punt guns was very effective. Back in the 1800 the use of punt guns to shoot down birds for market meat at cash value, which eventually was banned as waterfowl populations were in heavy decline. Punt guns were not the average sporting shotgun. First use were over sized black powder shotguns in which well...

A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A single shot could kill over 50 waterfowl resting on the water’s surface. The hunter would maneuver the entire boat in order to aim the gun. In the United States, this practice depleted stocks of wild waterfowl and by the 1860s most states had banned the practice. “Since Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 there has been a punt gun salute every Coronation and Jubilee in Cowbit, Lincolnshire, England” - Wikipedia