It came off the Mississippi River around Chester Illinois. It's pictured in Muderlak's book "When Ducks Were Plenty" though he has the location wrong.

Destry

Was there any major difference between the punt guns of the Mississippi River and those used on the Chesapeake Bay ?

From what I've read when they were confiscated or turned up about as many were found using flintlock iginition as were found using percussion caps .

I remember seeing a monster of a fowling gun used on the St. Lawrence in the Smithsonian collection back in the days it was in the old castle on the Mall. Large tall glass cases lined the walls and the swivel mounted fowler was at the bottom of one. The light in that room was dim but the guns held me spell bound! I miss it. David

I think a number of those old punters ended up in the bottom of the bay, when the recoil from the shot broke the skiff, and everything went down

This gentleman has posted pictures of British punt guns several times on this other board,

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/...hp?topic=784.0

I would love to shoot one just to see what it is like.

And there is a shop near by here where the owner collects big bore muzzleloading doubles, there are some 10, 8 and a couple 6's on the rack. The prices are a bit steep. I was asking about them one time. The guy behind the counter said the owner finds most of them in the Cheasapeake area, and prices them like that because hs does not care if the sell or not. If the sell at that price he goes looking for more.

When I was a good bit younger I used to loathe the state of Maryland !

Then in my early years as a young man I started going to the Eastern Shore of Maryland for a couple steam engine shows . Later I started hunting Sika deer there and whitetails in Southern Maryland .

Now I would like nothing better then to own perhaps 70 acres in southern Dorchester County that was Sika friendly .

The waterfowl never called me there but the little Sika whistle sure does !

Of course Michners novel "Chesapeake" had alot to do with me being intrested in the area .

Now I need to figure out why the punt guns , 8 gauges and 10 gauges intrest me so much :whistle:

i hope you figure out the infatation with the big bores i think i was born with this problem.. i charlie

Thanks !

And intresting both are said to be made by Westley Richards .

American punt guns were all different because they were all made locally. I've seen them that weren't much bigger than 4 gauge and were 12 feet long all the way down to my gun which is just short of 1 1/2 bore and only about 6 feet long.

I've shot geese and ducks with 8 and 4 gauge guns in England. They aren't the "Flock Killers" that everybody seems to think they are. The big bore shoulder guns were made to shoot long range, that was really their purpose.


Destry