Was there ever anything larger ?
 

Did Parker ever chamber a breech loading shotgun in ANYTHING larger then an 8 gauge ?

Not that anyone I know is aware of.

As far as I know, the largest Parker was a 7 frame 40 1/2" barrel 8 gauge.

Has anyone seen barrels longer?----------Daryl Middlebrook

did it come with wheels?

I have, and have shot, my 27 pound P. Mullin 4 bore with 48" barrels.

No wheels, but back in the day, both the Parker and the P. Mullin were supplied with two "Porters" as a standard accessory. One carried the gun and one carried the ammunition.-----Back in the day, the "standard" load for a 4 bore was 4 ounces of shot. Many market hunters loaded more.

Actually, I found the recoil not to be to bad. 27 pounds of gun did its job. The difficulty for me is just holding the gun up to fire it.

i seen the lengh of parker barrels discussed before..seems like somebody had barrels longer than 40 1/2 inch..i may be mistaken...you experts help us out here... charlie

daryl thats much of a gun you have there..it certainly would just be a chore to lift to the fireing position.. any way you could post a picture of this gun...i have some shells for the 4 gauge maybe the gun will come along someday... charlie

That 4 sounds intresting to say the least !

At some point I wouldn't mind get my hands on "an original" Punt gun . Been wanting one of those ever since I read James Michners novel Cheasapeake 10 or 15 years ago. Be kinda neat to get and old bronze barreled english made punt gun if such a thing actually existed !

I've seen quite a few punt guns and they've all either had what appeared to be wrought steel barrels on them of one kind or another. Never seen or heard of one that had bronze but I've certainly not see them all. Mine has a forged steel barrel, it's about 6 feet long.

DLH

Should you ever be inclined I'd love to see a picture of yours !

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

If I ever get enough scheckels to get a double 8 it's a pretty darned good bet I'll kill a deer with it . But so far in my 52 years I've never fired a shot at a duck or goose .