Expert: Kent Staubus - 5/20/2009

Question
1. What kind of bullet is used to fire through punt guns? Solid ball, buckshot, slug? Due to extremely huge caliber the punt guns have and they can kill 50-100 waterfowls in one single shot.
2. Are punt guns muzzle-loaded?

Answer
I've been on vacation and have just now returned.  I did not have email access.  Anyway, a punt gun was a large caliber single shot smooth bore gun used by commercial hunters to shoot ducks & other waterfowl, a flock of them at a time.  They were like small black powder canons with a bore of 4 gauge.  A gauge is how many balls the size of the bore that can be made from a pound of lead. Thus, a 4 gauge gun shoots a ball that is 1/4 of a pound.  It would have a bore of about 2.5 inches (roughly.)  These guns were outlawed early in the 1900's.  The current largest bore you can legally use is 10 gauge.  The guns used small lead shot, not buckshot (which is large) but probably something more like #5 birdshot.  I forget how many #5 pellets there are per ounce, I would guess about 300. (That you can look up.)  Thus, with a 4 oz charge of shot, a punt gun would spray something like 1200+ lead pellets.  It could have been more than 2,000 even.  A punt gun was a single shot muzzle loader.  They were outlawed when daily limits were put on how many ducks you could shoot.  The typical limit today is about 5 or 6 ducks a day.


Regards,
Kent in SD