Forums.NitroExpress.com

See above posted photo: Cowbit, (pronounced "cob-bit"), is between Crowland, where I lived and shot fen-land pheasants and the odd wild duck, and Spalding, that I often visited. There's a good gunshop in Spalding called Elderkins that used to have a few 10 and 8 bores and sometimes the odd 4 bore. I didn't know then about the punt-gun-salute, but apparently they still do it at Cowbit. You'll see it on You Tube.

I did get to see the duck decoy near Crowland, a 4 centuries old pond and decoyman's thatched roof house with duck nets/traps running off each pond "pipe". The Borough Fen Decoy is now run by the Wildfowl Trust and is not open to the public except perhaps on special request. There's a punt or two on display in village museums around the nearby coast past the Wash.

There's a punt-gun and it's gun-punt, (the boat), on display at Kasteel Doorwerth hunting museum near Arnhem in Holland. The square-backed punts in the French photos (above) remind me of one I saw in a hunting book for sale in France. It was taken at Bordeaux harbour and looked just like a scull boat of the type the Americans use. With all the French that settled at Louisiana, I think they must have introduced it there. I stayed beside the same harbour where they still use tethered call-ducks to call in the wild birds. They must have been bred to be talkative as they kept me up all night!

There's a good book called The Outlaw Gunner by Harry M. Walsh that describes their use long after such guns were made illegal in the USA. The James A. Mitchener fiction book Chesapeake borrows from the earlier work and both are good reads. In it, one guy buried his punt gun, when not in use, in a covered vertical hole in his front yard. The idea was, "most visible, least seen". Anyway the game warden came around and asked the family where Dad was. Since he wasn't in, the warden said he was just going to sit right down on that cover in the front yard and wait for him to return. The kids, who knew exactly what was beneath him, were nearly sick!

A few punts are still in use in the UK where they are still legal. But the cost of bismuth shot in such large quantities is tough. One guy, a gamekeeper here in NZ for a while, used to punt at home with his Dad using a punt gun they improvised. Another Englishman living here now got to make a punt gun from scratch with his class studying engineering in the UK. They then all got to go out in it one at a time with their teacher when it was finished. Dave said it was the coldest he's ever been! He's still a duck shooter, but he's not to keen to ever go punt-gunning again. I'll happily take his place!

Post Extras