ROBIN MYERSCOUGH GEOFF TIBBENHAMGUN PUNTS
Dixon Kemp to Keith Shackleton. Yachting books from
the turn of the century often carried sections on building
punts and stalking ducks among the reed beds in the early
morning mists of quiet backwaters. These vicarious
pleasures inspired a generation. Nevertheless, the caveat
remained that those taking it up purely for the shooting
aspect “will very soon find himself sadly disappointed.”
But yachtsmen, it seems, were simply happy messing about
in punts. Not so hunters; the modern sport of wildfowling
with shotguns was hatched by misfiring punt-gunners.
Punt gunning was never easy and, these days, success
is rare. A bag of 15 to 20 birds represents a good day
out, although Armageddon remains as an outside
chance. In demonstration mode, a punt gun with a full
charge can reduce a pattern of 125 clay pigeons to
smithereens. It is a weapon that evokes the Heath
Robinson pipe gun of Saddam Hussein’s Project
Babylon. It says something that punt gunning is banned
in Texas. Indeed, it has been banned in various states
since the 1860s and was made illegal nationwide in the
USA in 1918. It seems that organised commercial
operations were threatening whole ecosystems and,
perhaps more critically, encroached on sporting
opportunities.
In Victorian Britain, while game was protected, fish
and fowl were free for the common people to harvest.
Breydon Water in the Norfolk Broads may be the spiritual
home of punt gunning. The much-publicised exploits of
the Breydon market gunners soon spread among like-
minded gentlemen who spread the word among their
peers. But in many other areas, conflict between sport
and commerce was inevitable. In 1830 Lt Col Peter
Hawker lamented that “Poole harbour, as well as almost
every other part of the English coast, has been ruined for
all the poor hand-gunners, by the introduction of
punt-guns”. Over time, however, the exigencies of
coexistence on a small island snuffed out industrial
wildfowling to leave the field open for our more daring
amateur sportsmen.
Punt gunnery is not for the faint-hearted. In the
heyday of the sport, smashed teeth, severed limbs and
even loss of life were not infrequent, with the last
recorded fatality as recent as 1970. The late Archie
Blackett defied the odds for 20 years, bagging more than
2,500 water fowl. But one morning his luck ran out;
Archie’s breech-loader, converted from a Vickers artillery
gun, machined down and bored out, lies lost in the
shifting sands of the Solway Firth.Above l-r: Prawn,
a 19ft 9in punt
from 1918,
restored;
Gamecock (1937)
leads the fleet in
a modern-day
race