Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Duck shooting Punt

Now that Mixy has subsided in our area Rabbit is appearing on the High End restaurant menus so a Farming/shooting friend of mine has resurrected his netting skills. All you need is a couple of ferrets a Devon bank and a gert big net and away you go.

I don't join him on this one as I can't stand the anguished shrieks of the rabbits.

Love the punt gun Richard. Like you I remember seeing one whilst on a fishing trip on the broads a "few" years ago, though I have never seen one used in anger. My brother and I used to make our own black powder and breach loaders back in the day, thankfully common sense prevailed before we lost anything vital!

David good to hear you had the shared experience.
You have taken me back now to half inch copper pipe guns firing acorns or stones whatever was around - crazy but real fun - thanks for that 😄

Nothing like a haze of black powder discharge!

Ah! I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning!
When in school we had a Science Society " Explosives Session" as an after school event.
We started with making gunpowder before progressing on to more "exotic and potent" mixtures. We only blew one small hole in a ceiling tile in the lab ( someone put a too tight a lid on the reaction bowl and over drying the mix inside making it too unstable). A version of napalm was fairly spectacular, ignition being the problem but quite impressive in the carpark. See, we were sensible not setting it off in the lab!
The final project was a canon to fire 1/4" ball bearings. We took it across to the nearby seashore, wedged it between boulders forming the sea defence and main rail line, pointed across the Burry estuary towards Gower and got a range of about 1/4 mile based on spotting the splash in the millpond calm sea. No seagulls were hurt.
The Science Society was good fun. Covering various chemistry topics, physics, zoology/Botany and a bit of engineering.
Before you ask NO! We didn't create a lifesize gorgeous blonde

The Australian Aboriginal system (without dogs). They used the throwing sticks, thrown above the birds, to keep them low.



Evocation of Aboriginal men pulling down birds with throwing sticks and nets (Jones, 1996).

When I saw the thread title I thought it was some sort of cockney rhyming slang...........................🤷🏻‍♂️

But....... Google:- 'Fenland on film'.

I watched quite a few of the documentaries a while ago, they're a fantastic archive of old films about a way of life that is sadly gone.
There was one film about a chap called Ernie James (the Fen tiger) who spent his whole life in Welney, working the waterways and making a living with the seasons.
He shot birds from a punt....!
I was born in Lincolnshire in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere and there were old fellas very similar to Ernie when I was a kid.

With my rose tinted specs firmly on, I absolutely love the simplicity and the way of life........ I think I could do it......it's just convincing the wife that might be tricky.....😆

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