Ep. 895: Project Punt Gun | 12 in '26

Spencer Neuharth gives behind-the-scenes details and answers viewer questions about his “12 in '26” punt gun experiment with crew members Seth and Max. They're also joined byJoel Kolander ofRock Island Auction, who will be auctioning off the punt gun with 100% of proceeds going back to Land Access Initiative.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Mediater podcast. I'm Spencer new Art, joined
today by Seth Morris and Max Barta. Today's episode is
a little different. We are going to be talking all
about punt guns. If you're not aware, we bought one
a few years ago, then we shot it. We filmed
the whole process, and you can go watch that right
now on the meat Eater YouTube channel. This is our

(00:20):
fifth installment in the twelve and twenty six series that
we're doing this year. That's twelve long form films that
we're dropping in twenty twenty six. This film is probably
the most different of everything that you'll see on our channel.
The other episodes have more traditional outdoor adventures where Yanni
does an archie bear hunt, Clay chases mountain lions with hounds.

(00:43):
The only thing that we hunt in the punt gun
episode is clay, pigeons and watermelons, so very different. And
some balloons and some balloons and some paper targets and
some hats. Yeah, we'll talk about in a little bit.
So this is a story, you know, about conservation and
a very badass gun. Today we are going to be
answering your questions about the punt gun. Although Steve and

(01:05):
I host the film. Max and Seth were there every
time we shot the thing, so they got real familiar
with it. And then Seth and Max even got to
shoot it. We had six shells with us. Steve and
I shot five of them. We had a sixth one.
We said what should we do with this thing? Should
we just throw it in the river? And then Max

(01:25):
and Seth they said no, no, no, let us shoot it.
So they did. And so we have a piece of
the film here that didn't make the final cut. This
this is behind the behind Max and Seth shooting the
punt gun.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, this is really bonded our friendship.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
I'll tee it up with this real quick. Sorry. We
only had one shell left, but two people who wanted
to shoot it. So they were going to pull the
rope together. That's how you fire the punt gun. You
pulled this rope that's like, I don't know, two feet long.
And so they they were very kind and they pulled
the rope together. But I noticed something in the film

(02:04):
play it for us film. Seth brings back the hammer
he got that on it on Three's what I what

(02:27):
I wanted to bring up is Seth has his hand
on the rope, and then Max trumps him and reaches
in front of hand to get to grip further up
the rope, and then Seth says, hold on, and then
he reaches in front of Max's hand again. It was
just like a little that's right, they were doing a
totem pole of hands. Whoever got to be closer uh

(02:50):
to to the trigger? Who do you think actually shot it?
Which one you pulled the rope?

Speaker 2 (02:55):
I felt like I had more than it.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
It felt pretty equal, even think so I was more
on your hand.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, almost, hold.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Phil, Can we see it again? Could you like really
slow it down. Let's get a good look at who
maybe and the film you help us decide? Here which
one of these two shot the punt guna Hamm's back.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Going to grab Max grabs in front of him.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yep, cute, And now.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
I had the majority. I had that little anger point.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Okay, now we're gonna shoot it. Here we go. I
think both It looks pretty slacky.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, that looks it looks like Seth. It looks like Seth.
Jacket starts the motion first.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Okay there, but then I felt like Max had a
more aggressive hole. We'll call it fifty to fifty. I'm
I'm going to.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Say I've shot a punk gun, whether Seth Polden or not.
Oh yeah, I was thinking about this. I think I
don't think there's ever been a punt gun in Montana
before this. Would you say, that's a pretty fair point.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
I mean, this is not punk gun country. These things
were used way east the Chesapeake Bay in Europe. That's
a good point, Max, If I had to guess if
one came through here, No, yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
We're gonna talk to Rock Island Auction later in the show.
Those are the guys who sold us the gun that
are then going to resell it. All that money is
going to go back to the med Eater Land Access initiative.
But leading up to us buying the punt gun, they
had mentioned that sellers will come to them and say,
I have a punk gun that I want you guys
to sell. But in reality it's not a punk gun.

(04:34):
It's what they would call to be a pigeon gun
or a fort gun. Now ours like hits the nail
on the head for the definition of a punk gun.
I bet there they were obviously fort guns here at
some point, maybe some pigeon guns, even though I don't
think that was in Montana's culture either. But as far
as the only punt gun, that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Max.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
We're gonna call that the first punk gun, I would.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
Say, so unless there's some like private collectors, you know.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, probably not though.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah. So on today's episode, we're going to answer your
questions and then we have that interview with Rock Island Auction.
So those guys are the expert on old firearms that
we're gonna chat with them. That's gonna be a lot
of fun. Here's the first question. This is from Nick Sikowski.
He says, feels like ages ago when first discussed. Exactly

(05:23):
when was the first conversation about it? Nick is referring
to the punt gun. He's right, this has been a
long time coming for Nick. I tried to get us
the cleanest timeline of the punt gun leading up to
us buying it. The first time it was discussed it
was in December of twenty twenty one on an episode
of med Eater Trivia. Trivia was still in its infancy.

(05:43):
It was so young, in fact, that the episode that
this happened on it was just called Game on Suckers.
That episode didn't even have a number after it. For context,
the episode that came out this week is CCXXII. That's
what is that, Max and Roman.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Don't ask me, take.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
No clue.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Two hundred and twenty two. I was gonna say, that's
two hundred and twenty two in real numerals. So the
episode we talked about this on didn't even have a
real ma numeral. It was literally the first episode that
said game on Suckers Now, Like, wasn't our technically our
first episode of meat Eatter trivia because there was a
period where we would do trivia and it was like
a kangaroo episode inside of a regular episode. This was

(06:25):
the first time we pulled that away and made its
own show. Anyway, just some background for you. What was
the question do you remember Phil's going to play it
for us again? This is that on that episode in
twenty twenty one clip Phil.

Speaker 5 (06:38):
Yeah, so Spencer for this question, Spencer, I actually showed
the room a picture of the punk guy that asked
what it was called. So here's the audio of the rest.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Oh the correct answer is the punt gun, oh Man.
The average punt gun ranged from a two gauge to
a four gauge and could fire over a pound of
pellets at once. Wow. They are very rare and hard
to come by, though. I was able to find a
few in online auctions, ranging anywhere from four thousand dollars
to ten thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
You can buy one.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
You could buy one. Are you going to buy one? No?
I'm not seeing you like pony up five thousand bucks? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:12):
On my how serious you were?

Speaker 6 (07:13):
You know?

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, because we could shoot it. I would love to
have that.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
That's the gents gun.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
That's the beginning of it. You know, Max knows this,
Seth knows this. If you want to get something done immediate,
or you just need to get Steve excited. Yeah, so
as you can hear, Steve was excited about it. And
it didn't take long until like those sort of maybe
should we could we to Steve was like, yes, let's
let's get a punt gun. So here's the rest of

(07:40):
that timeline again. That was December twenty twenty one. January
twenty twenty two, I found some punt guns online. They
range in price from four thousand dollars to eight thousand dollars.
I talked to one seller. He said that him and
his buddy shot theirs. They stood back to back, and
what they did was they had one guy who stood
in front and he let the barrel rest on his shoulder,

(08:03):
and then the other guy stood behind him and he
sort of pressed the butt of the punt gun against
his shoulder, just like if you were shooting a regular shotgun.
When they pulled the trigger, that guy said that his
buddy had his collar bone broken.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Oh, just like an episode of Jackass.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
It's exactly like that.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
That sounds like a terrible idea.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, bad idea. We didn't buy any of those punt guns.
I think some of them floated closer to the category
of pigeon gun, which we'll learn about later. Just didn't
love any of those, so we didn't buy him. But again,
this is the timeline of how it unfolded. February of
twenty twenty two. I found a five footer at an
antique mal in Wisconsin. I called them. They wanted fifty

(08:44):
five hundred dollars for it. The seller was unsure if
it would shoot, didn't want to change the price, and
that was an important thing to us. We wanted to
buy a punt gun that we thinked would work. And
so because we couldn't figure out if that one would
actually fire. We walked to way there. February twenty twenty two,
someone reaches out to me with a hot tip that

(09:05):
Rock Island Auction has two of them coming up for
sale that summer. Again Rock Island, they're the biggest auction
house when it comes to historic guns. Here's some examples
of the guns that they have sold in the past.
Han Solo's DL forty four heavy Blaster that sold for
one million dollars. They sold two Remington Revolvers that were

(09:25):
owned by Ulysses S. Grant. Those sold for five million dollars.
And then they sold a Winchester eighteen eighty six with
the serial number one, so literally the first ever Winchester
eighteen eighty six that sold for one point two million dollars.
Just to give you an idea of like the kind
of guns that they traffic. That's who had two of
these punt guns for sale March of twenty twenty two.

(09:48):
Here are some emails with Steve. Here was one where
he said, quote, as my dad always said, you can't
lose your ass on punt guns. I don't know if
Steve's dad actually said that, yeah, but I like, you know,
be like, as Abraham Lincoln said, you can't trust everything
you read on the internet. Like I feel like that's
what Steve was doing. But I'm just like trying to

(10:08):
give you more context of how excited Steve was about this.
The next day he says, I can't wait to mount
it to a boat and set out some soda bottles
like ducks. Here's an email from a few weeks later,
he says, we gotta buy the damned punt gun. We're
poised and ready. And then a week after that he
says this will change our lives, and then he put
in parentheses for the better. So Steve is now excited.

(10:33):
And I ended up getting approved a budget here at
meat Eater of twenty thousand dollars to buy a punt gun.
And as we talked about on that old podcast from December,
Steve was interested when it was like four to eight
thousand dollars. So some strong negotiating by me to get
us up to twenty thousand dollars. Okay, May of twenty
twenty two, this is the day of the auction again,
twenty thousand dollars budget, not a penny more. Rock Island

(10:57):
has two punt guns up for auction. First punt gun
this was the one. If I just got to pick,
like which one we were gonna have, I would want
the second one. That's the one we ended up getting.
The first punk gun. It was a smaller model, less
prestigious brand. Rock Island estimated that it would sell for
between twelve thousand dollars and eighteen thousand dollars. I bid

(11:17):
up to our ceiling of twenty thousand dollars. Two bidders
blow right past me. The gun sells for twenty five thousand,
seven thousand, more than the high end estimate.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
I wonder what those people are doing with it, you know,
like why do they want it so bad?

Speaker 1 (11:31):
I don't know. I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna ask Rock
Island Auction later, like who is the buyer? What does
this person look like? What are they gonna do?

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Because we have a reason, yeah, yeah, we goal.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, and they're probably not gonna shoot theirs, you know,
probably not. Yeah. So that was punk Gun number one,
seven thousand dollars over its high end estimate. Second punk
gun this is the one that we want. It's much bigger,
it's older, it's from a more prestigious brand that's Holland.
In Holland Rock Island estimated that one would sell were
between sixteen thousand and twenty two thousand, five hundred. So

(12:05):
if it follows the pattern is the last punk gun,
that means this one's gonna sell for thirty thousand. It's
basically me and one other bidder, and I assume that
this other person is the odd man out from the
last punt gun auction. They went back to back these
two auctions. Bidding goes fast. I quickly get to the
ceiling of twenty thousand dollars and then it just ends.
The other guy doesn't go anymore, which I was kind

(12:27):
of shocked at at the time. I didn't think it
was going to work out, but it was a big
relief because that was the gun that we want.

Speaker 5 (12:34):
This guy went past twenty grand for the first punt gun.

Speaker 6 (12:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
I don't know that it was him who was competing.
I just assumed that he was the odd man out
who didn't win the smaller one for sure, and if
he would have went to twenty thousand dollars and one penny,
I'd have been out, and he didn't do it.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Come on no, you wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
You would have pitched in of.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Like your one hundred bit right.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
You know what I think I could have I could
have explained it away to later. I'd be like, Steve,
it was gonna get away.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
What do you want me to do?

Speaker 6 (13:03):
You know?

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Exactly? So that that is the origin, That is how
we got the punt gun back in May of twenty
twenty two. All right, next question here, this is from
outdoors Biggie. He says, what are the punt gun's stats?
All right, it was made by Holland and Holland in
eighteen eighty five, so that makes it one hundred and
forty years old. One hundred and forty one years old,

(13:24):
I think, uh, six years younger than the light bulb,
a decade older than the radio, and it's actually older
than the state of Montana. Just to give you some
context of like the technology that we're working with. This
would be the equivalent of someone taking a gun out
of Max's safe that he just bought today and then
shooting it in the year twenty one sixty six. You

(13:48):
can't even fathom, like, well, what's the world going to
look like in twenty one sixty six? I have no idea.
But that'd be like if someone took Max's brand new
gun that he got today and then shooting it down.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I was gonna say it hopefully like my kid's going
to be doing that, But I was like, oh no,
I got to add a couple more gades. Maybe kids kids.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Get you know, great kids, they'll be talking about how
you know, great great great grandpa Maxwell shot a punt
gun back in.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
The day old wow.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Hopefully they'll still be able to look up the video
may it's right, yeah, who knows more stats. It's a
two gauge shotgun. If you listen to trivia, you know this.
But when something is listed as a gauge, if you
have a twelve gage shotgun, that means you take twelve
balls that fit in twelve lead balls that fit in
the end of a twelve gauge barrel, and that equals

(14:38):
a pound. So that means that if you had two
lead balls that fit in the end of our barrel
of our punt gun, that would make one pound. That
that is like as big as a punk gun gets
seven and a half feet long. Sixty pounds. It's an
awkward sixty pounds though, Like this is always being carried
by a couple people around here. Nine and a quarter

(14:58):
inch shell. It's a original walnut stock, and then it
has a gray paint that Rock Island told this is
the original gray paint and it has about ninety five
percent of that left on it. So those are the
punt gun stats, all right, Chase Howard says, if you
can answer what's the overall cost per shot? We had
six shells, Max and Seth take a guess as to

(15:20):
each what each one of those shells costs?

Speaker 6 (15:23):
Was in it?

Speaker 5 (15:23):
Right?

Speaker 1 (15:24):
It was filled with It was a little over half
a pound of number six bismuth, and the shells were
made of brass that I think was nickel plated. So
that's that's the what we're working with. And yet it
was a nine inch shell half a pound of number
six bismuth. What do you think that cost us forty
five bucks a pop for way way more? Take another guess.

(15:50):
I'll give you some more context. The punt gun came
with one singular spench shell that seemed to be original
to the gun. Like that shell that came with the
gun was probably fired out of that gun. It was
made for that gun. You know, one hundred and forty
years ago. That's we had that thing to work off of.
We had to pay a machinist an engineer to do

(16:13):
some cad drawings for us to figure out what the
best materials are ship this thing across the country, which
they didn't ship. They actually drove it over here personally
because it was like basically an explosive. At that point.
We joked about this. I don't think it was ever
in the film, but like when you're handling one of these,
you're like, do not drop that?

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, yeah for sure.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Okay, so take another.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Guess you said one. Wow, after all that, imagine if
it was TSS in there.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Imagine like, what does a TSSHLL cost right now? Twenty bucks?

Speaker 2 (16:44):
It's very around that fifteen buck yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Like two twenty.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
One thousand dollars. It was one thousand and thirty two
dollars shell. Oh god, okay, so that's roughly here.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Here's waste that much money on a shot.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
I don't think I didn't know it until Chase Howard
asked this question. I I was like, I don't know,
probably like, you know, two hundred bucks a shell. And
I went and looked up our invoice. It was four
hundred This is per shell, four hundred and seventy dollars
in materials, four hundred eighty dollars in fabrication and assembly,
and then a five hundred dollars flat fee for doing
the cad work to make it all possible. So divided

(17:25):
by six, that's another eighty dollars per shell, for a
grand total of over one thousand dollars a shell.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
We're way off.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, but surely they didn't cost that much back then,
and when people were actually using punk.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
I mean, I can't fathom.

Speaker 7 (17:37):
That they did, just if you adjust for although my
bet it was expensive because a lot of a lot
of punk guns back then were loaded through the barrel
right like you drop down a scoopful of gunpowder and
then like a probably a cardboard wad, and then a
handful of pellets.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Ours is breech loading, so it's loaded more like a
traditional shotgun. I bet those things were expensive to make
back then as well.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
I wonder if you get, if you get a flock
of ducks on the water, how many rounds of like
twelve gage bismuth would it take to kill the amount
of ducks one shot of the punt gun killed?

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Good we'll never know.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, twenty thousand dollars punt gun, and then you know
it only takes twenty shells to equal the price of that.
Now with our auction, when we auction this thing off
in August, you are getting one of the spent shells.
Actually you're getting two. You're getting the OG one that
we based our modern ones off of, and then you're
getting one of those modern spent shells. That way, if

(18:40):
you want to shoot this thing, you can go have
your thousand dollars shells made as well. All right, eighty
six Spencer says, did you figure out approximately how big
the spread would be or it's lethal distance? Our first
shot was to determine exactly that. I think we wound up.
It was like an eight foot by eight foot spread

(19:01):
at thirty yards. If you were gonna shoot a twelve
gauge at thirty yards, max would like a thirty inch spread.
Is that what you'd expect? Yeah, I mean, I know
there's a lot of factors and.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, different chokes and stuff, but yeah, I mean you're probably,
if not maybe like a forty.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Inch okay, thirty or forty inch spread at thirty yards
or the twelve gauge, So we were like three or.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Four that's probably a pretty open choke probably, Yeah, So like.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Four x that was our spread. As you'll see in
the film. We do some different tests to be like
if we were shooting ducks on water, which which we
replicate with balloons, we put balloons from like twenty yards
out to eighty yards. We pop the balloons out at
eighty yards lethal distance. I bet you could kill a
duck with a BB in the right place at one

(19:45):
hundred yards, don't you think. Yeah, like if one of
those found the brain of a mallard, Yeah, that's a
dead mallard at one hundred yards.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Yeah, it would have been interesting to.

Speaker 4 (19:55):
Maybe do like a water melon at one hundred yards,
just to see like how, yeah, the penetrate of those
pellets or you know something that could you can measure
the penetration or ballistics jail or something, yeah at one
hundred Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
I think if if a punk gunner used this, they
would like kill some ducks dead dead at twenty yards,
Like those things would be obliterated, probably not even gonna
make it to market, and then they would have some that,
you know, just get one BB in the right place
beyond one hundred yards, but I bet they were wounding.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah. Yeah, And I was thinking about this earlier. I
was like, yeah, so after like one or two shots
of the punk gun, is like, what are they gonna
do with all the cripples? You know, they have to
like round those up too.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Or maybe they had some shotguns in the boat.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
I would have to imagine.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, I imagine at the edge of that spread, it's
just like you're probably wounding maybe as many as you're killing.
At that point. There's just a lot of ducks that
aren't probably flying away from that scenario, but aren't dead either.
Silas Hayes says, do you think your punt gun was used?
If so, and where We're gonna talk about this with

(21:03):
Rock Island a little later. But the peak punt gun
era was roughly from eighteen eighty to nineteen ten. That's
in both North America and Europe. Our gun is from
eighteen eighty five, so it comes around like right at
the beginning of when punt gunning was really hot. Now
our gun shows some signs of use, like there's a
little chipping in the paint, it's missing a screw, it

(21:26):
has signs of where it places where it would be
attached to something. A lot of punt guns at that
time like wound up just in the bottom of lakes,
in the bottom of rivers and the bottom of estuaries.
Ours survived one hundred and forty years, so I don't
think it was used a ton, but I bet it
shot into some flocks of birds. And someone along the

(21:48):
way thought that the engraving was potentially a custom job
on our punt gun. It got a handle, it's got yeah,
so it's got a walnut stock that's like, I don't know,
twelve inches long or so, that's got some engraving. And
then there's some engraving around where the barrel meets the
stock as well, and someone pointed that out and there
like that that looks like it would be custom. You know,

(22:11):
that was a special order to Holland.

Speaker 6 (22:13):
In Holland.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
The other thing I learned is when you look at
the punt gun history, you'll find there were obviously like
these were used by blue collar hunters that were making
a living off of selling ducks and geese. You'll find
instances though, where they're sort of like punt gun tourists
who are, you know, a well off newspaper owner in London.

(22:35):
In London, like a well off banker in England who
just wants to experience the thrill of doing a punt
gun hunt without any evidence at all. I think that's
who bought this punt. I think it's one of those
folks who like they weren't doing this for a living,
but they enjoyed, you know, hunting and the outdoors, and
they wanted to go try this sporting thing, so they

(22:55):
like you know, commissioned Holland and Holland to make them
a beautiful punk gun with some customer engravings, and then
I bet they went and used it a few things.
But I don't think this was used by like a
market hunter who was living in a shack and this
was like his bread living. Yeah, for making it.

Speaker 4 (23:09):
I wonder you said Rock Island said that that paint
on there was original.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
They said it was original, which I think when most
people look at that, they're like, no, that came around later.
Rock Island said it was rigil and they estimated ninety
five percent of it was left.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
I wonder, see when I looked at it and I
just it looks like someone put it on there. It does,
and I wonder if that is the case that this
punk gun was used, like maybe Chesapeake Bay salt water.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Sure if they put that paint on there the ceiling
from getting rusty.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
You're right, yeah, it's it's almost. Yeah, it's kind of
shocking to hear that that's original paint because you're like, no,
somebody came around in like nineteen sixty and thought they
were like sprucing it up. And it's like, I don't
have any way to confirm this, but it looks like
a thick amount of paint too, like multiple coats of
gray paint went on that barrel.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
So to answer the question from Silas about was it used,
I think it was used, uh, but not used a
ton r next question was from Mike Stefan, How did
you know it wasn't going to explode and were you
worried about it exploding?

Speaker 6 (24:16):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, Seth and Max were there every time we shot
it that first time. Were you guys worried?

Speaker 3 (24:22):
I was? I was behind a vehicle.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
I was not.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
I was film and Steven Spencer their reaction, so I wasn't.
My back was to the gun and everything is just
like fingers crossed. This doesn't explode.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
I was worried.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
I wasn't worried like the the barrel was going to
explode or anything. I was worried about the integrity of
the breach. Yeah, like stuff blown out the back.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, a little bit of this shows up in the cut.
But the first time we went to shoot the gun,
it was like a pretty cold day, and I guess
we hadn't fully confirmed that the shells fit inside of
the barrel at that point. So we get there and
we realize that it's just like very very close, but

(25:05):
it's not making it in the barrel. So Steve starts,
you know, taking gunk out of the barrel, which is
why we also thought it was used, because it had
some build up as though it had been shot in
the past. And I'm sandpapering the shell and We're just
like trying to get rid of some millimeters to make
this thing work and eventually work. But that's what you
were concerned about.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Seth Yep.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, Yeah, we're just like doing a lot of manipulating
in the field trying to make it come to Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
After that first shot, we like slowly trusted the gun
more and more. You know, we like our rope trunk
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
You know, we got by shell number six. When Seth
and Max shoot, they're like touching the gun full trust.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, I wasn't so much concerned about an explosion. But
I guess what I was mildly concerned about was the
recoil of it. You have to let a gun like
produce recoil, You have to let it buck a little bit.
If you don't, if you just clamp everything down as
tight as possible, you're just like stressing out the mechanics
of the gun. That's that's not good for it. And

(26:07):
so we're like, I feel like walking a tightrope trying
to let the gun recoil, but not recoil too much
where it like becomes a danger to us. And so
that felt like a balancing act. What we ended up
doing was we I found out later it's called a trunnion.
A trunnion is what that connecting point is called.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
We had a fabricator, uh Travis Fabrication here in Bozeman
who made us Spartan, Travis bart Barton Fabrication. He built
us a mount that we get attached to a trailer
and then we had some sandbags on that trailer. Uh
and and my concern with the recoil wasn't warranted. It
all worked out well. The gun was able to rise

(26:51):
when it shot. We had to go back and cite
it in each time, so worried about it exploding a
little bit. And and as you see in the film,
like the first time that we shoot it, Steve attaches
a rope to it. That was his dad's tree stand rope.
Like his dad would be in a tree stand he
needs to bring his bow up. That was the rope
we used. And as you guys point out, and then I.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Think we tied another rope onto that. Oh yeah, yeah,
get us further back.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Uh huh. It didn't feel like the original rope was
going to be the difference between us, like losing an
arm or not. Okay, next question was from Billy the
Kid Rock that's a great name. He says, do you
think the punt gun would be good for hunting anything
besides ducks?

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (27:36):
What snow geese?

Speaker 6 (27:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (27:40):
I mean just another form of waterfall. But I don't
know anything else.

Speaker 4 (27:45):
What's those like starlings or sparrows that are invasive? They're
always all bunched up. I bet you could you could and.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
They do those big waves.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, you can hurt on those things.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah, you can do a hurting on the flock of
winter turkey.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
I thought that was the absolute perfect thing. Like any
short of an elephant, You could kill anything with a
punt gun. But the ideal scenario is using it what
they use it for, which is like, you know, sneaking
into a flock of ducks on the water and doing
one shot that brings down a hundred of them at
a time. Some historians think that that is where the

(28:21):
phrase get your ducks in a row comes from. It's
from punt gunners waiting until they felt like they were
at the perfect spot in the flock to pull the trigger.
But I was thinking about what else it would be
good for turkeys in like the fall or the winter.
I can recall it a deer hunt I was in
in the Black Hills in late November, where all of
a sudden, I found myself in the middle of a

(28:41):
flock of turkeys that must have been like one hundred
to two hundred turkeys, and they were just all around me,
and they were moving past me, and they were like
mildly aware of my presence, but obviously they felt some
comfort in their numbers. If you had a punt gun
in that situation, you'd been eating turkeys for years, lots
of Thanksgiving meals.

Speaker 4 (28:57):
I one time back in Pennsylvania, we had a hard
winter and it was like a deep, crusty snow, and
there was this one farmer that was spreading manure on
the fields, like on top of the snow.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
And there was a winter flock there that I like
quick counting at like nine hundred birds.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
Yeah, yeah, Like birds came from all over just to
be there.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
That would be the perfect scenario to use a punt gun.
Or if you were like baiting feral hogs for example.
I think anything that you were baiting and like creating
a congregation of critters in one spot, that would be
the ideal use.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Ye'd imagine you could size up shot in those things
and put like buckshot in there, right definitely.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, Yeah, you could probably do like a turkey load equivalent,
you know, where it's like different varying sizes of pellets
all at once. Now, like the punt gun thing, though
it fought, they become illegal in North America in nineteen eighteen.
That's when the Migratory Bird Act comes around, the reality
is they start to fall out of fashion. Before that,

(30:03):
you have pump pump shotguns show up in the eighteen eighties,
Semiato shotguns and the early nineteen hundreds, and the market
hunters who were using these they kind of learn that actually,
we can be more efficient, we have to plan less logistically,
it's cheaper, it's easier to use if we just go
out with a shotgun we can hold against our shoulder, like,

(30:25):
we can be better market hunters in that case. So
when you're talking about like the punt gun being outlawed,
folks were starting to go away from it, like before
it actually becomes illegal, and now you know this has
been the case since nineteen eighteen or ten gauge is
the biggest shotgun that you can use if market hunting
was still allowed today, though, I don't think you'd see

(30:46):
guys out there with the punt gun.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, it's just not efficient.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
No, as you can see when you know when they
cost one thousand dollars per shell.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
It doesn't worry. Okay, crank Jobs says, what was the
most un expected thing you learned from the experience? You
guys have any thoughts on this when we were shooting it.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Honestly, the the damage it did to the watermelons was
a little unexpected.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
You thought, more or less.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
I thought I thought it would be less for some reason.
I just thought the pattern wouldn't be that.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
I don't remember how far we were away from.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Them, he was like thirty yards thirty.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
I just thought the pattern would be more spread and
it would just be like a bunch of holes.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (31:28):
That. And another thing I did not expect was how
like I expected it to be way louder.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yeah, it was kind of like a soft boom.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah. With that said, though, there were still I think
we experienced this and I don't know which shot, but
pellets came back at us.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
I think it was pigeons.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, And someone someone noted that like, yeah, I got
hit in the shoulder with the one, Like oh, I
heard it bounce off the vehicles. So there was there
was a certain amount of that. Anything surprised you max
when we shot it, I would say, just the pattern
and how good it was, you know, Like I was
very impressed at thirty five yards, Like when we get
those paper light up targets, I was very impressed.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
I was like, Wow, that could do some damage, you know,
like I could see why people use that right, you know.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah, and uh, Seth brought up the water moltain. That's
the final thing in the film that we shoot, and
that kind of goes back to the genesis of the
punt gun. Immediately four or five years agoing to start
talking about this, Steve was like, we gotta shoot water melons.
We gotta do the Gallagher bit. We got we gotta
go blow up a bunch of watermelons. And then that
also allowed Steve to explain to people who Gallagher is,

(32:41):
which I think he enjoyed equally as much as actually
calling you trigger to shoot the way He's like.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
You don't know Gallagher?

Speaker 1 (32:46):
What Gallagher?

Speaker 6 (32:47):
You know?

Speaker 5 (32:47):
It's not how much Steve talks about Gallagher. I think
that's the only comedian.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
I don't think anyone knew what he was talking about.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
I will admit I did not know what he was
talking about, and then like figured it out.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah. I would only like my exposure to Gallagher was
from secondhand references, like your family guy would do a
bit about Gallagher, I'd be like, well, I don't know
who you know Gallagher?

Speaker 5 (33:10):
He famously walked out of a Mark Marrin podcast it
was and got really mad. Oh yeah, it's a fun listen.
He lasts like twenty minutes and then storms out.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
What would possibly make him so because what wasn't this
thing was?

Speaker 5 (33:22):
But it was just sort of like, what's the deal
with all the water? Like he was just kind of
he was kind of poking him, he wasking the bear.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, so I don't think we wouldn't be doing this
podcast today. We wouldn't have bought the punt gun if
Gallagher didn't exist, just because Steve was like so excited,
infatuated with the idea of.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
I think you got to tell people who galligator Gallagher is.
I think what he does.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Steve has said this million times. He would smash watermelons
on stage, and you would like, you know, wear a
raincoat if you were in the front row because you
were going to get you know, covered in watermelon. Am
I getting that right? Phil?

Speaker 8 (33:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (33:54):
I mean I think it was more than watermelon. That
the watermelon was the thing that that that caught on
and that's what people remember. But it was all kinds
of fruit, Spencer, not just water milk.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Okay, well, we shoot watermelons in the film. Most unexpected
thing for me was like during this research, I was
I was learning, you know, about the market hunting era,
and when it comes to ducks, there was only a
little bit of value with the feathers. The meat was
the main product. If these ducks didn't have the meat
that they had, like this market would not have existed

(34:25):
because the feathers weren't valuable enough on their own. The
duck meat is what paid the bills, and there was
like a very clear hierarchy in the prices. What would
you say is like the best tasting duck Max in
North America?

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Well, I think you asked someone it's going to be something,
and then you ask another person it'll be something different.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Mask and Max.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I'm just explained myself, But yeah, I think wood ducks
and mallards are my favorite.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Would you say the same thing? Okay, Well, the prices
like kind of show you what the American palette was
at that point. A plover that's a shore bird that
you'd see it's, you know, like a little marshmallow with
toothpick legs out on a gravel bar in the Missouri River.
Those cost twenty five cents per plover is what you

(35:14):
would get to see that is nine dollars per plover
in twenty twenty six. Appetizer an appetizer, sure, yeah, not
a highly respected bird, which is the other thing you
learned is that these guys weren't just killing ducks and geese.
They were killing herons, seagulls, shore birds, all kinds of
different stuff. So a plover was worth a quarter nine

(35:36):
dollars today, a snipe was only a little more valuable
at thirty cents a snipe teal wood ducks and wigeons,
that's what Max said would be his top pick would
be a wood duck that was seventy five cents per pair,
so less than forty cents per wood duck, which is
only slightly more valuable than a snipe.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, I don't know, I don't agree with that. The
prices should have been a little higher.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, okay, So black ducks those were a dollar, mallards
were a dollar twenty five, and then the ones that
everybody cared about was canvas backs and redheads. Those were
a dollar seventy five apiece, which is the equivalent of
sixty two dollars today.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
Yeah, sixty two dollars for me, I feel like I
used to do some hunting on the Chesapeake Bay Back
I live in Pennsylvania, and like the duck to kill
was a canvas.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Back king of ducks.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, so it's like people are still after him.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Yeah, so these ducks. If you were a market hunter
in Chesapeake Bay and say you went, you know, punt
gunning for a night and you killed one hundred and
fifty ducks, those ducks would then either be salted or
iced and then put on a train, and then they
would wind up in some of your premier cities in
the Midwest and East coast, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, New York.

(36:53):
And then these would go to like the finest dining restaurants,
and what they cared about were canvas backs and redheads
also read. And those prices, I should explain, those came
from a Good Housekeeping magazine in eighteen eighty six, that's
one year after our punt gun was made, and they
said that's what you would sell them for in New York.
But the other thing I learned is that ducks fetched

(37:16):
a higher price if they came from a place with
lots of wild celery. Apparently they thought that like a
duck eating wild celery ate better? Is that your experience, Max, I've.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Never experienced a ducking wild celery, but I remember hearing
about that, just like that East Coast region, Like that's
what those diver ducks would do.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
The three premier regions that I saw, like, if you
kill a duck in this zone, that's gonna fetch the
highest price. That's what the restaurants want. It was the
Upper Chesapeake, Wisconsin's Lake kanash Kanang, and then Texas's Lake Surprise.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Really apparently those were like all sorts of different regions though.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, Yeah, what I feel like when I hear people
talk about wood duck being the best tasting duck, which
is that's not an uncommon opinion that Max has. People
would say it's because they eat a lot of acorns.
Is that like what you would think it is?

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah, I mean I've had ducks that eat pond scum
tastes like crap, But then also ducks that eat corn
taste really good, you know, So I feel like some
of that has to play a factor in it. But
I think the wood ducks there's just a good ratio
of meat to fat. Okay, just because they're a smaller duck.

(38:31):
I think the biggest ratio of meat to fat is
obviously a teal, like a big fat green wing teal
is just like just a small small amount of meat
and just like lots of fat and a lot of
people like this.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Is it different for like a blue wing or a cinnamon.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Well, I said the green wing teal just because they're
the most hearty, and a lot of times, like during
the migration, you'll see the cinnamon teal, the blueing teal
go first all the way down to southern Texas, this
even down to parts of Central America, and then the
green wing till they'll be up here hanging with the
mallards in December, some of them, not all of them.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
So they just get more fat, yeah, they later.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Well, the wild celery is what was driving the market
back then. Max. If you were a punt gunner, I'll
explain how they were used a little bit. A lot
of times it was used like either just after dark
or just before sunrise, so that the punt gunner could
like paddle into the area and be real stealthy without
being seen. They had to allow for four yards of

(39:37):
water behind them because that's how much recoil these produced.
If you were a punt gunner, no rules, Max. You
can be in a national park in August if you want.
Where are you taking that thing? Uh?

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Probably somewhere in the Central Flyway during the springtime hunt
snow geese. Oh okay, Yeah. I don't know if I
could do it it on ducks because I like him
so much, but snowgee's are already a new sense, you know,
and so I feel like I would just go carp
the sky. Yeah, I would go after snowgies just because

(40:10):
like they're knowing to roost in large numbers, and I
feel like it would be a good time. But I
would have three punt guns, oh okay, one on the water,
one slightly above and one slightly aimed above that like a.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Twenty degree angle, and then like yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
You smoke them on the water, they all get up,
get another one, and then a third shot off.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
What if you were trying to play the market though,
and have a bunch of canvas backs or red.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Oh yeah, then I would definitely go to the chestapeak
and you would find some canvas backs.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Okay, yeah, set any thoughts on if you were a
punt gunner.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Where I'd go?

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Where you take that thing?

Speaker 3 (40:47):
I'd go that little hole that I hunted with you,
Max at one time.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Okay, I could even say what state you were in. No,
I like that, Max.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
No, there's it's just a small warm water creek that
well it was a pond, but there was a warm
water creek flowing into it. I don't think you could
fit another Mallard into it.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Could you get a punk gun there if you had to?

Speaker 3 (41:14):
You couldn't have a boat, you can, ye, it.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Would be like a canyon or just like roll it
up on wheels, okay, like a fork gun.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
So the things we shooting, we don't get to shoot
any any live animals, uh in the video, but we
shoot some paper targets to show you it'd spread. We
shoot the clay pigeons. There's there's sort of a clay
pigeon disaster that that you'll watch on the video. We
shoot the water melons, and then we also shoot some hats. Uh.

(41:47):
These are hats that say this hat was shot by
a punt gun. And and now we are going to
sell those in the auction House of Oddities. The Auction
House of Audities is going to be happening sometime in
early July. Here they're not going to be auctioned off
the hats. They're just going to have a buy it
now price. There are only seventy three of them, and
when they're gone, they're gone. And when you do buy one,

(42:09):
you just get a random hat. Some of these were
absolutely destroyed that they have, you know, twenty five pellet
holes in them. If you if you shake them a little,
you'll hear the bebes that are still in.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Like the bill, you can you can see some of
the bebes too.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Oh yeah, yeah. The hats they have a leather patch
on them. That's where it says this hat was shop
by a punk gun. Some of those leather patches just
like absorbed the bb It looked like, you know, somebody
was the hand of God and just put it there
and pressed it in with their thumb. So anyway, we
have these hats for sale. There's other ones that only
got one or two straight pellets in them. If you
want to go buy one of these, when they're gone,

(42:45):
they're gone. There's seventy three of them in the auction
house of bodies. You're just getting a random hat. Probably
going to sell them for seventy five dollars a piece.
I know that sounds steep, but every penny is going
into the land Access Access Initiative, so you're funding a
good cause. We're also selling the punt gun shells in
the auction house as well. We're gonna have three of
them that are for sale again. This will be in

(43:09):
early July when that's happening. You guys have any other
thoughts before we do our interview with Joel from Rock Island.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Glad to be a part of it.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
Yeah, that might be the I'm assuming it will be
the last punt gun I ever shoot.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, this person last, first and last. And you guys
got a video of you doing it together.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
It's teamwork, all right.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
The video is available right now on our YouTube channel.
Now let's do our interview with Joel Calander.

Speaker 6 (43:37):
All right.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Joining us on the line is Joel Calander, the interactive
production manager from Rock Island Auction. Rock Island is who
will be selling our punt gun later this summer, with
proceeds going to the Meat Eater Land Access Initiative. Joel,
welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (43:53):
That's good to be back. Good to talk to you again.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Now our punt gun will be for sale at the
August premiere Firearms auction, tell us about that event.

Speaker 8 (44:02):
Sure, that's our big summer premiere auctually have three premiere
auctions here. This one's August twenty first, twenty third. It's
gonna be about seventeen hundred items. It's a three day sale.
It's an absolute, absolute event at our in person venue
there in Bedford, Texas. So if you're in the area, heck,
even if you're not in the area, come on down
it is. They're always open to the public. If you

(44:23):
can't make it down like and if someone wants to
bit on the punk gun or see better photos of it,
of course, you can always go to the website for photos,
for more information, of course, to place bids on those items.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Okay, so a few months away from selling the thing,
give us a guess as to what the punt gun
will sell for.

Speaker 8 (44:41):
So the good news is you have kind of an
idea already right within the last couple of years. That's
a pretty good comparison because the actual gun sold in
twenty twenty two. That said, our estimate now is a
little bit higher. We got believe a pre auctionssment at
least could change. We're still we're working on that sale
right now. Between twenty and thirty thousand. Okay, I think

(45:02):
there's there's a couple of things that go into that
one tied to you guys, and you know, you guys
are a pretty popular thing now do it's uh, I
got evidence that it's a that it's a functional unk gun,
which there are too many of these.

Speaker 6 (45:18):
I mean, there are too many punt guns. In general.
They're a rare item.

Speaker 8 (45:20):
So to have one that's documented and functionals has a.

Speaker 6 (45:24):
Piece of brass with it, that's always a plus.

Speaker 8 (45:26):
And it's actually surprisingly good condition for a punk gun.
As you know, those things are often in a quat
environments and often salt water environments. So to have one
like this with that paint and it's a Holland and Island,
I think that's that's all going to help the value
for that. Oh and it's appearing alongside a lot of
really just top of the line sporting arms, both for

(45:47):
wing shooting and for a big game.

Speaker 6 (45:49):
So start sporting arms go this August.

Speaker 8 (45:51):
That punt gun is gonna be a headliner and it's
it's in very good company.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Okay, very excited. I'll be tuning in for that action paint.
Just a picture for the type of that is looking
to spend twenty thousand or thirty thousand on a punt
gun that they may never shoot. Who is that person?

Speaker 6 (46:08):
Sure, we actually seek quite a bit of this.

Speaker 8 (46:10):
Of course, collectors is the easy answer, right, we're at
auction house for find a historic firearms, so colectors is easy,
and we'll kind of collectors. Well, of course you have
sporting arms collectors. You see that with premier brands today,
Holland and Holland, Purdy, Rigby, some of those more famous names,
Kriegof and what have you. So sporting arms specifically though,
you may find ones for British sporting arms. You might

(46:32):
find one specifically for British best quality firearms or even
London gun makers. You may also find someone who just
loves wing shooting, whether that's you know, American, there's a
bunch of publications of course here Stateside to focus.

Speaker 6 (46:46):
On just wing shooting and hunting. You might find that
as well.

Speaker 8 (46:50):
And then there's just people who like big display pieces
or things that go boom. You know, a functional piece
has going to kill to a lot of people as well.
So there's pretty good again, pretty good gamut of the
cross sections of colectors there.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Okay, we hope it's competitive that day. Give us some
history of Rock Island auction and punt guns. How often
do you have one come up for sale?

Speaker 6 (47:12):
So the short answer is not very often.

Speaker 8 (47:15):
And you know, way back when I first started, I
think we said we sold, you know, some right around
forty thousand guns a year at auction. We been here
thirteen years, so that number is if it hasn't double that,
I'd be very surprised. That's the number one in the
world for what we do. But throughout checked our records
prior to this and just to see how many punt guns,
it's barely barely over two dozen.

Speaker 6 (47:37):
Wow, the coming Yeah, if you're.

Speaker 8 (47:39):
Selling tens of thousands of guns year and that few
are punt guns, so not a lot of them remain
one because again we mentioned already those those kind of
initial rough conditions. These are guns that are they're working
guns in saltwater conditions. And then two, of course, it
speaks to the to the legislation. If you can't use
these punt guns, you know what, what are they for
a lot of people lose the sort of luster of ownership.

(48:01):
So at least when they weren't in practical use anymore.
So I'm not not too many punk guns floating around anymore.

Speaker 6 (48:09):
Even that comes through our doors.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Yeah, I think when we bought ours, there were two
punt guns up for sale that week, and previously we
bought it in twenty twenty two. Prior to that, I
think someone there had told me that twenty sixteen was
the last time you guys had sold one. So less
than one punt gun a year, it seems like.

Speaker 6 (48:28):
That's fair. I mean, you know, you get ones like that.

Speaker 8 (48:30):
We have two and a sale most likely a single
collector who's had more than one. So yeah, but less
of one punk good here as since we've opened, and
we've been opened since nineteen ninety three, that's a that's
a safe estimate.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Now, how does the size of our punt gun compared
to the other ones that you guys have sold.

Speaker 8 (48:50):
There's so many jokes to be made here, but I
will say it's.

Speaker 6 (48:58):
Bigger than average.

Speaker 8 (48:59):
I mean, we have the there's a lot of the
seven eight, there's a lot of the seven foot range.

Speaker 6 (49:03):
There's a lot of the eight foot range.

Speaker 8 (49:05):
Not of course, you know any source you read, they
always want to site the biggest, right, you know, these
are twelve foot guns. These are ten foot guns, and
they're the forger an inch wide, and they killed you
know this, many hundred things at once.

Speaker 6 (49:17):
You know, those are those are the exceptions. That's one
end of the scale.

Speaker 8 (49:20):
But punt guns, I mean, just as a genre, are
so varied because they were in use for so long,
I'm sorry for through so many sort of periods of development,
right by so many different groups of people, through so
many different firearm technologies on. So it runs the gamut.
I mean, you get people who were using them more commercially,
so very very large, you know, the many the most

(49:41):
birds you could take down, the more money you were
bringing in, yeah, during those commercial hunting days. And then
you had people who are just trying to in their
earlier days, just trying to make an extra buck and
maybe put some meat on the table for their family too,
So they're a little bit smaller at that point. Here's
I didn't have the full measurement. I have a barrel
measurement eighty five and a half inches, which puts it
about seven foot. You know, once you add that sort

(50:03):
of tiller or or stock that's on the back, that
saturn extra twelve eighteen inches so, uh, it's right in
there with a lot of good seven and eight footers.

Speaker 6 (50:11):
The biggest one that we had.

Speaker 8 (50:12):
Was like just over just over nine foot nine foot
seven and a half inches. So there's somehoozies come through
the direct for sure.

Speaker 6 (50:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Now, at some point before we bought the gun, someone
from your team told me that you will often have
sellers that come to you guys with what they call
a punt gun, but in reality they have a pigeon
gun or a fort gun. So what is the difference
between those three things, a pigeon gun, a fort gun,
and a punt gun.

Speaker 8 (50:42):
We're getting into the collecting knitty GrITT here, and that's
what we're here for.

Speaker 6 (50:46):
I love it. Pigeon guns.

Speaker 8 (50:49):
They're gonna there's gonna be some intersection too, because eventually,
when people were punting, anything that you could use that
would get you close to ducks on a punt and
take down more than one duck at once could have
seen used as a punt gun. Right if you were
just trying to put again beat on the table or
make a couple extra bucks, you weren't really picky about
what it was in form it was did it function,

(51:11):
But pigeon guns early on are for the early pigeon shoots,
like literal trap shooting. You have five trap houses. They
released pigeons. They could go any which direction and you
had to knock them down within a circle a giant
sort of area to get killed to get credit for it.
If you want to knock those pigeons down fast, you
wanted a big gun. So eight bars aren't common, Very

(51:33):
long barrels aren't uncommon, and very very high end as well.
There was a lot of money on these pigeon shoots
back in the day. So here you have this size.
You have really well put together pigeon guns. They could
often be confused for a large punt gun. You also
both you know, smooth board shotguns.

Speaker 6 (51:53):
Did you have a wall gun? Or what was a fort.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Gun that I had heard? I heard some of them
referred to as fort gun. What would that be?

Speaker 8 (52:00):
A fork gun, a wall gun, a rampant gun, sort
of lots of different names all for the same thing,
and it's exactly what it sounds like. These are guns
that are mounted on walls. A lot of times they
will be large, very seldom if I see like an
actual rifled example, but oftentimes through some sort of fork
with as like a pintle or something on the bottom,

(52:24):
because you're actually gonna set that on top of a
wall to defend your fork castle, you know what have you.

Speaker 6 (52:31):
And they're really sort of an intermediate range weapon.

Speaker 8 (52:34):
You know, you had your small arms for closed up,
you had artillery and mortars for far away targets. But
right in the middle, well, you could use a really
big wallgun to make an impact on some enemy troops
that might be you know, sieging your position or your
or your building. The last one or two punt guns,
as you discussed on the podcast, these are large guns

(52:55):
to be put in a boat, mounted in a boat,
or a punt very gallow because essentially you are sneaking
up on ducks on their own turf, trying to be
as undetected as possible, getting within a certain range for
you to really love that shot across the water and
take out as many ducks as possible. Those are again

(53:19):
large caliber, no surprise there, shotguns you're trying to take
out as many as possible. But the range of a
true punt gun is everything from pre flintlock to the
cartridge guns like the screwbreach Holland and Holland that y'all bought,
and so everything in between.

Speaker 6 (53:33):
It's it's such.

Speaker 8 (53:34):
A fantastic genre of collecting once you start diving into it.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah, have you guys ever sold a punt gun that
is confirmed to work like ours?

Speaker 6 (53:42):
Is? No?

Speaker 8 (53:44):
Okay, there have been a lot of quote unquote duck guns,
which are again these sort of large.

Speaker 6 (53:51):
Bore it's like four board. We have a lot of
four board duck guns.

Speaker 8 (53:55):
Shouldn't say a lot, but there's when they do come
through very high end. You're dealing with very high end
custom make from like John Dixon and Son or again
Holland and Holland. People are using these as shoulder mounted
four bore shotguns. And again they're they're for duck would
they are they the type to be like mounted or
secured in a boat?

Speaker 6 (54:16):
You know? But they're definitely being used for essentially the
same purpose, and they would be a flock shooting ducks.
So there are.

Speaker 8 (54:22):
Those that are capable and find enough condition or I
wouldn't worry a bit about them being fired. Yeah, But
as far as a true punt gun like yours with
you know, pintle mounts on it and everything in the
recoiled device on the bottom, all this fun stuff. No,
I've never seen one even thought about being fired.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Great, very excited. Now, what was any part of you
nervous about us shooting the one that we purchase?

Speaker 6 (54:47):
Now? The funny answer is no, because it's not me. Uh.
But the second answer is no, not at all.

Speaker 8 (54:53):
I mean, if there's a group of guys that I
and I trust to do the research with the outdoors
and sporting its, it's the folks that meat eater. Now,
if you were two guys in a row boat taking
it out, I might I might be a little more concerned.
You'll still have a quality maker like Holland and Holland. Yes,
those are sort of like legacy arms and just they
laughed in their heirlooms. So you started out with good

(55:14):
materials in good condition, and you're smart about it.

Speaker 6 (55:17):
Everything everything wi lined up perfect.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, and that's also why it took us four years
to get to the point where we could make the
film about us shooting the punt gun.

Speaker 8 (55:26):
I mean, I wasn't going to bring it up, but
I'm I'm sure it might come up once or twice
in the comment.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yeah, yeah, Now, how is selling a punt gun different
from your typical firearms. I imagine there's got to be
some real logistical challenges that you guys go through selling,
you know, an eight foot gun.

Speaker 8 (55:43):
Yeah, I mean the selling parts easy, right, an auctioneer
and banging hammer at the front of a room. But
everything around it is required, you know, to accommodate that
that massive size. So whether it's trying to take the
photography of it, you know, to put it in our catalog,
or to put it on the website, it uh transporting
it even around the building, run our facility, getting it

(56:04):
set up on our preview haul down in Bedford, Texas,
and then of course eventually shipping it to a new owner.
They all have they all have their their issues come
up with which, by the way, if.

Speaker 6 (56:17):
You're an in person, better boy, we would encourage that.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah. Our punt gun when we bought it, it showed
up in a literal crate, I think multiple crates actually,
So if you are the person who buys this thing
and it's going to be shipped to you expect a
giant piece of wood coming in the mail and that's
where your punk gun will be inside of. Now, our
punt gun, as most were, was made in England simply
because that's where this style of hunting was the most popular.

(56:43):
So with that being the case, what is the most
what is the most English thing about our gun? Is
there something you look at that makes you go, oh,
that gun? It was made in London.

Speaker 6 (56:55):
We can't talked about earlier, but the Holland and Holland.

Speaker 8 (57:00):
Essential best quality gun, a London gun maker that's been
around since with eighteen thirty five, so the first one
hundred ninety years, fifty last year, one hundred ninety years
last year, and they just airloom quality. Like I said,
legacy type guns the type you pass on. And of
course we see him come out of some pretty impressive collections.

(57:21):
Those are guns that will regularly draw six figures, high
artistry and embellishment. But there are also guns that you
should not be afraid to take out and use, maybe
true to form with a punt gun, absolutely fantastical and Holland,
So Holland and Holland is just quint essential British gun.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Somebody we showed the gun to told us that they
suspected the engraving around the barrel most likely made it
a special order or a custom made gun. What do
you think of that.

Speaker 8 (57:49):
Theory, Yes, especially given when your gun was made, which
I believe was the late eighteen hundreds, correct.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Eighteen eighty five, is what we could come up.

Speaker 8 (57:58):
With because the initially, you know, we have the early
eighteen hundreds where hunt gunning is kind of coming into
its own right.

Speaker 6 (58:07):
You have a lot of sailors, you have deck guns.
How do we use these? What do we do when
we're out of the service.

Speaker 8 (58:11):
You know, there's a lot of or mutual origins there
from that British sort of age of naval warfare. But
initially these are people who are, like you said, not
doing this commercially, and so it's whatever you can get,
and a lot of times they're very rough. Sometimes you
might put it together at home if you can't get
those materials, but very very sort of singular purpose. As

(58:34):
it goes on, it becomes essentially a score of the gentry.
You know, the well healed and well to do are
taking this very difficult, rough hunt. I mean, this is
cold hunting. This are cold shooting muddy went salt water,
like you might be out all day laying on your

(58:56):
belly and like rowing a hunt that's very physically demanding
there's a lot going on there, so to turn it
into a sport at the end of the nineteenth centuries
kind of what happens. And then you see more of
these let's say, accomplished gun makers getting into act, like
Holland and Holland. John Dixon's another one that made some
four board duck guns, and it becomes you see the engraving,

(59:19):
you see a finer quality in these guns. Yours is
the only one I will say that's in that punt
gun form that looks like essentially duck artillery for lack.

Speaker 6 (59:30):
Of a better term. That it does have the engraving.

Speaker 8 (59:32):
On it, that scroll work, that scroll on a canvas
work on there, and even a little engraving up in
front of the trigger underneath with a little scene of
the of the goose. I have no doubt that, just
based on it's time alone, you're looking at a their
premier manufacturer. Already by the eighteen eighties, Holland and Holland,
they're getting national acclaim in royal endorsements, and with the

(59:54):
engraving on there absolutely an order for someone well to do.

Speaker 6 (01:00:00):
I wanted to go out and fry fund gunning. It
wasn't essential. It wasn't to make money, but they want
to try it out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Yeah, some real artistry on that gun. Now, besides our
punt gun, what other guns from that auction are you
excited about?

Speaker 8 (01:00:13):
So the good news is there are some. The bad
news is we have a giant auction coming this weekend.
Oh and the American Sales two and fifty years celebrating
American history. So I can't talk too much about August
just yet, but I will say three things about August. One,
as I mentioned earlier, you're in a host of sporting

(01:00:33):
arms that should.

Speaker 6 (01:00:36):
Rise and tide floats all boats.

Speaker 8 (01:00:38):
Sorry for the punt gun pun, but that should help
all the sporting arms in that sale. And that's what
we do, we build auctions. There is a second. I
will say the August premiere has one item flagship of
the sale does have an estimate in the seven figures.
And I will say about the August premiere that there

(01:00:58):
is a gun so famous in that sale I would
I would wager that everyone in your room right now
has seen a photograph of it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Okay, great, that's that's a wonderful tease. And after this interview,
Joel is going to tell me what that gun is
so that I know and I don't have to wonder anymore. Now,
tell folks how they can learn more about the August
auction where our punt gun will be sold.

Speaker 8 (01:01:25):
Sure, actually, since that auction will be over welcoming off
to be over Saturday, go to the website on Monday.
We will have essentially a sixteen page highlight portfolio that
you can flip through digitally on our website. Uh, you'll
see the big dogs front and center on the front catalog,
on the back catalog. If you go to Rock Island

(01:01:45):
Auction dot com, they will have that highlight portfolio of
the catalog for anyone who wants to see the punt
gun and to place some bids on it. That to
be available around mid July. Well, of course, bench make
y'all aware of that, and you can you can spread
the good words we can trying to raise some funds.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Here, Okay, very excited, and Rock Island is graciously waving
all of our fees that normally come with selling a
gun through them. That means they are helping put as
much money into the land Access initiative as possible, So
we really appreciate that. Joel, thank you for helping US
fund more conservation projects, and thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 6 (01:02:20):
It's been a blast. We're happy to come back.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Aytime, Okay, talk to you again. Thank you bye ye
all right, that's it for this episode. The punt gun
film is on our YouTube channel right now. Please go
watch it. It's a lot of fun. Old guns are cool,
big guns are cool. This is as old and as
big as it gets. So if you like history, if

(01:02:44):
you like conservation, if you like firearms, you'll like this video,
so please go check it out. It's available right now.
Don't forget to go buy your punt gun hat at
the auction House of Oddities that will go live sometime
in July. You can also bid on the shells there.
We have three of them that we're going to be selling.
And if you want to buy the punt gun yourself,

(01:03:06):
you can go do that at the Rock Island Auction
in August. You can participate virtually. They'll set you up
really well. I bought the gun from Bozeman, Montana, while
the auction was happening. I believe they were in Illinois
at that point. Now they're located in Texas, so you
don't even have to be there in person to participate again.

(01:03:26):
That's Rockland Auction dot Com that is happening at the
end of August. All right, that's it for this episode.
Thanks for watching, Thanks for listening.

Speaker 6 (01:03:33):
By now