2 gage shotgun

Question
Hello Doug. I have what I believe to be a 2 gage shotgun I inherited from my Father. If I remember correctly, this gun took 2 LBS of shot and used 50 Grams of blasting powder, and was fired from a stationary mount or attached to a trained steer.The barrel is 28 1/2" long, the bore is 1 1/8" and the barrel thickness is 1/4" at the tip. The weight of the barrel is approx. 12 LBS I believe it was used by commercial Goose hunters. Would you be able to offer any additional information, or correct the information I have? Are there many of these old shotguns around?  I have the barrel, nipple and tang only.       Thanks, Dennis

Answer
Dennis,

You have a gun that is alternately referred to as a Punt Gun or a "Goose Cannon".  Truly these old 2 gauge and 1 gauge guns were more appropriately referred to as 'cannons' than shotguns.  A 2 gauge could have used 1/2 pound shot or smaller shot in more quantity, potentially as much as a couple of pounds of shot at a time.  The  powder load appropriate to move that shot along would be pretty large.  I'm not sure about the 50 grams (that is a lot of powder).

They were fired from a stationary mount as you suggest.

Here some info from Wikipedia about Punt Guns:

A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations. Punt guns were usually custom-designed and so varied widely, but could have bore diameters exceeding 2 inches and fire over a pound (0.5 kilos) of shot at a time.[1] A single shot could kill over 50 waterfowl resting on the water's surface. They were too big to hold and the recoil so large that they were mounted directly on the punts used for hunting, hence their name. Hunters would maneuver their punts quietly into line and range of the flock using poles or oars to avoid startling them. To improve efficiency hunters could work in fleets of up to around ten punts.

In the United States, this practice depleted stocks of wild waterfowl and by the 1860s most states had banned the practice. The Lacey Act of 1900 banned the transport of wild game across state lines, and the practice of market hunting was outlawed by a series of federal laws in 1918. In the United Kingdom, a 1995 survey showed fewer than 50 active punt guns still in use. UK law limits punt guns to a bore diameter of 1.75 inches (1 1/8 pounder).


Honestly, I don't know too much more about these guns.  If you want to see a very cool video of one actually being fired, check out the link below.  Please don't be offended by the URL.

http://hillbillywhitetrash.blogspot.com/2007/07/big-guns.html

You can also Google 'punt gun' and find a lot of information.

Hope this helps you out...

Regards,

Doug