Lola at the Coffee House

How about some duck for dinner? I'll run and shoot us some - now where's my gun, oh yeah - there it is!

bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpety bump!!!

B U M P !

OK, that's better.

Nice piece, Bill. What cal. ammo does that take?

Thanks all.. It's quite funny really sometimes being Australian, our chosen descriptions and words are often different.

Bill, the first photos is exactly what the home that I visited near Oklahoma looked like and I think it was $10k or $30k something silly like that.

The funny thing is, in Aussie Land, we have an area called Aldinga, I just love that area and there are so many eco homes and pole homes (two storey) built on the land, with views of the ocean. I don't like the new brick, courtyard homes at all, yet I sell them I very much love the pole homes, and they have a simular look really to the mobile homes that are not so mobile In the building constructure side but yet, they still costs $200k to build... Why is that? Just saying

Caravans. Is what we call the "mobile homes" you tow, but then there is your take Lustig which I think is totally different again, as a caravan you can take the wheels off and plonk down somewhere but .. IDK .. different too.

Chesapeake Bay duck gun or punt gun -

A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations and private sport. Punt guns were usually custom-designed and so varied widely, but could have bore diameters exceeding 2 inches (51 mm) and fire over a pound (≈ 0.45 kg) 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. Generally the gun was fixed to the punt; thus the hunter would maneuver the entire boat in order to aim the gun. The guns were sufficiently powerful, and the punts themselves sufficiently small, that firing the gun often propelled the punt backwards several inches or more. To improve efficiency, hunters could work in fleets of up to around ten punts.

Fascinating. James Mitchener describes these miniature cannons in his Chesapeake but I've never actually seen one.

That is where I first became aquainted with them. Apparently, they nearly wiped out the east coast duck populations. I also understand that this gun comes from England. I did know that they were a "part" of a the boat or had to be setup on shore as a piece of artillery.

Nobody could fire that holding it to his shoulder. The recoil would probably break the collar bone.

for sure, for sure

I like the term "portable homes".

Because wage levels in the building industry and in its suppliers make it a necessity. In the UK planning restrictions are also a factor.

I like these easy quiz questions.

Frigg, me too what about portable loos? Here comes a picture I can tell

Thank you for the explanation Sooooo, what are the costs of "portable" homes where you live Spendi?

They were built-in as part of the punt. The small picture shows a degree of elevation of the gun but I believe they were built-in fixed, with the gun barrel parallel with the water surface. They were intended principally to kill birds sitting on the water. The "scatter" of the projectiles would account for any nearby birds in the air.

"Sport" was evidently not the intention.

Every museum on the Chespeake owns one or more punt guns and the "sneak boats" and "sink boats" on which to mount them. The market hunting of ducks and geese by such a method was officially outlawed in Maryland and Virginia during the 1920's when the ducks and geese stocks were severely depleted.

Every year, during summer festival days at the various museums (like the Northeast Chesapeake Bay museum, the HAvre de Grace Museums , St Michaels etc) all will have several punt gun demos during their festivals. Whenever they fire the things, they do it far out on the water so that people aren't allowed too close.

The story that they used to fill the barrels with stones and nails was all bullshit. These guns were handed down from generation to generation and needed to last because it was often the source of the only income that some watermen had during the winter months before muskrat trapping season.

The sound of a punt gun is unique, its like a deep thud . Since they used only gun powder the shot needed was usually like a number 2 to 5 shot (they didn't want to tear the ducks up and a larger shot would be needed for the geese.

When they fired these things the white trail could easily target the hunter . That's why they hunted at night on their sneak boats.
The Northeast Bay Museum in Northeast Maryland (that's the town name) has a punt gun set up on a fixed mount on a sneak boat in their boat shed. Its an interesting gizmo with allthe sand bags used for the recoil.
These things were kept at a very low angle since the hunters would sneak up on a raft of sleeping ducks where they sorta huddle up on the water.
I was told that the best targets were when the ducks all huddled on a patch of ice so that the hunter would sneak as close to the raft of ducks on open water and try to get a wide enough pattern (by distance) so to get them all.

They would gather up the ducks and put them in barrels cleaned and salted for the restaurants in DC Baltimore, Philly, and the ever popular Hotel DuPont's Gold Room where executive dinners were frequently held and wild duck with wild turnips and celeriac dressing was often the bill of fare.

See we don't kill much in Aussie Land, just buy what is killed.. Killing animals pfttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

P eople
E ating
T asty
A nimals