Speaker 1: Welcome to the Mediater podcast. I'm Spencer new Art, joined
Speaker 1: today by Seth Morris and Max Barta. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: a little different. We are going to be talking all
Speaker 1: about punt guns. If you're not aware, we bought one
Speaker 1: a few years ago, then we shot it. We filmed
Speaker 1: the whole process, and you can go watch that right
Speaker 1: now on the meat Eater YouTube channel. This is our
Speaker 1: fifth installment in the twelve and twenty six series that
Speaker 1: we're doing this year. That's twelve long form films that
Speaker 1: we're dropping in twenty twenty six. This film is probably
Speaker 1: the most different of everything that you'll see on our channel.
Speaker 1: The other episodes have more traditional outdoor adventures where Yanni
Speaker 1: does an archie bear hunt, Clay chases mountain lions with hounds.
Speaker 1: The only thing that we hunt in the punt gun
Speaker 1: episode is clay, pigeons and watermelons, so very different. And
Speaker 1: some balloons and some balloons and some paper targets and
Speaker 1: some hats. Yeah, we'll talk about in a little bit.
Speaker 1: So this is a story, you know, about conservation and
Speaker 1: a very badass gun. Today we are going to be
Speaker 1: answering your questions about the punt gun. Although Steve and
Speaker 1: I host the film. Max and Seth were there every
Speaker 1: time we shot the thing, so they got real familiar
Speaker 1: with it. And then Seth and Max even got to
Speaker 1: shoot it. We had six shells with us. Steve and
Speaker 1: I shot five of them. We had a sixth one.
Speaker 1: We said what should we do with this thing? Should
Speaker 1: we just throw it in the river? And then Max
Speaker 1: and Seth they said no, no, no, let us shoot it.
Speaker 1: So they did. And so we have a piece of
Speaker 1: the film here that didn't make the final cut. This
Speaker 1: this is behind the behind Max and Seth shooting the
Speaker 1: punt gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is really bonded our friendship.
Speaker 1: I'll tee it up with this real quick. Sorry. We
Speaker 1: only had one shell left, but two people who wanted
Speaker 1: to shoot it. So they were going to pull the
Speaker 1: rope together. That's how you fire the punt gun. You
Speaker 1: pulled this rope that's like, I don't know, two feet long.
Speaker 1: And so they they were very kind and they pulled
Speaker 1: the rope together. But I noticed something in the film
Speaker 1: play it for us film. Seth brings back the hammer
Speaker 1: he got that on it on Three's what I what
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up is Seth has his hand
Speaker 1: on the rope, and then Max trumps him and reaches
Speaker 1: in front of hand to get to grip further up
Speaker 1: the rope, and then Seth says, hold on, and then
Speaker 1: he reaches in front of Max's hand again. It was
Speaker 1: just like a little that's right, they were doing a
Speaker 1: totem pole of hands. Whoever got to be closer uh
Speaker 1: to to the trigger? Who do you think actually shot it?
Speaker 1: Which one you pulled the rope?
Speaker 2: I felt like I had more than it.
Speaker 3: It felt pretty equal, even think so I was more
Speaker 3: on your hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost, hold.
Speaker 1: Phil, Can we see it again? Could you like really
Speaker 1: slow it down. Let's get a good look at who
Speaker 1: maybe and the film you help us decide? Here which
Speaker 1: one of these two shot the punt guna Hamm's back.
Speaker 3: Going to grab Max grabs in front of him.
Speaker 1: Yep, cute, And now.
Speaker 2: I had the majority. I had that little anger point.
Speaker 1: Okay, now we're gonna shoot it. Here we go. I
Speaker 1: think both It looks pretty slacky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that looks it looks like Seth. It looks like Seth.
Speaker 3: Jacket starts the motion first.
Speaker 1: Okay there, but then I felt like Max had a
Speaker 1: more aggressive hole. We'll call it fifty to fifty. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm going to.
Speaker 2: Say I've shot a punk gun, whether Seth Polden or not.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was thinking about this. I think I
Speaker 2: don't think there's ever been a punt gun in Montana
Speaker 2: before this. Would you say, that's a pretty fair point.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not punk gun country. These things
Speaker 1: were used way east the Chesapeake Bay in Europe. That's
Speaker 1: a good point, Max, If I had to guess if
Speaker 1: one came through here, No, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk to Rock Island Auction later in the show.
Speaker 1: Those are the guys who sold us the gun that
Speaker 1: are then going to resell it. All that money is
Speaker 1: going to go back to the med Eater Land Access initiative.
Speaker 1: But leading up to us buying the punt gun, they
Speaker 1: had mentioned that sellers will come to them and say,
Speaker 1: I have a punk gun that I want you guys
Speaker 1: to sell. But in reality it's not a punk gun.
Speaker 1: It's what they would call to be a pigeon gun
Speaker 1: or a fort gun. Now ours like hits the nail
Speaker 1: on the head for the definition of a punk gun.
Speaker 1: I bet there they were obviously fort guns here at
Speaker 1: some point, maybe some pigeon guns, even though I don't
Speaker 1: think that was in Montana's culture either. But as far
Speaker 1: as the only punt gun, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: Max.
Speaker 1: We're gonna call that the first punk gun, I would.
Speaker 4: Say, so unless there's some like private collectors, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably not though.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So on today's episode, we're going to answer your
Speaker 1: questions and then we have that interview with Rock Island Auction.
Speaker 1: So those guys are the expert on old firearms that
Speaker 1: we're gonna chat with them. That's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Here's the first question. This is from Nick Sikowski.
Speaker 1: He says, feels like ages ago when first discussed. Exactly
Speaker 1: when was the first conversation about it? Nick is referring
Speaker 1: to the punt gun. He's right, this has been a
Speaker 1: long time coming for Nick. I tried to get us
Speaker 1: the cleanest timeline of the punt gun leading up to
Speaker 1: us buying it. The first time it was discussed it
Speaker 1: was in December of twenty twenty one on an episode
Speaker 1: of med Eater Trivia. Trivia was still in its infancy.
Speaker 1: It was so young, in fact, that the episode that
Speaker 1: this happened on it was just called Game on Suckers.
Speaker 1: That episode didn't even have a number after it. For context,
Speaker 1: the episode that came out this week is CCXXII. That's
Speaker 1: what is that, Max and Roman.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me, take.
Speaker 3: No clue.
Speaker 1: Two hundred and twenty two. I was gonna say, that's
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty two in real numerals. So the
Speaker 1: episode we talked about this on didn't even have a
Speaker 1: real ma numeral. It was literally the first episode that
Speaker 1: said game on Suckers Now, Like, wasn't our technically our
Speaker 1: first episode of meat Eatter trivia because there was a
Speaker 1: period where we would do trivia and it was like
Speaker 1: a kangaroo episode inside of a regular episode. This was
Speaker 1: the first time we pulled that away and made its
Speaker 1: own show. Anyway, just some background for you. What was
Speaker 1: the question do you remember Phil's going to play it
Speaker 1: for us again? This is that on that episode in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one clip Phil.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so Spencer for this question, Spencer, I actually showed
Speaker 5: the room a picture of the punk guy that asked
Speaker 5: what it was called. So here's the audio of the rest.
Speaker 1: Oh the correct answer is the punt gun, oh Man.
Speaker 1: The average punt gun ranged from a two gauge to
Speaker 1: a four gauge and could fire over a pound of
Speaker 1: pellets at once. Wow. They are very rare and hard
Speaker 1: to come by, though. I was able to find a
Speaker 1: few in online auctions, ranging anywhere from four thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: You can buy one.
Speaker 1: You could buy one. Are you going to buy one? No?
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing you like pony up five thousand bucks? Yeah?
Speaker 3: On my how serious you were?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we could shoot it. I would love to
Speaker 1: have that.
Speaker 2: That's the gents gun.
Speaker 1: That's the beginning of it. You know, Max knows this,
Speaker 1: Seth knows this. If you want to get something done immediate,
Speaker 1: or you just need to get Steve excited. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: as you can hear, Steve was excited about it. And
Speaker 1: it didn't take long until like those sort of maybe
Speaker 1: should we could we to Steve was like, yes, let's
Speaker 1: let's get a punt gun. So here's the rest of
Speaker 1: that timeline again. That was December twenty twenty one. January
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, I found some punt guns online. They
Speaker 1: range in price from four thousand dollars to eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I talked to one seller. He said that him and
Speaker 1: his buddy shot theirs. They stood back to back, and
Speaker 1: what they did was they had one guy who stood
Speaker 1: in front and he let the barrel rest on his shoulder,
Speaker 1: and then the other guy stood behind him and he
Speaker 1: sort of pressed the butt of the punt gun against
Speaker 1: his shoulder, just like if you were shooting a regular shotgun.
Speaker 1: When they pulled the trigger, that guy said that his
Speaker 1: buddy had his collar bone broken.
Speaker 2: Oh, just like an episode of Jackass.
Speaker 1: It's exactly like that.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bad idea. We didn't buy any of those punt guns.
Speaker 1: I think some of them floated closer to the category
Speaker 1: of pigeon gun, which we'll learn about later. Just didn't
Speaker 1: love any of those, so we didn't buy him. But again,
Speaker 1: this is the timeline of how it unfolded. February of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. I found a five footer at an
Speaker 1: antique mal in Wisconsin. I called them. They wanted fifty
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars for it. The seller was unsure if
Speaker 1: it would shoot, didn't want to change the price, and
Speaker 1: that was an important thing to us. We wanted to
Speaker 1: buy a punt gun that we thinked would work. And
Speaker 1: so because we couldn't figure out if that one would
Speaker 1: actually fire. We walked to way there. February twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: someone reaches out to me with a hot tip that
Speaker 1: Rock Island Auction has two of them coming up for
Speaker 1: sale that summer. Again Rock Island, they're the biggest auction
Speaker 1: house when it comes to historic guns. Here's some examples
Speaker 1: of the guns that they have sold in the past.
Speaker 1: Han Solo's DL forty four heavy Blaster that sold for
Speaker 1: one million dollars. They sold two Remington Revolvers that were
Speaker 1: owned by Ulysses S. Grant. Those sold for five million dollars.
Speaker 1: And then they sold a Winchester eighteen eighty six with
Speaker 1: the serial number one, so literally the first ever Winchester
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six that sold for one point two million dollars.
Speaker 1: Just to give you an idea of like the kind
Speaker 1: of guns that they traffic. That's who had two of
Speaker 1: these punt guns for sale March of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Here are some emails with Steve. Here was one where
Speaker 1: he said, quote, as my dad always said, you can't
Speaker 1: lose your ass on punt guns. I don't know if
Speaker 1: Steve's dad actually said that, yeah, but I like, you know,
Speaker 1: be like, as Abraham Lincoln said, you can't trust everything
Speaker 1: you read on the internet. Like I feel like that's
Speaker 1: what Steve was doing. But I'm just like trying to
Speaker 1: give you more context of how excited Steve was about this.
Speaker 1: The next day he says, I can't wait to mount
Speaker 1: it to a boat and set out some soda bottles
Speaker 1: like ducks. Here's an email from a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: he says, we gotta buy the damned punt gun. We're
Speaker 1: poised and ready. And then a week after that he
Speaker 1: says this will change our lives, and then he put
Speaker 1: in parentheses for the better. So Steve is now excited.
Speaker 1: And I ended up getting approved a budget here at
Speaker 1: meat Eater of twenty thousand dollars to buy a punt gun.
Speaker 1: And as we talked about on that old podcast from December,
Speaker 1: Steve was interested when it was like four to eight
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So some strong negotiating by me to get
Speaker 1: us up to twenty thousand dollars. Okay, May of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, this is the day of the auction again,
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars budget, not a penny more. Rock Island
Speaker 1: has two punt guns up for auction. First punt gun
Speaker 1: this was the one. If I just got to pick,
Speaker 1: like which one we were gonna have, I would want
Speaker 1: the second one. That's the one we ended up getting.
Speaker 1: The first punk gun. It was a smaller model, less
Speaker 1: prestigious brand. Rock Island estimated that it would sell for
Speaker 1: between twelve thousand dollars and eighteen thousand dollars. I bid
Speaker 1: up to our ceiling of twenty thousand dollars. Two bidders
Speaker 1: blow right past me. The gun sells for twenty five thousand,
Speaker 1: seven thousand, more than the high end estimate.
Speaker 2: I wonder what those people are doing with it, you know,
Speaker 2: like why do they want it so bad?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna ask Rock
Speaker 1: Island Auction later, like who is the buyer? What does
Speaker 1: this person look like? What are they gonna do?
Speaker 2: Because we have a reason, yeah, yeah, we goal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're probably not gonna shoot theirs, you know,
Speaker 1: probably not. Yeah. So that was punk Gun number one,
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars over its high end estimate. Second punk
Speaker 1: gun this is the one that we want. It's much bigger,
Speaker 1: it's older, it's from a more prestigious brand that's Holland.
Speaker 1: In Holland Rock Island estimated that one would sell were
Speaker 1: between sixteen thousand and twenty two thousand, five hundred. So
Speaker 1: if it follows the pattern is the last punk gun,
Speaker 1: that means this one's gonna sell for thirty thousand. It's
Speaker 1: basically me and one other bidder, and I assume that
Speaker 1: this other person is the odd man out from the
Speaker 1: last punt gun auction. They went back to back these
Speaker 1: two auctions. Bidding goes fast. I quickly get to the
Speaker 1: ceiling of twenty thousand dollars and then it just ends.
Speaker 1: The other guy doesn't go anymore, which I was kind
Speaker 1: of shocked at at the time. I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was going to work out, but it was a big
Speaker 1: relief because that was the gun that we want.
Speaker 5: This guy went past twenty grand for the first punt gun.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it was him who was competing.
Speaker 1: I just assumed that he was the odd man out
Speaker 1: who didn't win the smaller one for sure, and if
Speaker 1: he would have went to twenty thousand dollars and one penny,
Speaker 1: I'd have been out, and he didn't do it.
Speaker 2: Come on no, you wouldn't.
Speaker 3: You would have pitched in of.
Speaker 2: Like your one hundred bit right.
Speaker 1: You know what I think I could have I could
Speaker 1: have explained it away to later. I'd be like, Steve,
Speaker 1: it was gonna get away.
Speaker 2: What do you want me to do?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 1: Exactly? So that that is the origin, That is how
Speaker 1: we got the punt gun back in May of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. All right, next question here, this is from
Speaker 1: outdoors Biggie. He says, what are the punt gun's stats?
Speaker 1: All right, it was made by Holland and Holland in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five, so that makes it one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty years old. One hundred and forty one years old,
Speaker 1: I think, uh, six years younger than the light bulb,
Speaker 1: a decade older than the radio, and it's actually older
Speaker 1: than the state of Montana. Just to give you some
Speaker 1: context of like the technology that we're working with. This
Speaker 1: would be the equivalent of someone taking a gun out
Speaker 1: of Max's safe that he just bought today and then
Speaker 1: shooting it in the year twenty one sixty six. You
Speaker 1: can't even fathom, like, well, what's the world going to
Speaker 1: look like in twenty one sixty six? I have no idea.
Speaker 1: But that'd be like if someone took Max's brand new
Speaker 1: gun that he got today and then shooting it down.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say it hopefully like my kid's going
Speaker 2: to be doing that, But I was like, oh no,
Speaker 2: I got to add a couple more gades. Maybe kids kids.
Speaker 1: Get you know, great kids, they'll be talking about how
Speaker 1: you know, great great great grandpa Maxwell shot a punt
Speaker 1: gun back in.
Speaker 2: The day old wow.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they'll still be able to look up the video
Speaker 1: may it's right, yeah, who knows more stats. It's a
Speaker 1: two gauge shotgun. If you listen to trivia, you know this.
Speaker 1: But when something is listed as a gauge, if you
Speaker 1: have a twelve gage shotgun, that means you take twelve
Speaker 1: balls that fit in twelve lead balls that fit in
Speaker 1: the end of a twelve gauge barrel, and that equals
Speaker 1: a pound. So that means that if you had two
Speaker 1: lead balls that fit in the end of our barrel
Speaker 1: of our punt gun, that would make one pound. That
Speaker 1: that is like as big as a punk gun gets
Speaker 1: seven and a half feet long. Sixty pounds. It's an
Speaker 1: awkward sixty pounds though, Like this is always being carried
Speaker 1: by a couple people around here. Nine and a quarter
Speaker 1: inch shell. It's a original walnut stock, and then it
Speaker 1: has a gray paint that Rock Island told this is
Speaker 1: the original gray paint and it has about ninety five
Speaker 1: percent of that left on it. So those are the
Speaker 1: punt gun stats, all right, Chase Howard says, if you
Speaker 1: can answer what's the overall cost per shot? We had
Speaker 1: six shells, Max and Seth take a guess as to
Speaker 1: each what each one of those shells costs?
Speaker 6: Was in it?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: It was filled with It was a little over half
Speaker 1: a pound of number six bismuth, and the shells were
Speaker 1: made of brass that I think was nickel plated. So
Speaker 1: that's that's the what we're working with. And yet it
Speaker 1: was a nine inch shell half a pound of number
Speaker 1: six bismuth. What do you think that cost us forty
Speaker 1: five bucks a pop for way way more? Take another guess.
Speaker 1: I'll give you some more context. The punt gun came
Speaker 1: with one singular spench shell that seemed to be original
Speaker 1: to the gun. Like that shell that came with the
Speaker 1: gun was probably fired out of that gun. It was
Speaker 1: made for that gun. You know, one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: years ago. That's we had that thing to work off of.
Speaker 1: We had to pay a machinist an engineer to do
Speaker 1: some cad drawings for us to figure out what the
Speaker 1: best materials are ship this thing across the country, which
Speaker 1: they didn't ship. They actually drove it over here personally
Speaker 1: because it was like basically an explosive. At that point.
Speaker 1: We joked about this. I don't think it was ever
Speaker 1: in the film, but like when you're handling one of these,
Speaker 1: you're like, do not drop that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, so take another.
Speaker 2: Guess you said one. Wow, after all that, imagine if
Speaker 2: it was TSS in there.
Speaker 1: Imagine like, what does a TSSHLL cost right now? Twenty bucks?
Speaker 2: It's very around that fifteen buck yeah.
Speaker 3: Like two twenty.
Speaker 1: One thousand dollars. It was one thousand and thirty two
Speaker 1: dollars shell. Oh god, okay, so that's roughly here.
Speaker 2: Here's waste that much money on a shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think I didn't know it until Chase Howard
Speaker 1: asked this question. I I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: probably like, you know, two hundred bucks a shell. And
Speaker 1: I went and looked up our invoice. It was four
Speaker 1: hundred This is per shell, four hundred and seventy dollars
Speaker 1: in materials, four hundred eighty dollars in fabrication and assembly,
Speaker 1: and then a five hundred dollars flat fee for doing
Speaker 1: the cad work to make it all possible. So divided
Speaker 1: by six, that's another eighty dollars per shell, for a
Speaker 1: grand total of over one thousand dollars a shell.
Speaker 3: We're way off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but surely they didn't cost that much back then,
Speaker 2: and when people were actually using punk.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't fathom.
Speaker 7: That they did, just if you adjust for although my
Speaker 7: bet it was expensive because a lot of a lot
Speaker 7: of punk guns back then were loaded through the barrel
Speaker 7: right like you drop down a scoopful of gunpowder and
Speaker 7: then like a probably a cardboard wad, and then a
Speaker 7: handful of pellets.
Speaker 1: Ours is breech loading, so it's loaded more like a
Speaker 1: traditional shotgun. I bet those things were expensive to make
Speaker 1: back then as well.
Speaker 4: I wonder if you get, if you get a flock
Speaker 4: of ducks on the water, how many rounds of like
Speaker 4: twelve gage bismuth would it take to kill the amount
Speaker 4: of ducks one shot of the punt gun killed?
Speaker 2: Good we'll never know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty thousand dollars punt gun, and then you know
Speaker 1: it only takes twenty shells to equal the price of that.
Speaker 1: Now with our auction, when we auction this thing off
Speaker 1: in August, you are getting one of the spent shells.
Speaker 1: Actually you're getting two. You're getting the OG one that
Speaker 1: we based our modern ones off of, and then you're
Speaker 1: getting one of those modern spent shells. That way, if
Speaker 1: you want to shoot this thing, you can go have
Speaker 1: your thousand dollars shells made as well. All right, eighty
Speaker 1: six Spencer says, did you figure out approximately how big
Speaker 1: the spread would be or it's lethal distance? Our first
Speaker 1: shot was to determine exactly that. I think we wound up.
Speaker 1: It was like an eight foot by eight foot spread
Speaker 1: at thirty yards. If you were gonna shoot a twelve
Speaker 1: gauge at thirty yards, max would like a thirty inch spread.
Speaker 1: Is that what you'd expect? Yeah, I mean, I know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of factors and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, different chokes and stuff, but yeah, I mean you're probably,
Speaker 2: if not maybe like a forty.
Speaker 1: Inch okay, thirty or forty inch spread at thirty yards
Speaker 1: or the twelve gauge, So we were like three or.
Speaker 2: Four that's probably a pretty open choke probably, Yeah, So like.
Speaker 1: Four x that was our spread. As you'll see in
Speaker 1: the film. We do some different tests to be like
Speaker 1: if we were shooting ducks on water, which which we
Speaker 1: replicate with balloons, we put balloons from like twenty yards
Speaker 1: out to eighty yards. We pop the balloons out at
Speaker 1: eighty yards lethal distance. I bet you could kill a
Speaker 1: duck with a BB in the right place at one
Speaker 1: hundred yards, don't you think. Yeah, like if one of
Speaker 1: those found the brain of a mallard, Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: dead mallard at one hundred yards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would have been interesting to.
Speaker 4: Maybe do like a water melon at one hundred yards,
Speaker 4: just to see like how, yeah, the penetrate of those
Speaker 4: pellets or you know something that could you can measure
Speaker 4: the penetration or ballistics jail or something, yeah at one
Speaker 4: hundred Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think if if a punk gunner used this, they
Speaker 1: would like kill some ducks dead dead at twenty yards,
Speaker 1: Like those things would be obliterated, probably not even gonna
Speaker 1: make it to market, and then they would have some that,
Speaker 1: you know, just get one BB in the right place
Speaker 1: beyond one hundred yards, but I bet they were wounding.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I was thinking about this earlier. I
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, so after like one or two shots
Speaker 2: of the punk gun, is like, what are they gonna
Speaker 2: do with all the cripples? You know, they have to
Speaker 2: like round those up too.
Speaker 3: Or maybe they had some shotguns in the boat.
Speaker 2: I would have to imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine at the edge of that spread, it's
Speaker 1: just like you're probably wounding maybe as many as you're killing.
Speaker 1: At that point. There's just a lot of ducks that
Speaker 1: aren't probably flying away from that scenario, but aren't dead either.
Speaker 1: Silas Hayes says, do you think your punt gun was used?
Speaker 1: If so, and where We're gonna talk about this with
Speaker 1: Rock Island a little later. But the peak punt gun
Speaker 1: era was roughly from eighteen eighty to nineteen ten. That's
Speaker 1: in both North America and Europe. Our gun is from
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five, so it comes around like right at
Speaker 1: the beginning of when punt gunning was really hot. Now
Speaker 1: our gun shows some signs of use, like there's a
Speaker 1: little chipping in the paint, it's missing a screw, it
Speaker 1: has signs of where it places where it would be
Speaker 1: attached to something. A lot of punt guns at that
Speaker 1: time like wound up just in the bottom of lakes,
Speaker 1: in the bottom of rivers and the bottom of estuaries.
Speaker 1: Ours survived one hundred and forty years, so I don't
Speaker 1: think it was used a ton, but I bet it
Speaker 1: shot into some flocks of birds. And someone along the
Speaker 1: way thought that the engraving was potentially a custom job
Speaker 1: on our punt gun. It got a handle, it's got yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's got a walnut stock that's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: twelve inches long or so, that's got some engraving. And
Speaker 1: then there's some engraving around where the barrel meets the
Speaker 1: stock as well, and someone pointed that out and there
Speaker 1: like that that looks like it would be custom. You know,
Speaker 1: that was a special order to Holland.
Speaker 6: In Holland.
Speaker 1: The other thing I learned is when you look at
Speaker 1: the punt gun history, you'll find there were obviously like
Speaker 1: these were used by blue collar hunters that were making
Speaker 1: a living off of selling ducks and geese. You'll find
Speaker 1: instances though, where they're sort of like punt gun tourists
Speaker 1: who are, you know, a well off newspaper owner in London.
Speaker 1: In London, like a well off banker in England who
Speaker 1: just wants to experience the thrill of doing a punt
Speaker 1: gun hunt without any evidence at all. I think that's
Speaker 1: who bought this punt. I think it's one of those
Speaker 1: folks who like they weren't doing this for a living,
Speaker 1: but they enjoyed, you know, hunting and the outdoors, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to go try this sporting thing, so they
Speaker 1: like you know, commissioned Holland and Holland to make them
Speaker 1: a beautiful punk gun with some customer engravings, and then
Speaker 1: I bet they went and used it a few things.
Speaker 1: But I don't think this was used by like a
Speaker 1: market hunter who was living in a shack and this
Speaker 1: was like his bread living. Yeah, for making it.
Speaker 4: I wonder you said Rock Island said that that paint
Speaker 4: on there was original.
Speaker 1: They said it was original, which I think when most
Speaker 1: people look at that, they're like, no, that came around later.
Speaker 1: Rock Island said it was rigil and they estimated ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of it was left.
Speaker 4: I wonder, see when I looked at it and I
Speaker 4: just it looks like someone put it on there. It does,
Speaker 4: and I wonder if that is the case that this
Speaker 4: punk gun was used, like maybe Chesapeake Bay salt water.
Speaker 3: Sure if they put that paint on there the ceiling
Speaker 3: from getting rusty.
Speaker 1: You're right, yeah, it's it's almost. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: shocking to hear that that's original paint because you're like, no,
Speaker 1: somebody came around in like nineteen sixty and thought they
Speaker 1: were like sprucing it up. And it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: have any way to confirm this, but it looks like
Speaker 1: a thick amount of paint too, like multiple coats of
Speaker 1: gray paint went on that barrel.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: So to answer the question from Silas about was it used,
Speaker 1: I think it was used, uh, but not used a
Speaker 1: ton r next question was from Mike Stefan, How did
Speaker 1: you know it wasn't going to explode and were you
Speaker 1: worried about it exploding?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Seth and Max were there every time we shot
Speaker 1: it that first time. Were you guys worried?
Speaker 3: I was? I was behind a vehicle.
Speaker 1: I was not.
Speaker 2: I was film and Steven Spencer their reaction, so I wasn't.
Speaker 2: My back was to the gun and everything is just
Speaker 2: like fingers crossed. This doesn't explode.
Speaker 3: I was worried.
Speaker 4: I wasn't worried like the the barrel was going to
Speaker 4: explode or anything. I was worried about the integrity of
Speaker 4: the breach. Yeah, like stuff blown out the back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit of this shows up in the cut.
Speaker 1: But the first time we went to shoot the gun,
Speaker 1: it was like a pretty cold day, and I guess
Speaker 1: we hadn't fully confirmed that the shells fit inside of
Speaker 1: the barrel at that point. So we get there and
Speaker 1: we realize that it's just like very very close, but
Speaker 1: it's not making it in the barrel. So Steve starts,
Speaker 1: you know, taking gunk out of the barrel, which is
Speaker 1: why we also thought it was used, because it had
Speaker 1: some build up as though it had been shot in
Speaker 1: the past. And I'm sandpapering the shell and We're just
Speaker 1: like trying to get rid of some millimeters to make
Speaker 1: this thing work and eventually work. But that's what you
Speaker 1: were concerned about.
Speaker 3: Seth Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we're just like doing a lot of manipulating
Speaker 1: in the field trying to make it come to Yeah.
Speaker 2: After that first shot, we like slowly trusted the gun
Speaker 2: more and more. You know, we like our rope trunk
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, we got by shell number six. When Seth
Speaker 1: and Max shoot, they're like touching the gun full trust.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't so much concerned about an explosion. But
Speaker 1: I guess what I was mildly concerned about was the
Speaker 1: recoil of it. You have to let a gun like
Speaker 1: produce recoil, You have to let it buck a little bit.
Speaker 1: If you don't, if you just clamp everything down as
Speaker 1: tight as possible, you're just like stressing out the mechanics
Speaker 1: of the gun. That's that's not good for it. And
Speaker 1: so we're like, I feel like walking a tightrope trying
Speaker 1: to let the gun recoil, but not recoil too much
Speaker 1: where it like becomes a danger to us. And so
Speaker 1: that felt like a balancing act. What we ended up
Speaker 1: doing was we I found out later it's called a trunnion.
Speaker 1: A trunnion is what that connecting point is called.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: We had a fabricator, uh Travis Fabrication here in Bozeman
Speaker 1: who made us Spartan, Travis bart Barton Fabrication. He built
Speaker 1: us a mount that we get attached to a trailer
Speaker 1: and then we had some sandbags on that trailer. Uh
Speaker 1: and and my concern with the recoil wasn't warranted. It
Speaker 1: all worked out well. The gun was able to rise
Speaker 1: when it shot. We had to go back and cite
Speaker 1: it in each time, so worried about it exploding a
Speaker 1: little bit. And and as you see in the film,
Speaker 1: like the first time that we shoot it, Steve attaches
Speaker 1: a rope to it. That was his dad's tree stand rope.
Speaker 1: Like his dad would be in a tree stand he
Speaker 1: needs to bring his bow up. That was the rope
Speaker 1: we used. And as you guys point out, and then I.
Speaker 2: Think we tied another rope onto that. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: get us further back.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. It didn't feel like the original rope was
Speaker 1: going to be the difference between us, like losing an
Speaker 1: arm or not. Okay, next question was from Billy the
Speaker 1: Kid Rock that's a great name. He says, do you
Speaker 1: think the punt gun would be good for hunting anything
Speaker 1: besides ducks?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: What snow geese?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean just another form of waterfall. But I don't
Speaker 2: know anything else.
Speaker 4: What's those like starlings or sparrows that are invasive? They're
Speaker 4: always all bunched up. I bet you could you could and.
Speaker 2: They do those big waves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can hurt on those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can do a hurting on the flock of
Speaker 2: winter turkey.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that was the absolute perfect thing. Like any
Speaker 1: short of an elephant, You could kill anything with a
Speaker 1: punt gun. But the ideal scenario is using it what
Speaker 1: they use it for, which is like, you know, sneaking
Speaker 1: into a flock of ducks on the water and doing
Speaker 1: one shot that brings down a hundred of them at
Speaker 1: a time. Some historians think that that is where the
Speaker 1: phrase get your ducks in a row comes from. It's
Speaker 1: from punt gunners waiting until they felt like they were
Speaker 1: at the perfect spot in the flock to pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking about what else it would be
Speaker 1: good for turkeys in like the fall or the winter.
Speaker 1: I can recall it a deer hunt I was in
Speaker 1: in the Black Hills in late November, where all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I found myself in the middle of a
Speaker 1: flock of turkeys that must have been like one hundred
Speaker 1: to two hundred turkeys, and they were just all around me,
Speaker 1: and they were moving past me, and they were like
Speaker 1: mildly aware of my presence, but obviously they felt some
Speaker 1: comfort in their numbers. If you had a punt gun
Speaker 1: in that situation, you'd been eating turkeys for years, lots
Speaker 1: of Thanksgiving meals.
Speaker 4: I one time back in Pennsylvania, we had a hard
Speaker 4: winter and it was like a deep, crusty snow, and
Speaker 4: there was this one farmer that was spreading manure on
Speaker 4: the fields, like on top of the snow.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 4: And there was a winter flock there that I like
Speaker 4: quick counting at like nine hundred birds.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like birds came from all over just to
Speaker 4: be there.
Speaker 1: That would be the perfect scenario to use a punt gun.
Speaker 1: Or if you were like baiting feral hogs for example.
Speaker 1: I think anything that you were baiting and like creating
Speaker 1: a congregation of critters in one spot, that would be
Speaker 1: the ideal use.
Speaker 4: Ye'd imagine you could size up shot in those things
Speaker 4: and put like buckshot in there, right definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, you could probably do like a turkey load equivalent,
Speaker 1: you know, where it's like different varying sizes of pellets
Speaker 1: all at once. Now, like the punt gun thing, though
Speaker 1: it fought, they become illegal in North America in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: That's when the Migratory Bird Act comes around, the reality
Speaker 1: is they start to fall out of fashion. Before that,
Speaker 1: you have pump pump shotguns show up in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Semiato shotguns and the early nineteen hundreds, and the market
Speaker 1: hunters who were using these they kind of learn that actually,
Speaker 1: we can be more efficient, we have to plan less logistically,
Speaker 1: it's cheaper, it's easier to use if we just go
Speaker 1: out with a shotgun we can hold against our shoulder, like,
Speaker 1: we can be better market hunters in that case. So
Speaker 1: when you're talking about like the punt gun being outlawed,
Speaker 1: folks were starting to go away from it, like before
Speaker 1: it actually becomes illegal, and now you know this has
Speaker 1: been the case since nineteen eighteen or ten gauge is
Speaker 1: the biggest shotgun that you can use if market hunting
Speaker 1: was still allowed today, though, I don't think you'd see
Speaker 1: guys out there with the punt gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just not efficient.
Speaker 1: No, as you can see when you know when they
Speaker 1: cost one thousand dollars per shell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't worry. Okay, crank Jobs says, what was the
Speaker 1: most un expected thing you learned from the experience? You
Speaker 1: guys have any thoughts on this when we were shooting it.
Speaker 3: Honestly, the the damage it did to the watermelons was
Speaker 3: a little unexpected.
Speaker 1: You thought, more or less.
Speaker 4: I thought I thought it would be less for some reason.
Speaker 4: I just thought the pattern wouldn't be that.
Speaker 3: I don't remember how far we were away from.
Speaker 1: Them, he was like thirty yards thirty.
Speaker 4: I just thought the pattern would be more spread and
Speaker 4: it would just be like a bunch of holes.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 4: That. And another thing I did not expect was how
Speaker 4: like I expected it to be way louder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was kind of like a soft boom.
Speaker 1: Yeah. With that said, though, there were still I think
Speaker 1: we experienced this and I don't know which shot, but
Speaker 1: pellets came back at us.
Speaker 3: I think it was pigeons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And someone someone noted that like, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: hit in the shoulder with the one, Like oh, I
Speaker 1: heard it bounce off the vehicles. So there was there
Speaker 1: was a certain amount of that. Anything surprised you max
Speaker 1: when we shot it, I would say, just the pattern
Speaker 1: and how good it was, you know, Like I was
Speaker 1: very impressed at thirty five yards, Like when we get
Speaker 1: those paper light up targets, I was very impressed.
Speaker 2: I was like, Wow, that could do some damage, you know,
Speaker 2: like I could see why people use that right, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, Seth brought up the water moltain. That's
Speaker 1: the final thing in the film that we shoot, and
Speaker 1: that kind of goes back to the genesis of the
Speaker 1: punt gun. Immediately four or five years agoing to start
Speaker 1: talking about this, Steve was like, we gotta shoot water melons.
Speaker 1: We gotta do the Gallagher bit. We got we gotta
Speaker 1: go blow up a bunch of watermelons. And then that
Speaker 1: also allowed Steve to explain to people who Gallagher is,
Speaker 1: which I think he enjoyed equally as much as actually
Speaker 1: calling you trigger to shoot the way He's like.
Speaker 3: You don't know Gallagher?
Speaker 1: What Gallagher?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 5: It's not how much Steve talks about Gallagher. I think
Speaker 5: that's the only comedian.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone knew what he was talking about.
Speaker 2: I will admit I did not know what he was
Speaker 2: talking about, and then like figured it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I would only like my exposure to Gallagher was
Speaker 1: from secondhand references, like your family guy would do a
Speaker 1: bit about Gallagher, I'd be like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: who you know Gallagher?
Speaker 5: He famously walked out of a Mark Marrin podcast it
Speaker 5: was and got really mad. Oh yeah, it's a fun listen.
Speaker 5: He lasts like twenty minutes and then storms out.
Speaker 1: What would possibly make him so because what wasn't this
Speaker 1: thing was?
Speaker 5: But it was just sort of like, what's the deal
Speaker 5: with all the water? Like he was just kind of
Speaker 5: he was kind of poking him, he wasking the bear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I don't think we wouldn't be doing this
Speaker 1: podcast today. We wouldn't have bought the punt gun if
Speaker 1: Gallagher didn't exist, just because Steve was like so excited,
Speaker 1: infatuated with the idea of.
Speaker 2: I think you got to tell people who galligator Gallagher is.
Speaker 2: I think what he does.
Speaker 1: Steve has said this million times. He would smash watermelons
Speaker 1: on stage, and you would like, you know, wear a
Speaker 1: raincoat if you were in the front row because you
Speaker 1: were going to get you know, covered in watermelon. Am
Speaker 1: I getting that right? Phil?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean I think it was more than watermelon. That
Speaker 5: the watermelon was the thing that that that caught on
Speaker 5: and that's what people remember. But it was all kinds
Speaker 5: of fruit, Spencer, not just water milk.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, we shoot watermelons in the film. Most unexpected
Speaker 1: thing for me was like during this research, I was
Speaker 1: I was learning, you know, about the market hunting era,
Speaker 1: and when it comes to ducks, there was only a
Speaker 1: little bit of value with the feathers. The meat was
Speaker 1: the main product. If these ducks didn't have the meat
Speaker 1: that they had, like this market would not have existed
Speaker 1: because the feathers weren't valuable enough on their own. The
Speaker 1: duck meat is what paid the bills, and there was
Speaker 1: like a very clear hierarchy in the prices. What would
Speaker 1: you say is like the best tasting duck Max in
Speaker 1: North America?
Speaker 2: Well, I think you asked someone it's going to be something,
Speaker 2: and then you ask another person it'll be something different.
Speaker 1: Mask and Max.
Speaker 2: I'm just explained myself, But yeah, I think wood ducks
Speaker 2: and mallards are my favorite.
Speaker 1: Would you say the same thing? Okay, Well, the prices
Speaker 1: like kind of show you what the American palette was
Speaker 1: at that point. A plover that's a shore bird that
Speaker 1: you'd see it's, you know, like a little marshmallow with
Speaker 1: toothpick legs out on a gravel bar in the Missouri River.
Speaker 1: Those cost twenty five cents per plover is what you
Speaker 1: would get to see that is nine dollars per plover
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six. Appetizer an appetizer, sure, yeah, not
Speaker 1: a highly respected bird, which is the other thing you
Speaker 1: learned is that these guys weren't just killing ducks and geese.
Speaker 1: They were killing herons, seagulls, shore birds, all kinds of
Speaker 1: different stuff. So a plover was worth a quarter nine
Speaker 1: dollars today, a snipe was only a little more valuable
Speaker 1: at thirty cents a snipe teal wood ducks and wigeons,
Speaker 1: that's what Max said would be his top pick would
Speaker 1: be a wood duck that was seventy five cents per pair,
Speaker 1: so less than forty cents per wood duck, which is
Speaker 1: only slightly more valuable than a snipe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, I don't agree with that. The
Speaker 2: prices should have been a little higher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So black ducks those were a dollar, mallards
Speaker 1: were a dollar twenty five, and then the ones that
Speaker 1: everybody cared about was canvas backs and redheads. Those were
Speaker 1: a dollar seventy five apiece, which is the equivalent of
Speaker 1: sixty two dollars today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sixty two dollars for me, I feel like I
Speaker 4: used to do some hunting on the Chesapeake Bay Back
Speaker 4: I live in Pennsylvania, and like the duck to kill
Speaker 4: was a canvas.
Speaker 2: Back king of ducks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like people are still after him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so these ducks. If you were a market hunter
Speaker 1: in Chesapeake Bay and say you went, you know, punt
Speaker 1: gunning for a night and you killed one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty ducks, those ducks would then either be salted or
Speaker 1: iced and then put on a train, and then they
Speaker 1: would wind up in some of your premier cities in
Speaker 1: the Midwest and East coast, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, New York.
Speaker 1: And then these would go to like the finest dining restaurants,
Speaker 1: and what they cared about were canvas backs and redheads
Speaker 1: also read. And those prices, I should explain, those came
Speaker 1: from a Good Housekeeping magazine in eighteen eighty six, that's
Speaker 1: one year after our punt gun was made, and they
Speaker 1: said that's what you would sell them for in New York.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I learned is that ducks fetched
Speaker 1: a higher price if they came from a place with
Speaker 1: lots of wild celery. Apparently they thought that like a
Speaker 1: duck eating wild celery ate better? Is that your experience, Max, I've.
Speaker 2: Never experienced a ducking wild celery, but I remember hearing
Speaker 2: about that, just like that East Coast region, Like that's
Speaker 2: what those diver ducks would do.
Speaker 1: The three premier regions that I saw, like, if you
Speaker 1: kill a duck in this zone, that's gonna fetch the
Speaker 1: highest price. That's what the restaurants want. It was the
Speaker 1: Upper Chesapeake, Wisconsin's Lake kanash Kanang, and then Texas's Lake Surprise.
Speaker 2: Really apparently those were like all sorts of different regions though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, what I feel like when I hear people
Speaker 1: talk about wood duck being the best tasting duck, which
Speaker 1: is that's not an uncommon opinion that Max has. People
Speaker 1: would say it's because they eat a lot of acorns.
Speaker 1: Is that like what you would think it is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've had ducks that eat pond scum
Speaker 2: tastes like crap, But then also ducks that eat corn
Speaker 2: taste really good, you know, So I feel like some
Speaker 2: of that has to play a factor in it. But
Speaker 2: I think the wood ducks there's just a good ratio
Speaker 2: of meat to fat. Okay, just because they're a smaller duck.
Speaker 2: I think the biggest ratio of meat to fat is
Speaker 2: obviously a teal, like a big fat green wing teal
Speaker 2: is just like just a small small amount of meat
Speaker 2: and just like lots of fat and a lot of
Speaker 2: people like this.
Speaker 1: Is it different for like a blue wing or a cinnamon.
Speaker 2: Well, I said the green wing teal just because they're
Speaker 2: the most hearty, and a lot of times, like during
Speaker 2: the migration, you'll see the cinnamon teal, the blueing teal
Speaker 2: go first all the way down to southern Texas, this
Speaker 2: even down to parts of Central America, and then the
Speaker 2: green wing till they'll be up here hanging with the
Speaker 2: mallards in December, some of them, not all of them.
Speaker 3: So they just get more fat, yeah, they later.
Speaker 1: Well, the wild celery is what was driving the market
Speaker 1: back then. Max. If you were a punt gunner, I'll
Speaker 1: explain how they were used a little bit. A lot
Speaker 1: of times it was used like either just after dark
Speaker 1: or just before sunrise, so that the punt gunner could
Speaker 1: like paddle into the area and be real stealthy without
Speaker 1: being seen. They had to allow for four yards of
Speaker 1: water behind them because that's how much recoil these produced.
Speaker 1: If you were a punt gunner, no rules, Max. You
Speaker 1: can be in a national park in August if you want.
Speaker 1: Where are you taking that thing? Uh?
Speaker 2: Probably somewhere in the Central Flyway during the springtime hunt
Speaker 2: snow geese. Oh okay, Yeah. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: could do it it on ducks because I like him
Speaker 2: so much, but snowgee's are already a new sense, you know,
Speaker 2: and so I feel like I would just go carp
Speaker 2: the sky. Yeah, I would go after snowgies just because
Speaker 2: like they're knowing to roost in large numbers, and I
Speaker 2: feel like it would be a good time. But I
Speaker 2: would have three punt guns, oh okay, one on the water,
Speaker 2: one slightly above and one slightly aimed above that like a.
Speaker 1: Twenty degree angle, and then like yeah, so.
Speaker 2: You smoke them on the water, they all get up,
Speaker 2: get another one, and then a third shot off.
Speaker 1: What if you were trying to play the market though,
Speaker 1: and have a bunch of canvas backs or red.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, then I would definitely go to the chestapeak
Speaker 2: and you would find some canvas backs.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, set any thoughts on if you were a
Speaker 1: punt gunner.
Speaker 3: Where I'd go?
Speaker 1: Where you take that thing?
Speaker 3: I'd go that little hole that I hunted with you,
Speaker 3: Max at one time.
Speaker 1: Okay, I could even say what state you were in. No,
Speaker 1: I like that, Max.
Speaker 2: No, there's it's just a small warm water creek that
Speaker 2: well it was a pond, but there was a warm
Speaker 2: water creek flowing into it. I don't think you could
Speaker 2: fit another Mallard into it.
Speaker 1: Could you get a punk gun there if you had to?
Speaker 3: You couldn't have a boat, you can, ye, it.
Speaker 2: Would be like a canyon or just like roll it
Speaker 2: up on wheels, okay, like a fork gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the things we shooting, we don't get to shoot
Speaker 1: any any live animals, uh in the video, but we
Speaker 1: shoot some paper targets to show you it'd spread. We
Speaker 1: shoot the clay pigeons. There's there's sort of a clay
Speaker 1: pigeon disaster that that you'll watch on the video. We
Speaker 1: shoot the water melons, and then we also shoot some hats. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are hats that say this hat was shot by
Speaker 1: a punt gun. And and now we are going to
Speaker 1: sell those in the auction House of Oddities. The Auction
Speaker 1: House of Audities is going to be happening sometime in
Speaker 1: early July. Here they're not going to be auctioned off
Speaker 1: the hats. They're just going to have a buy it
Speaker 1: now price. There are only seventy three of them, and
Speaker 1: when they're gone, they're gone. And when you do buy one,
Speaker 1: you just get a random hat. Some of these were
Speaker 1: absolutely destroyed that they have, you know, twenty five pellet
Speaker 1: holes in them. If you if you shake them a little,
Speaker 1: you'll hear the bebes that are still in.
Speaker 3: Like the bill, you can you can see some of
Speaker 3: the bebes too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. The hats they have a leather patch
Speaker 1: on them. That's where it says this hat was shop
Speaker 1: by a punk gun. Some of those leather patches just
Speaker 1: like absorbed the bb It looked like, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: was the hand of God and just put it there
Speaker 1: and pressed it in with their thumb. So anyway, we
Speaker 1: have these hats for sale. There's other ones that only
Speaker 1: got one or two straight pellets in them. If you
Speaker 1: want to go buy one of these, when they're gone,
Speaker 1: they're gone. There's seventy three of them in the auction
Speaker 1: house of bodies. You're just getting a random hat. Probably
Speaker 1: going to sell them for seventy five dollars a piece.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds steep, but every penny is going
Speaker 1: into the land Access Access Initiative, so you're funding a
Speaker 1: good cause. We're also selling the punt gun shells in
Speaker 1: the auction house as well. We're gonna have three of
Speaker 1: them that are for sale again. This will be in
Speaker 1: early July when that's happening. You guys have any other
Speaker 1: thoughts before we do our interview with Joel from Rock Island.
Speaker 2: Glad to be a part of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that might be the I'm assuming it will be
Speaker 4: the last punt gun I ever shoot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this person last, first and last. And you guys
Speaker 1: got a video of you doing it together.
Speaker 2: It's teamwork, all right.
Speaker 1: The video is available right now on our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: Now let's do our interview with Joel Calander.
Speaker 6: All right.
Speaker 1: Joining us on the line is Joel Calander, the interactive
Speaker 1: production manager from Rock Island Auction. Rock Island is who
Speaker 1: will be selling our punt gun later this summer, with
Speaker 1: proceeds going to the Meat Eater Land Access Initiative. Joel,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: That's good to be back. Good to talk to you again.
Speaker 1: Now our punt gun will be for sale at the
Speaker 1: August premiere Firearms auction, tell us about that event.
Speaker 8: Sure, that's our big summer premiere auctually have three premiere
Speaker 8: auctions here. This one's August twenty first, twenty third. It's
Speaker 8: gonna be about seventeen hundred items. It's a three day sale.
Speaker 8: It's an absolute, absolute event at our in person venue
Speaker 8: there in Bedford, Texas. So if you're in the area, heck,
Speaker 8: even if you're not in the area, come on down
Speaker 8: it is. They're always open to the public. If you
Speaker 8: can't make it down like and if someone wants to
Speaker 8: bit on the punk gun or see better photos of it,
Speaker 8: of course, you can always go to the website for photos,
Speaker 8: for more information, of course, to place bids on those items.
Speaker 1: Okay, so a few months away from selling the thing,
Speaker 1: give us a guess as to what the punt gun
Speaker 1: will sell for.
Speaker 8: So the good news is you have kind of an
Speaker 8: idea already right within the last couple of years. That's
Speaker 8: a pretty good comparison because the actual gun sold in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty two. That said, our estimate now is a
Speaker 8: little bit higher. We got believe a pre auctionssment at
Speaker 8: least could change. We're still we're working on that sale
Speaker 8: right now. Between twenty and thirty thousand. Okay, I think
Speaker 8: there's there's a couple of things that go into that
Speaker 8: one tied to you guys, and you know, you guys
Speaker 8: are a pretty popular thing now do it's uh, I
Speaker 8: got evidence that it's a that it's a functional unk gun,
Speaker 8: which there are too many of these.
Speaker 6: I mean, there are too many punt guns. In general.
Speaker 6: They're a rare item.
Speaker 8: So to have one that's documented and functionals has a.
Speaker 6: Piece of brass with it, that's always a plus.
Speaker 8: And it's actually surprisingly good condition for a punk gun.
Speaker 8: As you know, those things are often in a quat
Speaker 8: environments and often salt water environments. So to have one
Speaker 8: like this with that paint and it's a Holland and Island,
Speaker 8: I think that's that's all going to help the value
Speaker 8: for that. Oh and it's appearing alongside a lot of
Speaker 8: really just top of the line sporting arms, both for
Speaker 8: wing shooting and for a big game.
Speaker 6: So start sporting arms go this August.
Speaker 8: That punt gun is gonna be a headliner and it's
Speaker 8: it's in very good company.
Speaker 1: Okay, very excited. I'll be tuning in for that action paint.
Speaker 1: Just a picture for the type of that is looking
Speaker 1: to spend twenty thousand or thirty thousand on a punt
Speaker 1: gun that they may never shoot. Who is that person?
Speaker 6: Sure, we actually seek quite a bit of this.
Speaker 8: Of course, collectors is the easy answer, right, we're at
Speaker 8: auction house for find a historic firearms, so colectors is easy,
Speaker 8: and we'll kind of collectors. Well, of course you have
Speaker 8: sporting arms collectors. You see that with premier brands today,
Speaker 8: Holland and Holland, Purdy, Rigby, some of those more famous names,
Speaker 8: Kriegof and what have you. So sporting arms specifically though,
Speaker 8: you may find ones for British sporting arms. You might
Speaker 8: find one specifically for British best quality firearms or even
Speaker 8: London gun makers. You may also find someone who just
Speaker 8: loves wing shooting, whether that's you know, American, there's a
Speaker 8: bunch of publications of course here Stateside to focus.
Speaker 6: On just wing shooting and hunting. You might find that
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 8: And then there's just people who like big display pieces
Speaker 8: or things that go boom. You know, a functional piece
Speaker 8: has going to kill to a lot of people as well.
Speaker 8: So there's pretty good again, pretty good gamut of the
Speaker 8: cross sections of colectors there.
Speaker 1: Okay, we hope it's competitive that day. Give us some
Speaker 1: history of Rock Island auction and punt guns. How often
Speaker 1: do you have one come up for sale?
Speaker 6: So the short answer is not very often.
Speaker 8: And you know, way back when I first started, I
Speaker 8: think we said we sold, you know, some right around
Speaker 8: forty thousand guns a year at auction. We been here
Speaker 8: thirteen years, so that number is if it hasn't double that,
Speaker 8: I'd be very surprised. That's the number one in the
Speaker 8: world for what we do. But throughout checked our records
Speaker 8: prior to this and just to see how many punt guns,
Speaker 8: it's barely barely over two dozen.
Speaker 6: Wow, the coming Yeah, if you're.
Speaker 8: Selling tens of thousands of guns year and that few
Speaker 8: are punt guns, so not a lot of them remain
Speaker 8: one because again we mentioned already those those kind of
Speaker 8: initial rough conditions. These are guns that are they're working
Speaker 8: guns in saltwater conditions. And then two, of course, it
Speaker 8: speaks to the to the legislation. If you can't use
Speaker 8: these punt guns, you know what, what are they for
Speaker 8: a lot of people lose the sort of luster of ownership.
Speaker 8: So at least when they weren't in practical use anymore.
Speaker 8: So I'm not not too many punk guns floating around anymore.
Speaker 6: Even that comes through our doors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when we bought ours, there were two
Speaker 1: punt guns up for sale that week, and previously we
Speaker 1: bought it in twenty twenty two. Prior to that, I
Speaker 1: think someone there had told me that twenty sixteen was
Speaker 1: the last time you guys had sold one. So less
Speaker 1: than one punt gun a year, it seems like.
Speaker 6: That's fair. I mean, you know, you get ones like that.
Speaker 8: We have two and a sale most likely a single
Speaker 8: collector who's had more than one. So yeah, but less
Speaker 8: of one punk good here as since we've opened, and
Speaker 8: we've been opened since nineteen ninety three, that's a that's
Speaker 8: a safe estimate.
Speaker 1: Now, how does the size of our punt gun compared
Speaker 1: to the other ones that you guys have sold.
Speaker 8: There's so many jokes to be made here, but I
Speaker 8: will say it's.
Speaker 6: Bigger than average.
Speaker 8: I mean, we have the there's a lot of the
Speaker 8: seven eight, there's a lot of the seven foot range.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of the eight foot range.
Speaker 8: Not of course, you know any source you read, they
Speaker 8: always want to site the biggest, right, you know, these
Speaker 8: are twelve foot guns. These are ten foot guns, and
Speaker 8: they're the forger an inch wide, and they killed you
Speaker 8: know this, many hundred things at once.
Speaker 6: You know, those are those are the exceptions. That's one
Speaker 6: end of the scale.
Speaker 8: But punt guns, I mean, just as a genre, are
Speaker 8: so varied because they were in use for so long,
Speaker 8: I'm sorry for through so many sort of periods of development,
Speaker 8: right by so many different groups of people, through so
Speaker 8: many different firearm technologies on. So it runs the gamut.
Speaker 8: I mean, you get people who were using them more commercially,
Speaker 8: so very very large, you know, the many the most
Speaker 8: birds you could take down, the more money you were
Speaker 8: bringing in, yeah, during those commercial hunting days. And then
Speaker 8: you had people who are just trying to in their
Speaker 8: earlier days, just trying to make an extra buck and
Speaker 8: maybe put some meat on the table for their family too,
Speaker 8: So they're a little bit smaller at that point. Here's
Speaker 8: I didn't have the full measurement. I have a barrel
Speaker 8: measurement eighty five and a half inches, which puts it
Speaker 8: about seven foot. You know, once you add that sort
Speaker 8: of tiller or or stock that's on the back, that
Speaker 8: saturn extra twelve eighteen inches so, uh, it's right in
Speaker 8: there with a lot of good seven and eight footers.
Speaker 6: The biggest one that we had.
Speaker 8: Was like just over just over nine foot nine foot
Speaker 8: seven and a half inches. So there's somehoozies come through
Speaker 8: the direct for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, at some point before we bought the gun, someone
Speaker 1: from your team told me that you will often have
Speaker 1: sellers that come to you guys with what they call
Speaker 1: a punt gun, but in reality they have a pigeon
Speaker 1: gun or a fort gun. So what is the difference
Speaker 1: between those three things, a pigeon gun, a fort gun,
Speaker 1: and a punt gun.
Speaker 8: We're getting into the collecting knitty GrITT here, and that's
Speaker 8: what we're here for.
Speaker 6: I love it. Pigeon guns.
Speaker 8: They're gonna there's gonna be some intersection too, because eventually,
Speaker 8: when people were punting, anything that you could use that
Speaker 8: would get you close to ducks on a punt and
Speaker 8: take down more than one duck at once could have
Speaker 8: seen used as a punt gun. Right if you were
Speaker 8: just trying to put again beat on the table or
Speaker 8: make a couple extra bucks, you weren't really picky about
Speaker 8: what it was in form it was did it function,
Speaker 8: But pigeon guns early on are for the early pigeon shoots,
Speaker 8: like literal trap shooting. You have five trap houses. They
Speaker 8: released pigeons. They could go any which direction and you
Speaker 8: had to knock them down within a circle a giant
Speaker 8: sort of area to get killed to get credit for it.
Speaker 8: If you want to knock those pigeons down fast, you
Speaker 8: wanted a big gun. So eight bars aren't common, Very
Speaker 8: long barrels aren't uncommon, and very very high end as well.
Speaker 8: There was a lot of money on these pigeon shoots
Speaker 8: back in the day. So here you have this size.
Speaker 8: You have really well put together pigeon guns. They could
Speaker 8: often be confused for a large punt gun. You also
Speaker 8: both you know, smooth board shotguns.
Speaker 6: Did you have a wall gun? Or what was a fort.
Speaker 1: Gun that I had heard? I heard some of them
Speaker 1: referred to as fort gun. What would that be?
Speaker 8: A fork gun, a wall gun, a rampant gun, sort
Speaker 8: of lots of different names all for the same thing,
Speaker 8: and it's exactly what it sounds like. These are guns
Speaker 8: that are mounted on walls. A lot of times they
Speaker 8: will be large, very seldom if I see like an
Speaker 8: actual rifled example, but oftentimes through some sort of fork
Speaker 8: with as like a pintle or something on the bottom,
Speaker 8: because you're actually gonna set that on top of a
Speaker 8: wall to defend your fork castle, you know what have you.
Speaker 6: And they're really sort of an intermediate range weapon.
Speaker 8: You know, you had your small arms for closed up,
Speaker 8: you had artillery and mortars for far away targets. But
Speaker 8: right in the middle, well, you could use a really
Speaker 8: big wallgun to make an impact on some enemy troops
Speaker 8: that might be you know, sieging your position or your
Speaker 8: or your building. The last one or two punt guns,
Speaker 8: as you discussed on the podcast, these are large guns
Speaker 8: to be put in a boat, mounted in a boat,
Speaker 8: or a punt very gallow because essentially you are sneaking
Speaker 8: up on ducks on their own turf, trying to be
Speaker 8: as undetected as possible, getting within a certain range for
Speaker 8: you to really love that shot across the water and
Speaker 8: take out as many ducks as possible. Those are again
Speaker 8: large caliber, no surprise there, shotguns you're trying to take
Speaker 8: out as many as possible. But the range of a
Speaker 8: true punt gun is everything from pre flintlock to the
Speaker 8: cartridge guns like the screwbreach Holland and Holland that y'all bought,
Speaker 8: and so everything in between.
Speaker 6: It's it's such.
Speaker 8: A fantastic genre of collecting once you start diving into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you guys ever sold a punt gun that
Speaker 1: is confirmed to work like ours?
Speaker 6: Is? No?
Speaker 8: Okay, there have been a lot of quote unquote duck guns,
Speaker 8: which are again these sort of large.
Speaker 6: Bore it's like four board. We have a lot of
Speaker 6: four board duck guns.
Speaker 8: Shouldn't say a lot, but there's when they do come
Speaker 8: through very high end. You're dealing with very high end
Speaker 8: custom make from like John Dixon and Son or again
Speaker 8: Holland and Holland. People are using these as shoulder mounted
Speaker 8: four bore shotguns. And again they're they're for duck would
Speaker 8: they are they the type to be like mounted or
Speaker 8: secured in a boat?
Speaker 6: You know? But they're definitely being used for essentially the
Speaker 6: same purpose, and they would be a flock shooting ducks.
Speaker 6: So there are.
Speaker 8: Those that are capable and find enough condition or I
Speaker 8: wouldn't worry a bit about them being fired. Yeah, But
Speaker 8: as far as a true punt gun like yours with
Speaker 8: you know, pintle mounts on it and everything in the
Speaker 8: recoiled device on the bottom, all this fun stuff. No,
Speaker 8: I've never seen one even thought about being fired.
Speaker 1: Great, very excited. Now, what was any part of you
Speaker 1: nervous about us shooting the one that we purchase?
Speaker 6: Now? The funny answer is no, because it's not me. Uh.
Speaker 6: But the second answer is no, not at all.
Speaker 8: I mean, if there's a group of guys that I
Speaker 8: and I trust to do the research with the outdoors
Speaker 8: and sporting its, it's the folks that meat eater. Now,
Speaker 8: if you were two guys in a row boat taking
Speaker 8: it out, I might I might be a little more concerned.
Speaker 8: You'll still have a quality maker like Holland and Holland. Yes,
Speaker 8: those are sort of like legacy arms and just they
Speaker 8: laughed in their heirlooms. So you started out with good
Speaker 8: materials in good condition, and you're smart about it.
Speaker 6: Everything everything wi lined up perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's also why it took us four years
Speaker 1: to get to the point where we could make the
Speaker 1: film about us shooting the punt gun.
Speaker 8: I mean, I wasn't going to bring it up, but
Speaker 8: I'm I'm sure it might come up once or twice
Speaker 8: in the comment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now, how is selling a punt gun different
Speaker 1: from your typical firearms. I imagine there's got to be
Speaker 1: some real logistical challenges that you guys go through selling,
Speaker 1: you know, an eight foot gun.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean the selling parts easy, right, an auctioneer
Speaker 8: and banging hammer at the front of a room. But
Speaker 8: everything around it is required, you know, to accommodate that
Speaker 8: that massive size. So whether it's trying to take the
Speaker 8: photography of it, you know, to put it in our catalog,
Speaker 8: or to put it on the website, it uh transporting
Speaker 8: it even around the building, run our facility, getting it
Speaker 8: set up on our preview haul down in Bedford, Texas,
Speaker 8: and then of course eventually shipping it to a new owner.
Speaker 8: They all have they all have their their issues come
Speaker 8: up with which, by the way, if.
Speaker 6: You're an in person, better boy, we would encourage that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Our punt gun when we bought it, it showed
Speaker 1: up in a literal crate, I think multiple crates actually,
Speaker 1: So if you are the person who buys this thing
Speaker 1: and it's going to be shipped to you expect a
Speaker 1: giant piece of wood coming in the mail and that's
Speaker 1: where your punk gun will be inside of. Now, our
Speaker 1: punt gun, as most were, was made in England simply
Speaker 1: because that's where this style of hunting was the most popular.
Speaker 1: So with that being the case, what is the most
Speaker 1: what is the most English thing about our gun? Is
Speaker 1: there something you look at that makes you go, oh,
Speaker 1: that gun? It was made in London.
Speaker 6: We can't talked about earlier, but the Holland and Holland.
Speaker 8: Essential best quality gun, a London gun maker that's been
Speaker 8: around since with eighteen thirty five, so the first one
Speaker 8: hundred ninety years, fifty last year, one hundred ninety years
Speaker 8: last year, and they just airloom quality. Like I said,
Speaker 8: legacy type guns the type you pass on. And of
Speaker 8: course we see him come out of some pretty impressive collections.
Speaker 8: Those are guns that will regularly draw six figures, high
Speaker 8: artistry and embellishment. But there are also guns that you
Speaker 8: should not be afraid to take out and use, maybe
Speaker 8: true to form with a punt gun, absolutely fantastical and Holland,
Speaker 8: So Holland and Holland is just quint essential British gun.
Speaker 1: Somebody we showed the gun to told us that they
Speaker 1: suspected the engraving around the barrel most likely made it
Speaker 1: a special order or a custom made gun. What do
Speaker 1: you think of that.
Speaker 8: Theory, Yes, especially given when your gun was made, which
Speaker 8: I believe was the late eighteen hundreds, correct.
Speaker 1: Eighteen eighty five, is what we could come up.
Speaker 8: With because the initially, you know, we have the early
Speaker 8: eighteen hundreds where hunt gunning is kind of coming into
Speaker 8: its own right.
Speaker 6: You have a lot of sailors, you have deck guns.
Speaker 6: How do we use these? What do we do when
Speaker 6: we're out of the service.
Speaker 8: You know, there's a lot of or mutual origins there
Speaker 8: from that British sort of age of naval warfare. But
Speaker 8: initially these are people who are, like you said, not
Speaker 8: doing this commercially, and so it's whatever you can get,
Speaker 8: and a lot of times they're very rough. Sometimes you
Speaker 8: might put it together at home if you can't get
Speaker 8: those materials, but very very sort of singular purpose. As
Speaker 8: it goes on, it becomes essentially a score of the gentry.
Speaker 8: You know, the well healed and well to do are
Speaker 8: taking this very difficult, rough hunt. I mean, this is
Speaker 8: cold hunting. This are cold shooting muddy went salt water,
Speaker 8: like you might be out all day laying on your
Speaker 8: belly and like rowing a hunt that's very physically demanding
Speaker 8: there's a lot going on there, so to turn it
Speaker 8: into a sport at the end of the nineteenth centuries
Speaker 8: kind of what happens. And then you see more of
Speaker 8: these let's say, accomplished gun makers getting into act, like
Speaker 8: Holland and Holland. John Dixon's another one that made some
Speaker 8: four board duck guns, and it becomes you see the engraving,
Speaker 8: you see a finer quality in these guns. Yours is
Speaker 8: the only one I will say that's in that punt
Speaker 8: gun form that looks like essentially duck artillery for lack.
Speaker 6: Of a better term. That it does have the engraving.
Speaker 8: On it, that scroll work, that scroll on a canvas
Speaker 8: work on there, and even a little engraving up in
Speaker 8: front of the trigger underneath with a little scene of
Speaker 8: the of the goose. I have no doubt that, just
Speaker 8: based on it's time alone, you're looking at a their
Speaker 8: premier manufacturer. Already by the eighteen eighties, Holland and Holland,
Speaker 8: they're getting national acclaim in royal endorsements, and with the
Speaker 8: engraving on there absolutely an order for someone well to do.
Speaker 6: I wanted to go out and fry fund gunning. It
Speaker 6: wasn't essential. It wasn't to make money, but they want
Speaker 6: to try it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some real artistry on that gun. Now, besides our
Speaker 1: punt gun, what other guns from that auction are you
Speaker 1: excited about?
Speaker 8: So the good news is there are some. The bad
Speaker 8: news is we have a giant auction coming this weekend.
Speaker 8: Oh and the American Sales two and fifty years celebrating
Speaker 8: American history. So I can't talk too much about August
Speaker 8: just yet, but I will say three things about August. One,
Speaker 8: as I mentioned earlier, you're in a host of sporting
Speaker 8: arms that should.
Speaker 6: Rise and tide floats all boats.
Speaker 8: Sorry for the punt gun pun, but that should help
Speaker 8: all the sporting arms in that sale. And that's what
Speaker 8: we do, we build auctions. There is a second. I
Speaker 8: will say the August premiere has one item flagship of
Speaker 8: the sale does have an estimate in the seven figures.
Speaker 8: And I will say about the August premiere that there
Speaker 8: is a gun so famous in that sale I would
Speaker 8: I would wager that everyone in your room right now
Speaker 8: has seen a photograph of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, that's that's a wonderful tease. And after this interview,
Speaker 1: Joel is going to tell me what that gun is
Speaker 1: so that I know and I don't have to wonder anymore. Now,
Speaker 1: tell folks how they can learn more about the August
Speaker 1: auction where our punt gun will be sold.
Speaker 8: Sure, actually, since that auction will be over welcoming off
Speaker 8: to be over Saturday, go to the website on Monday.
Speaker 8: We will have essentially a sixteen page highlight portfolio that
Speaker 8: you can flip through digitally on our website. Uh, you'll
Speaker 8: see the big dogs front and center on the front catalog,
Speaker 8: on the back catalog. If you go to Rock Island
Speaker 8: Auction dot com, they will have that highlight portfolio of
Speaker 8: the catalog for anyone who wants to see the punt
Speaker 8: gun and to place some bids on it. That to
Speaker 8: be available around mid July. Well, of course, bench make
Speaker 8: y'all aware of that, and you can you can spread
Speaker 8: the good words we can trying to raise some funds.
Speaker 1: Here, Okay, very excited, and Rock Island is graciously waving
Speaker 1: all of our fees that normally come with selling a
Speaker 1: gun through them. That means they are helping put as
Speaker 1: much money into the land Access initiative as possible, So
Speaker 1: we really appreciate that. Joel, thank you for helping US
Speaker 1: fund more conservation projects, and thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 6: It's been a blast. We're happy to come back.
Speaker 1: Aytime, Okay, talk to you again. Thank you bye ye
Speaker 1: all right, that's it for this episode. The punt gun
Speaker 1: film is on our YouTube channel right now. Please go
Speaker 1: watch it. It's a lot of fun. Old guns are cool,
Speaker 1: big guns are cool. This is as old and as
Speaker 1: big as it gets. So if you like history, if
Speaker 1: you like conservation, if you like firearms, you'll like this video,
Speaker 1: so please go check it out. It's available right now.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to go buy your punt gun hat at
Speaker 1: the auction House of Oddities that will go live sometime
Speaker 1: in July. You can also bid on the shells there.
Speaker 1: We have three of them that we're going to be selling.
Speaker 1: And if you want to buy the punt gun yourself,
Speaker 1: you can go do that at the Rock Island Auction
Speaker 1: in August. You can participate virtually. They'll set you up
Speaker 1: really well. I bought the gun from Bozeman, Montana, while
Speaker 1: the auction was happening. I believe they were in Illinois
Speaker 1: at that point. Now they're located in Texas, so you
Speaker 1: don't even have to be there in person to participate again.
Speaker 1: That's Rockland Auction dot Com that is happening at the
Speaker 1: end of August. All right, that's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks for watching, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: By now