GF's Link
Anybody been there?
Not a bullet or bowstring anywhere in sight.....
I can’t recall if it was David Petzal or Jim Carmichael who described the recoil of a 4-gauge as “terrifying…
We all know that “flock shooting“ is a terrible way to go about bird hunting, but with a 4 it was a good way to take out the whole flock at once. Those guys would ease up on a bunch of rafted-up ducks at night, and hey, if you’re only going to get off one shot, may as well make it a quarter-pounder, right? I think there may even have been 2-gauges - these huge bores were known as punt guns - “punt” as in a type of rowboat. Those were laid in a cradle pointed in line with the bow and they’d just aim the boat at the flock, then probably hang on for dear life while the boat took the recoil...
And back in the early days of the Ivory trade, there were 8 & 4 gauge RIFLES; some of the 8s were even built as doubles IIRC. Gigantic, roundball cartridge rifles for stopping elephants and such.
Ross Seyfried wrote about these pretty extensively... he apparently had a limitless tolerance for recoil and used to hunt jack-rabbits with DG stopping rifles...
