EP 554. Last of a Dying Breed: The Lost Art of Punt Gunning (Part 2)

Speaker: Yep. So is the gun cocked?
Ramsey Russell: Firing the hole.

Speaker: Keep your head to one side when you fire. Keep your head to one side.
Ramsey Russell: Don’t worry.

Speaker: Hold a sec. Hold.

Ramsey Russell: You ready?

Speaker: Ready when you are.

“You ready? Ready when you are. God dog. Oh shit. Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where you all just listen to yours truly pulling the trigger, so to speak, on a modern-day punt gun. Kaboom. Four ounces of black powder pushed 20 ounces of steel shot over the water. It was incredible. It launched the boat backwards about 5 or 6 foot. A massive blue cloud of smoke covered the water out in front of us. It was exciting.”

Ramsey Russell: God dog. Oh shit. Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where you all just listen to yours truly pulling the trigger, so to speak, on a modern-day punt gun. Kaboom. Four ounces of black powder pushed 20 ounces of steel shot over the water. It was incredible. It launched the boat backwards about 5 or 6 foot. A massive blue cloud of smoke covered the water out in front of us. It was exciting. Modern-day pirating, I call it. No ducks were harmed in the making of that. Bad weather, bad wind, poor conditions for getting up on them, poor tides. We couldn’t get up close enough to the ducks to do anything. But we’ll go back next year and do it. I hope that you enjoy this deep dive into punt gunning, the lost art of punt gunning, half as much as I did. You boys listening? There’s 25 or 30 ounces per box of shotgun shells. We need to tighten up over there in the state. We only shoot six. That means we need to shoot six or seven times and have our ducks. Two things. A famous newscaster named Walter Cronkite once said that duck hunting is a perilous sport, especially if you’re a duck. That I understand. But what elements of punt gunning make it dangerous?
Ginger: Well, you’re firing a cannon.
Ramsey Russell: You are firing a cannon, cinched to wood with ropes.
Ginger: And yeah, it’s strapped in with rope in a wooden punt, in deep water, quite a long way from safety. When you pull the trigger, your head is about 6 inches away from the breech. If it all goes wrong, you’re dead.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, that’s a fact. I can see that.

“Punt gunning, like it’s the same with fishing and everything, it’s a dangerous sport.”

Ginger: You’ve seen the bangs today. You’ve seen the explosion. You are firing a cannon. You put your head down the other end in front of it, it blows your head off. The back end can be quite dangerous as well if you got it wrong. If it exploded, people have died. Punt gunning, like it’s the same with fishing and everything, it’s a dangerous sport.
Ramsey Russell: I’m sure more than a few have lost their teeth.
Ginger: Quite a lot.
Ramsey Russell: Or got a blacken eye or got a broken nose.
Ginger: Yeah. Because in the early days, they used hemp rope, and of course, that rots. And these were men with not much money, so they didn’t go out every year and buy new rope. T he rope was there. It’ll do until it doesn’t do and it breaks. And when it breaks, that gun comes flying back and takes your teeth out. Quite a lot were knocked unconscious. That was fairly a regular thing where the gun came flying back and knocked people unconscious. But they just got on with the job and carried on.
Ramsey Russell: Today we got James’ gun cinched up and took it on its maiden voyage. And we decided after we got everything rigged, you said, hey, it looks great, it looks proper, but let’s just run a charge through it just to be sure.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And that made a big boom and a pile of smoke. And then, I mean, you had showed me one time at the boat ramp. Boy, we pulled up, pulled the tether. Kaboom. Ducks galore got up, and you boated over. Man, we started changing over recharge. We’re gonna put a live charge in it now. You only showed me one time, but by God, I knew how to put that shell into it and get her going. And I got very excited about that. But the load I put in that we then hunted with for the next couple of hours, it had 4 grams of black powder and 20 ounces.
Ginger: Yeah, pound and a quarter.
Ramsey Russell: Pound and a quarter of shot. And I had to go do the math, because I’m used to shooting three and three-quarter dram would be a heavy pigeon load equivalent of powder per shell. And so I did the math on the way down here, and basically, that one charge that came out of that punt gun was roughly 18 shotgun shells at one time. That would be pretty equivalent in terms of powder and charge. You could round up and say powder and shot combined is about a modern-day 25-box load coming down that punt. And we sculled around, could not get into position. Had a lot going against us. So we decided we were just going to pattern it on the water. Holy shit. When I pulled the string and that charge went off, good God. I mean, I felt the boat go back.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And the last thing you said, you said, I’ve learned is, when you cock it with the first tether, then you roll over to your side and get the heck out of the way in case things break when you pull the string.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And it got my attention when that charge went off. Holy cow. Fire leapt down the barrel. I guess if we had been firing at a flock of birds within 100 yards, maybe we’d have killed some birds.
Ginger: Oh, yeah. And I would guarantee they heard that three miles away.
Ramsey Russell: I would think so.
Ginger: Yeah. You heard the echo going, battle of the water. They would have heard that a long way away.
Ramsey Russell: One thing I realized today, the boats, the punts are very shallow.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And so while we’re moving, let’s say we’re gonna go a half mile before we start actively hunting. We’re up and paddling. When we get in position, the gunner, me, up front, I’m laying down, I’m prone.
Ginger: Yeah.

“When I thought back, without experience, without proper introduction to punt gunning, when I thought back to the bad old days of the Chesapeake Bay, these guys going out with cannons and they were just waylaying ducks left and right, just going out and having a wild party and shooting thousands and thousands of ducks, that ain’t the case.”

Ramsey Russell: He’s in the back laying down. And at some point in time, he’s got literally hand paddles. He’s just putting his little arms out and just kind of hand paddling, little ant-leg pushes. And we’re very low to the water, we can’t be seen. And we’re going to try to approach. And it just occurred to me, this is not easy. And that was one realization I had today. When I thought back, without experience, without proper introduction to punt gunning, when I thought back to the bad old days of the Chesapeake Bay, these guys going out with cannons and they were just waylaying ducks left and right, just going out and having a wild party and shooting thousands and thousands of ducks, that ain’t the case. The conditions had to be right. The light had to be right. The wind had to be right. They had to be skillful and safe to get within range. And even then, something may come up. Everything had to conspire. And it’s not like, you know, it could be that they went out once a week or once a month or three times a season when the conditions were right and everything was good. And it all came together and they hit a payday. But they weren’t going out every single night and waylaid them like we would have thought. It’s just no way. And that was the biggest realization that I had today. It occurred to me as we had seen some mallards through binoculars over in some trees with the wind, and whatever, we decided that was the play. We ran out of daylight, that was the play. And I was laying down, and I was attuned. I was like a char dog waiting on a mark. I was looking at a mark. I knew where those ducks were gonna be. As we got up, I saw one and I perked. James saw it too, because he kind of kicked my foot. He was in the back, paddling, navigating, and I’m getting ready. And I said, man, this is it, this is it, this is it. And she got up and flew off, and I didn’t break stride. That duck was a hen mallard, and she got up and flew. I had seen through binoculars about a dozen birds up in that little clump. They apparently had left already. She was the last duck. And so I’m sitting here thinking, well, that’s it. We’re not going to shoot a duck today. That’s fine. But it just made me think that my previous misconceptions about punt gunning were that there was this huge advantage over modern-day shoulder hunting. That’s not at all. I mean, when you start talking punt gunning, you’re talking a two- or three-hundred-year-old technology that I’m putting into practice today. It’s almost like a big handicap as compared to going out and hunting with your 12 gauge at night or me at home in Mississippi or wherever, decoying birds. I mean, it’s like a big handicap. It is, to your point earlier, it’s a major challenge, a major hunt, a major undertaking to attempt a shot.

Ginger: Using stuff that was used in the Napoleonic War. You’re still using almost not musket balls, quite, but you’re using that and gunpowder.
Ramsey Russell: And gunpowder. I mean, it’s crazy.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Now I asked you how many attempts, let’s call it today was an attempt, how many attempts do you go out versus successful shots fired?
Ginger: Where we were today, I would say 1 in 10, possibly even 1 in 20.
Ramsey Russell: Why?
Ginger: Because it’s very, very difficult. You’ve got to get within, let’s say, 80 yards of wild birds in open water, or they’re in their own environment and they’re not daft. They’ll sit right in the middle of a flooded field, so they’re 200 yards out from any shoreline. They’re safe. So it’s very difficult, even in a punt, to get towards them. We were in flooded meadows today, which is hard. So I tend to try and use hedges for concealment and run along a hedge because you are more concealed. And then, if you can see birds through the hedge or somewhere else, you can approach them. You’ve got some concealment. When you’re on the coast, you have none of that at all. You’re there, but you do have wind and tide with you, so you can use the tide to push you along very, very slowly. We’d have to take you onto the tide because it’s a different thing to that.
Ramsey Russell: That’s what I’m building up on now. Where would you have rather hunted, and what is your success rate in the marsh you were talking about?
Ginger: I would much rather have taken you on the Blackwater, on the tide. It’s still very hard and you have to be incredibly patient. The main thing about being a punt gunner and a young punt gunner and learning it,  you can’t believe how patient you have to be. But it goes back to an old thing, a bit like American Indians were, a bit like the early punt gunners. If the birds are there and you can see they’re there, your job is to get a shot at them. And it doesn’t matter if you wait three or four,  we’ve gone to sleep in the bottom of the punt before now because the birds are there, but we can’t get at them. We need the tide to rise. So we’ve laid down in the bottom of the punt, poured a cup of coffee, had a sandwich, and even nodded off because the birds are there and you know they’re there, and if you can get it right, you’re going to get a shot. The alternative is you leave that and go look somewhere else, where you might look all day. So you have to be very, very patient.
Ramsey Russell: And how often are you able to hunt that area in the marsh? You told me earlier today that if you’re patient and go to that area, almost 100% of the time you get the opportunity for a shot. But you don’t go there all the time. Why not?
Ginger: One thing, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. When I first did not so well, the problem is you’ve got to be able to look at the tide. When you’re looking at the coast now which I look at, you’ve got the tide, so you want to go, if possible with going down the estuary, with the tide going out, because it saves you rowing against it and you can spot what’s going on. And then as it turns and the tide comes back, you return with the tide again. So it’s in your favor. And you’ve actually seen there may be ducks up that channel there, but there’s more down that channel. So you’re using wind and tide to go with you on the coast. And still, you’ve got to be very patient once you’ve seen them. But you do get,  if you’re skillful and you do learn the skill,  it’s not God-given, you have to have an idea where the birds are likely to be. So you get this idea of where they are. You’ve got to have the right tide. You mustn’t have a strong wind because that will blow you. You can’t maneuver them. You saw today with the punts, they’re 22 feet long,  but the wind will blow them all over.
Ramsey Russell: Oh my God.
Ginger: And you don’t have, you can’t sit up and go, “Oh, push the oar in like that.” You’re still moving very, very gently. So you mustn’t have a strong wind. You want poor light conditions. You don’t want bright blue like we had today, really. You don’t want bright sunlight because the birds will see you easier moving. So you’ve got an awful lot of things that have to go right.
Ramsey Russell: So the tide conditions may be good, twice a month.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But then it’s also got to align with cloudy weather, heavy weather and inclement weather without a lot of wind.
Ginger: Especially the wind. I usually have a tide table and I ring the three or four days when the tides are right and then I know that I’ve got the tide, the possibility. But you don’t know what the wind’s going to be. And sod’s law says that just when the tides are right, it’ll be windy. The next week, when the tides are wrong, it’ll be calm. But that’s the way it goes. We once had to try to go from here over to shoot on the Blackwater. And every time we tried, it had been wrong. Too windy, wrong tide, everything. Finally, everything came right and we said, “Right, we’re getting up at 3 o’clock, tomorrow morning. We’re going to drive over to the East Coast and we’re going punting.” We woke up at 3 o’clock, there were 6 inches of snow outside.
Ramsey Russell: Is that good or bad?
Ginger: Bad. We couldn’t go. You couldn’t get over, couldn’t get out. You hardly get out, they hadn’t cleared the roads yet, that low, towing a punt, which you’ve just done. Yeah. And it was just like, “Argh! Is it always against me?” I always say with punt gunning, it’s almost like a war, an army. It’s not what goes right. A good day is when nothing much goes wrong.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Oh, what a good quote.
Ginger: Yeah. And it’s very much like that. Things are always going to go wrong. The birds aren’t there, but if you can get that to a minimum, then you’re having a good day. And then with experience, and a lot of the experience, as I say, is patience,  you really have to be. And when you’re younger and keener, you’re not so patient. You have to learn that if there’s a shot there and you’ve just rowed for, you might have rowed for two hours to get to that position,  you don’t ignore it. You’ve got a shot. So you are very patient. You’re going to do everything you can to get that shot. But having said that, you can just be there, let’s say another 20 yards to go,  and a microlight will go across, scares up the whole estuary. A bird walker walks along the seawall, and when they walk, they’ve got these big long sticks over their backs to put the telescopes on. Well, it looks like a gun to the birds. That’ll put all the birds up on an estuary. There are just so many things that can go wrong. A boat, a motorboat, a fishing boat will come up and scare the birds away.
Ramsey Russell: Or a hiker or a horseback rider or anything.
Ginger: Absolutely.
Ramsey Russell: There’s not a lack of people or outdoor activities around here.
Ginger: We had once lovely down there out on the water, there’s an island, Southey Island, I think it’s that one there. And there’s a roadway, causeway goes out to it, but all the channels up to it are a really good place for the duck. And we were just going along and we’d seen some duck, we were just going along there and got them lined up, and the postman comes in his van across the causeway, sees us, so stops right in line looking at us to say, “Oh, I wonder what those guys are doing over there.” And we’re going, “Leave, leave, go!” And the bloke’s like, “Oh yeah, I wonder what…” And then he got back in the van, slammed the door, put the birds up.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Ginger: And we were that close to getting the shot, but we couldn’t fire because he was in the way. Yeah, it’s what doesn’t go wrong. A day when it doesn’t go wrong.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. In the decades that you’ve been punt gun hunting, what is the biggest bag you’ve ever had in a single shot.
Ginger: I don’t normally mention bag things, but I will for you. The biggest one we’ve had was 28.
Ramsey Russell: Okay, okay.

Ginger: Which was quite enough. But as I’ve said, I have turned down bigger shots than that because I don’t want to shoot any more than that. I think I did that. I might once more in my life take a big shot. Might. But then you’ve got to pluck them and do something with them. People don’t want ducks in the feather. You get ducks and go to give them, someone says, “Oh, will you pluck them for me?”

Ramsey Russell: Sure.

Ginger: Well, Christ, by the time I’ve plucked them and gutted them I might as well eat them myself. This is the problem. I don’t want too many ducks. I want the thrill of the chase. I want a shot. I want to have managed to do it. That’s the success. How many you shoot is almost by the by. It doesn’t make it any better.

Ramsey Russell: And I knew, having spent a day with you, I knew that the answer was going to be something like that. More than a number. It’s really about the art of punt gunning.

Ginger: Yeah, It’s getting outwitting ducks in their own environment.

Ramsey Russell: You have been patient, you have been skillful, you have been experienced and turned down a bigger bag in exchange for a reasonable bag.

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That justifies the art.

“I’m like a ghost, because to them it’s just a bit of driftwood going down and it doesn’t even disturb them. And that’s the art of punt gunning.”

Ginger: Yeah. You don’t want to come home empty-handed. You’ve put a lot of work in life. You will quite often, but you don’t want to. You want to at least come home with something. But that number doesn’t really matter. It’s that you managed it, you did it, that’s a success. You come home and feel justice. I’d feel just as overjoyed if I shot eight as if I shot eighteen. I wouldn’t be happy having shot eighty because I would have wounded a lot, had to go around and kill, and I’ve got too many. So it’s the success. It’s doing it and being there, managing to do it. In that situation, I’ve paddled stalking like that, and it is more of a stalking sport. I’ve come past birds and waders that have been asleep so close to me I could almost touch them, and I really mean that. They’re probably within six feet of me and they don’t even know I’m passing. I’m like a ghost, because to them it’s just a bit of driftwood going down and it doesn’t even disturb them. And that’s the art of punt gunning. If bird watchers would love it because you are in their environment. They’re all around you, but you are invisible. They don’t see you. They’re just getting on with their daily action and going round. If you’re right and you’re cautious and you don’t make a sound, they don’t know you’re there. If you stand up, the whole estuary will erupt with all the birds screaming, “Oh, it’s a man, a man, a man.” But you’re in there and you’re actually, it’s the only time you would ever be in their environment. Watching the little waders picking up worms, and they were within feet of you. It’s wonderful. You’re just in there and you’re just like the invisible man. They don’t see you, and it’s wonderful to be. It’s very enjoyable watching the life of the other birds as well. I know you want to shoot the ducks, but there’s the waders and other birds going on. The one good shot we had, the best shot we had, the 28, was a marsh harrier. We’d lined up on a good shot of teal on a bank, and just as we were getting near them, a marsh harrier came down, which is a Big hawk.

Ramsey Russell: I know.

Ginger: Yeah. He put all the birds up and they all flew from in front of us up the channel, round the corner where we couldn’t see. Damn. Blast that damn harrier. And then, when the harrier went, because we stopped and waited, thought, “What am I gonna do now? Can we get around the…” The birds came back again, back to where they’d been and were there again. They came in, and, but this time, as they came in, some settled and were in front of us. But as we were just, I was the gunner. As I was just about to pull, another bunch came down as well to go past. They were flying just over the heads of the bunch that had already settled. So I pulled the trigger at that time. Hit the flying birds and the settled birds both at the same time.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Ginger: That’s when we shot 28. Thanks to the marsh harrier. It happens.

Ramsey Russell: But everything went right.

Ginger: All went right. Didn’t go wrong.

Ramsey Russell: Great.

Ginger: Tried to go wrong with the harrier, but didn’t go wrong in the end.

Ramsey Russell: I want you to explain just a little bit about the actual punt gun. I’m looking at one up on your wall. Some of these ones around here were black powder front loaders.

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: The more modern punt gun. When did the punt guns, like you’re shooting, like James is shooting, that is, I would describe as a long front-heavy steel pipe.

Ginger: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: James has a 1½ inch bore diameter. It’s threaded on one end. But what you see right there, the big heavy main component is just a big steel pipe.

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it changed. Then we’ve got the cartridge that we chamber. Let’s talk about the cartridge. Describe this cartridge to me.

Ginger: You’ve got to go back a little bit. It’s not a perfect pipe because you’ve got an explosive chamber. You have to have it thicker at the breech.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Ginger: Otherwise it would probably blow the big,

Ramsey Russell: Big on one end. It’s tapered.

Ginger: It may blow the pipe out. You’ve got an explosion going on, so it is a little bit different.

Ramsey Russell: It does have a taper. It’s very swelled on the end that the cartridge goes into.

Ginger: Because you’ve got the thickness to absorb the shock of that explosion.

Ramsey Russell: Speaking of which, can you imagine the old-timey flintlock type? The quality of the steel? And they’ve got this massive charge right inside there and their face is right next to it. I’ve heard of cannons going off and injuring sailors. It’s got to be the same thing with these old guns. Back in the day.

Ginger: One of the famous ones on there, they used to have a screw thread where the black powder went on for a flintlock one. And they’d put a bit of powder in there and then screw that thread in again, hold it. Well, of course, that’s why you’re always on the left side, because that thread was on the right. And every now and then, because they kept screwing in and out and it was rusty and worn, every now and then one of those would blow out with the explosion because the threads had worn. So you never have your head on the right-hand side because that’s where the thread was. You put it on the left.

Ramsey Russell: So that’s why you lean to the left. That’s why you’re laying in that boat on your left side.

Ginger: Because the early ones had a thread going in there for the powder, finer powder so the flintlock could set fire to it with the coarser powder inside the chamber.

Ramsey Russell: Interesting.

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: When do you think the modern, I’m gonna call it modern, like what James has, when did that come on from the scene?

Ginger: Reasonably.

Ramsey Russell: 1970s? 1980s?

Ginger: Let’s see when I had mine and those ones. It’s probably within the last, I would say, where are we now?

Ramsey Russell: 2024.

Ginger: Yeah. I’m thinking probably 1980s and into 1990s.

Ramsey Russell: 1980s or 1990s when that hit the thing. Okay.

Ginger: Yeah. Well, people didn’t do it. And I think has saved it a lot, there was one guy who made them near the Blackwater, called Tony Frostic, and both of our guns are made by him. He was an engineer. He’d done a lot with boats and things, and he almost did them for fun. He was a guy who wanted to do these things, and I’d been trying to make one myself and thought about making one. Then I went to the punt gunners meeting, which happens every couple of years, and there on the table was a breech, and it was exactly what I was looking for. I’d heard of a bloke, like a mystic somewhere hidden up in a cave in the mountains was making punt guns, but I could never find where. And there was this breech of a punt gun that had been made. Luckily, there was a guy there. I found, who brought this? The guy said, “I did.” “Where did you get it?” He said, “Oh, it’s made by Tony Frostic.” That was your gun. That was the breech of your gun. James’s gun. That was the one. I saw the first thing, and then I got Tony. I’d been trying to make one and thinking how do I make one and how do I do it and wasn’t really getting anywhere easily because of all the stuff. Then Tony Frostic, he always made two at a time while he was making money, he made two. So he’d made one for my other friend who died, which is James’s one now. I was number one. I got number two. I think has happened since then, to some degree, is the gas pipe industry. They now use really high-quality, high-pressure seamless tubing, which is exactly what you’re looking for as a barrel. It’s perfect. It’s very difficult to make a barrel. It must be really smooth inside. It’s got to be really good quality, and that was difficult to find. But with modern high-pressure oil and pipelines, then you’ve got the makings of a really good barrel. Once you’ve got that bit, the rest is reasonably straightforward. Reasonably. So you could do more modern punt guns. There’s not many of them out there, and I only knew of one other guy who made them apart from Tony Frostic. But they did, someone was still making these guns.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s talk about the cartridge itself. The modern-day cartridge, which I would describe as a homemade black powder shotgun shell cartridge. About the size of a road flare. At least the one I went “kaboom” with today is about that size.

Ginger: What, sorry, did you say?

Ramsey Russell: A road flare. The flares or stick of dynamite.

Ginger: Yes. Yeah, stick of dynamite. Like that, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Do you make those yourself?

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Describe the components. Because like I noticed, I’ve got a permanent piece of metal, brass, I guess this is.

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And from that, what is that? And where do you go from there?

Ginger: It’s quite similar to a shotgun cartridge. You’ve got a brass cap on the end and you’ve got a plastic tube. Now, whether they copied it from punt guns and earlier ones on there, or punt guns used that, what you’ve really got for a punt gun is a brass end cap with a percussion cap in it. Like with a 12 shotgun.

Ramsey Russell: Like 32 caliber, I think.

Ginger: Yeah, whatever. I use shotgun ones in.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Ginger: So all you’ve got is a brass base with a percussion cap like any other shotgun. Then the bit on there, you have a tube of paper or card, which, strangely enough, which only dawned on me after a while, is made of cartridge paper. Everyone knows cartridge paper is what people draw on. What they don’t realize, and even I didn’t realize, was it’s what they used to make cartridges from.

Ramsey Russell: I did not know that.

Ginger: Cartridge paper. That’s why it’s called cartridge paper.

Ramsey Russell: On top of that, I’ve got my brass primer, I’ve got my cartridge paper roll, and I just pour my powder in?

Ginger: No. Well, you glue the two things together first. So you glue, using just a standard paper glue, you put the percussion cap in the bottom so nothing falls out. So you press one in like you would reloading. You glue the tube to the brass end cap. So you’ve now got a tube. Then, all you do is measure out, I often put a little bit of fine powder in first because that burns quicker with a percussion cap, but basically all you then do is measure out gunpowder, black powder, what you want. Pour that in. Use wadding, which is very important. You have to have a wad.

Ramsey Russell: What do you use for wad?

Ginger: Well, that would be quite a long story, if I go on too much. I use now, the matting from an army sort of base sleeping thing.

Ramsey Russell: Historically, they probably used boat sail, you were saying?

Ginger: Yeah. Originally, my early ones, my muzzle loader ones, we used, when you did the muzzle loader, yeah. They used what was called oakum, and oakum was tarred rope. It was all the old rope. And if you think, if you go back to the galleons and the naval ships, if you’re halfway around the world, what do you have a lot of that you need to use in your cannons. Old rope. Tarred old rope. Perfect. Shred it all up, nice and sticky, goes together. Ram it down a barrel. Perfect. Perfect wadding. And of course, on naval ships, each ship had, if I remember, it’s down to miles of rope. On a sailing ship of those times, they had, I think, miles of rope in the rigging for the sails. So what wears out and what gets used and what would be perhaps thrown away, old rope.

Ramsey Russell: And then on top of that wad, you put the shot charge.

Ginger: Yeah. You normally put a card on top. Like the card on top of a shotgun.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Ginger: So you put the powder in, put a card on top, put your wadding on top of that, and then another card or two on top of that. There’s your cartridge.

Ramsey Russell: So I’ve got a long barrel, I’ve got the cartridge we just described. I slide it in. Now I’m going to attach a firing pin, which is about the size of that teacup.

Ginger: Yeah. It probably weighs a pound or two.

Ramsey Russell: I think it does. And it’s got a female thread, so I’m gonna thread it on.

Ginger: Thread it in. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And once I get it, I’m gonna take that little piece of metal bar and make sure it’s on there good.

Ginger: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t want it flying out.

Ramsey Russell: No. And then comes the, it looks like, you call it a stock. Looks like a pistol handle.

Ginger: Well, it’s the breech, isn’t it, really. You call that whole lump, I suppose.

Ramsey Russell:  The breech. Okay.

Ginger: Yeah. I think it’s a breech rather than a stock, isn’t it really, because it has the components.

Ramsey Russell: It is. And it’s got two tethers. One tether cocks it.

Ginger: So a stock is just a stock of a gun. It has nothing, no working parts. Whereas on a punt gun, that breech has the workings right through it. So inside the breech, all it is really, is a hammer. You want them, because you’re in very cold, wet, salt, muddy conditions, you want the simplest form of mechanism that’s going. You want nothing complicated that will get mud, stone, sand jammed in it. So all it really is one pin on a spring and one sear. So you pull it back on one, that clicks it and holds it, and you pull the other one the other way, which releases it. That shoots forward, hits the cap in the back of your breech plug, which fires the charge.

Ramsey Russell: Go kaboom.
Ginger: Yeah. One basically two moving parts. That’s all there is in it. But again, it works, why change it.
Ramsey Russell: And the whole punt gun is tethered. That barrel has got little ears on the sides of it.
Ginger: Trunnions. They’re called trunnions.
Ramsey Russell: Trunnions?
Ginger: Yeah. You’re back to cannons on Nelson’s Navy again, they’re trunnions on a barrel which you have the same thing on a cannon. Those bits that come out the side, which had a bit over, are the trunnions.
Ramsey Russell: And it’s tethered with rope because you want it. You wouldn’t use steel cable because you want it. Something’s got to absorb that recoil.
Ginger: It’s got to give.
Ramsey Russell: It’s got to give a little bit.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And one of the most impressive things I saw, and I wondered when James put it in the truck this morning, what exactly it was. We were loading the truck with oars and paddles and short paddles and long paddles and that big old barrel and everything went. Everything went to his truck. And he had this little device. Had like a long little rod and an interesting little look, kind of like a mallet. At a glance, it looked like a croquet mallet, but it’s what the barrel rests on.
Ginger: Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And even when we put it together, I finally said, what is this? What’s it for? And it’s not just to hold the barrel off the boat. I can pull it to me to raise it up, or I can push it forward to lower the sight.
Ginger: Because the boat, the deck slopes. Deck isn’t flat.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Ginger: On a punt, slopes down gently. My one’s got wheels on. And my one has little wheels that go up and down. But if you do that, if you push it forward, it drops down slightly. So the barrel drops down. If you pull it back, it comes up. The barrel comes up. So it’s incredibly simple. You know, you can just have a block of wood on a broom handle and move it up and down if you wanted to. It does the same thing. But all you’re doing is allowing for where two people are sitting in the punt. That’s your aiming. That’s your actually up and down, vertical aiming of the barrel. So when you’re first going out of a morning, you’d normally get the two guys in their position they’re going to be in. And while they’re there, the gunner aims the gun. So he’s firing at 80 yards, perhaps just over the heads of the ducks because they’re normally near the waterline. So he’s already got it pretty well good. So you don’t have to do anything. Having said that, you might go along, and the ducks are actually six foot up the bank. So at that stage, he has to redo it, while he’s doing it as quietly as possible. This is where the stealth really comes in because it may make a noise. Mine’s got nylon wheels on, so it rolls very gently coming along. And I’ve actually built on there. But that’s what it is. That’s the simplest thing going.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, it’s very simple.

Ginger: But it’s effective.

Ramsey Russell: In a two-man punt gun setup like James and I were today, the gunner adjusts elevation and aims.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Pulls the trigger, and really the pilot in the back, he really more or less.
Ginger: Let me say, a steersman. Yeah, he’s the guy back.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, the steersman is more or less getting the general direction right.
Ginger: But you’ve got it like a two-man team. It’s more like a tank. You’ve got a gunner and a driver. The driver at the back is what you’ve just said. He’s going left and right. The gunner at the front is going up and down. But what we would normally do, as you’re going along, you can’t speak. You can’t make a sound getting near the ducks. So what you do, if the gunner at the front wants the gun to go to the right, he’ll tap the right foot. If he wants the gun to go left, he’ll tap his left foot. If you can get something like that, or even if they’re lying next to each other, all you’ve got to do is rub your foot there. And basically, left, left, that’d be right actually,  but there, and then if you do both together, that’s straight on. Straight, straight, straight. Right a bit. Right a bit. Right a bit. Straight, straight, straight. Because you’re trying to keep that barrel exactly where the gunner wants in the heart of the ducks you’re going to shoot where there’s a good group, whatever, but you can’t speak. You can’t do anything. You just have to do it between the two of you. And very often, the steersman at the back, he can’t see. He’s lying right down. The gunner can see a bit. And what we would often do is, when we’re going down, we would now use something like, in the old days you didn’t need one. But we’d often use a range finder. So if we look down and we can see the birds are, through a range finder, let’s say, 200 yards away. Right, now we’re looking down by eye or with a range. We’re now looking for something like a patch of seaweed on the thing or a mooring buoy or something on there that’s a hundred yards away, because now you don’t need to do, you just creep up very slowly. The gunner might make a peek that the birds are still there. But until he gets to perhaps 120 yards away, he’s really doing nothing at all. Just drifting very, very slowly, keeping an eye about on there until he’s getting reasonably within range. Now he’s got to make sure, if the birds put the head up, he’s got to stop. If the birds are starting to move away, you’ve lost them. But if everything is still good, he knows now he’s only got to go incredibly stealthily another 40 yards. So he may get to that hundred-yard marker. He’s got 20 yards to go. Now he’s pulled the hammer back already because there’s going to be a click, and you don’t want to be too near the birds. They might hear that click of just that hammer coming back on the lanyard. So he clicks it back. He’s ready to fire. But it’s getting nearer and nearer. Now he’s got his hand on the lanyard of the trigger because he’s getting ready. He’s trying to keep the barrel in line. He’s getting closer and closer and closer, and he’s in range. If they jump now, he’s going to pull. But if he can get another 10 yards, almost the better. So he’ll creep gently, gently, gently another 10 yards. He’s on. They’re on. He’s on. Boom. He fires.
Ramsey Russell: What would you describe as the maximum effective range, the ideal distance and the line between, that’s just too dang close? Or is there such a thing?
Ginger: No, you would never go too close.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I wouldn’t want to fire to a flock 10 yards away.
Ginger: You wouldn’t have to. Because you start off 200 yards away.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Ginger: So you don’t start that close. So when you get to 100 yards, you’re in range.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Ginger: But you might wound a fair number. And there’s your problem of a modern day. You don’t want to wound too many but you’ve got to go round with a 12-bore, shooting them, killing them. If they’re wounded, you can’t leave them. And that attracts attention of bird watchers, other people things like that. So you really want to kill all of the birds, if you can, outright. So you use fairly big shot. So we might use a shot of a BB size for a teal. Well, you’d never shoulder gun BB at teal. You’d use sixes or sevens in the old lead.
Ramsey Russell: What’s a perfect range? The ideal range to you is you’re creeping up on that flock and your heart’s beating. Right before it goes boom. You can take a shot at 100 yards?
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: What’s the perfect range?
Ginger: I would say 75 to 80.
Ramsey Russell: Okay. Wow.
Ginger: It’s a good range. It’s about there. And not more often than not, but some people would do it. They’d get in range like that and then they would either slap the side of the punt or make a noise. The birds jump. And that is quite an effective way of hitting them because now they’ve got their wings open. So it’s there. That is quite reasonably common, I would say, doing that to make the birds jump up because it’s a better shot. However, if it hasn’t fired properly, you’ve lost the shot. Whereas if you’re there and you pull something, I’ll tell you a very little story. We had a wonderful day. That was me and Hayden, which was huge down there. You might have heard of Hayden Jones. When you saw it, Slimbridge, he was punting with me. We’re going down. There’s a wonderful batch of wigeon. He’s the gunner. I’m the steersman. So we’re getting there. There’s this lovely, beautiful, tight group of wigeon. We’re getting there and we’re getting closer. I’m at the back. We’re close. And I think, fire, fire. We’re close. We’re in range of, fire, fire. And he’s fumbling. What the frig are you doing, fireman, fire. And finally, the ducks all get up and fly away. Ah, geez. I sat from the back. What were you doing? They were there. Why didn’t you fire? He said, I pulled the wrong trigger. I said, Christ, there’s only two. And what he’d done was, in excitement, he cocked the gun with the one and then picked up the same one again, still looking at the birds in excitement, and was pulling the cocking trigger again and again, wondering why it doesn’t go bang. He’s pulling the wrong trigger. Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Can you uncock it without pulling the trigger?
Ginger: Without pulling the trigger? No. What you can do, you can unload it like you would on a hammer gun even on there. Yeah you can.  You can pull it right back again and release the trigger gently and put it forward gently. So you can unload it that way once it’s cocked. It doesn’t have to stay cocked, if you’re there.
Ramsey Russell: Do you have a favorite waterfowl species in general, or a favorite waterfowl species to puntgun?
Ginger: Both times, wigeon. But wigeon comes from, again, being my, where we started. The convict, the young lad, 17 years old, out on the marshes with his gun. I walked out in the marshes one night, full moon, and a pack of wigeon flew across the moon in front of me, out of range, calling, whistling, gurring on there. I was hooked for life. I just one look at those birds going across and it was wigeon. They’ve always been my favorite duck ever. Normally, you very rarely just get a pair. You normally get a group of wigeon. Once you’ve got wigeon around, it’s a good sign. They were always my favorite duck.
Ramsey Russell: How many punt gunners do you think exist now in the United Kingdom?
Ginger: Well, when you’re talking of gunners who have been gunners and now getting a bit too old or active.
Ramsey Russell: Active. How many active gunners would you guess there are? Would it be closer to three dozen or 300?
Ginger: Oh, much closer to three dozen. Thirty-six to forty. I think possibly fifty, but how many are active? It would certainly not be many more than fifty. And we’re all getting old and dying all the time. That’s the problem. There aren’t many young people who want to do it. It’s very hard.
Ramsey Russell: Modern day guys coming up behind Ginger are too candy-ass.
Ginger: Yeah, it’s a hard old job.
Ramsey Russell: That’s why it’s a dying sport.
Ginger: Yeah. They want to make it easy somehow. They’re not into shooting, a lot of them anyway. And if they are, it’s clay pigeon shooting. Things have just changed. When I was a young lad and roamed the marshes, kids don’t do it anymore.
Ramsey Russell: I talked to a man one time there in Havre de Grace, Maryland, where they body booting over on Susquehanna Flats. They’ll have a swan decoy the size of that cow, that sofa, and it’s planted in the mud. Hundreds of decoys around you. But that swan decoy is nothing but a silhouette that you stand behind. You’re hidden in the spread, shooting decoying birds coming in. It’s a very light punt gunning.
Ginger: Shooting swans or just to attract the ducks?
Ramsey Russell: No, no, no. Shooting duck. But swans are big enough to hide behind. Swans are in the area and attract the ducks. But swans have got a long neck and they’ll reach down into that mud and pick up stuff and a lot of it’ll float to the top and the ducks can get it.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a very effective technique, but it’s a very, very arduous and uncomfortable sport. It’s very old and effective and a venerable technique. And the man telling me the story was saying that when he was young, all the old guys would take the young guys under their wings because the old guys didn’t have quite the back they did, quite the energy they did. They’d take the young guys and teach them the ropes in exchange for them providing the muscle. And he’s now in his 50s and he said, you know what the problem is? I go, what? He goes, there aren’t the young people coming behind me. He said, the young people aren’t doing this. So now I’m the old guy. There’s no young guys to teach, to provide the muscle. And I’m kind of hearing you say the same thing because what I learned today is punt gunning is not an easy sport. It’s much easier to back a duck boat down into the water, crank up the outboard, and motor onto a tree, step off by the tree or push up and then pull up a blind. Boom. That’s much, much easier than what we did today.

Ginger: Oh yeah.
Ramsey Russell: We had to set for its maiden voyage. We had to set up James’s boat and rig today. And you said, well, it’d taken 10 minutes, but who cares if we’d stepped in your boat for 10 minutes? That is still an arduous process as compared to conventional duck hunting.
Ginger: You’ve got to maintain them, you’ve got to move them around, you’ve got to carry them about, you’ve got to have a car with a trailer.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean, my gosh, just loading that boat up. That’s a heavy wooden, 20-something foot boat to get up on a trailer.
Ginger: Which you have to maintain every year, if you don’t want it falling apart or sinking with you and everything else. Yeah, it’s hard. But that’s the challenge of life.

Ramsey Russell: Of course.

Ginger: Do you want to sit on your beer? I could be now, I could be sat here at my age, not bothering to go out, sat and watching the television. I mean, blow that for a [**:01:03:45].
Ramsey Russell: What would you guess the average age of that 35 to 50 punt gunners? What would you guess the average age?
Ginger: At least 60 plus, average I suggest.
Ramsey Russell: 60 plus.
Ginger: Yeah, at least.
Ramsey Russell: How does a guy like you that’s been duck hunting for so long, how do you feel about this sport dying?
Ginger: Terrible. A lot of it, I do to honor the old guys who did it. I think I’ve got it hard. I’ve got neoprene waders, a car with a heater in. I come home to a house with heating in. Those guys out there had oiled leather waders, no neoprene, no decent clothing, probably not waterproof clothing at all, possibly ex-army stuff. A lot of them went home to a, I mean, the guy I know used a turf fire. He didn’t have heating, let alone anything else. If he went home wet and his clothes were wet, they almost certainly would have been going out. He got up in the morning and put them on wet.
Ramsey Russell: Right.
Ginger: And they didn’t live long. They did not live that long because of the conditions they lived under. But that was their life. They brought up families and they were quite respected men in their society. These were gunners. These made a good living, or the best guys made a good living, should we say. As you can see, they rubbed shoulders with the gentry as well, on equal terms, I would say. I’ve got a picture of me. I talked to, oh God, I can’t remember which duchess it is now. I’m sorry. It’s Sophie. Sophie Reese Jones, who’s one of our royal family. Her father was a punt gunner. No, sorry, her uncle was a punt gunner. Reese Jones. Theo Reese Jones used to be chairman of the Wildfowling as well. I restored his punt and gun and used it for demonstrations, and unfortunately and very sadly, the club sold it without telling me, which was very annoying. I was not happy at all. She’s the Duchess, I think. Is she the Duchess of Wessex, I think. But they are family, so I chatted to her about punt gunning because her uncle used to do it. The royal family is still involved with it. It’s been there as well. I think it’s because it’s one of these ancient traditions, ancient sports that they admire themselves still. I would say it’s part of merry England, but it does go back in our history from the naval gunners of Nelson’s Navy right through all the way. It is part of shooting heritage in Britain. To lose it, is a tragedy.
Ramsey Russell: Yes.
Ginger: When it’s gone, it’s gone. That will be a tragedy. It’ll just be written. It’ll just be put up in a book somewhere or there’ll be a photograph. I’ll be doing it.
Ramsey Russell: Those same young kids that don’t want to do the effort, they don’t read anymore either. They watch YouTube.
Ginger: The thought of doing something just doesn’t appeal to them anymore, which is a shame. As they get older and a different generation comes through, whether there’ll be a backlash or not, I think they will realize that they’ve done away with a lot of things that shouldn’t have been done. They’re lessons in life. When you’re doing things like that, it gives you character. You’ve done it, you’ve made a challenge, you’ve beaten a challenge, you’ve succeeded. Strive to do it. You’ve succeeded. You’ve done it. The satisfaction is fantastic. The kids just don’t seem to want to accept the challenge anymore.
Ramsey Russell: Everybody wants to be at the top of the mountain. But really and truly, I’ve learned as a business owner, as a grown man, as a daddy, as a hunter, the top of the mountain’s not where it’s at, it’s the climb.
Ginger: You’ve got to climb.
Ramsey Russell: That’s the experience, man.
Ginger: You’ve got to climb up to get the mountains.
Ramsey Russell: That’s all the scenery. The scenery is on the side of the mountain.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Today was my first punt gun hunt, not my last. hen I think back to conventional hunting like I often do, some of my proudest moments were the hardest earned species, the hardest earned hunts, the wettest, most soaking, miserable hunts. When I’m back by the fire and I think back years later, wow, and the memorable.
Ginger: That’s the ones you remember.
Ramsey Russell: The one I had to earn.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You told me a story while you were getting the kettle hot about a hero of yours. You told me in the kitchen about a hero, about a man that fed his family.
Ginger: Walter Linnet, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Tell me about Walter Linnet.
Ginger: I’ll show you later on, but I got his caps box in there. Ingenious. You’ll see it later. He was on the mouth of the Blackwater, which is probably one of the most famous punt gunning areas in England. He lived in a clapboard house seaside of the sea wall. So the tide came up and in a big tide would probably flood into it. Dirt floor, clapboard house.
Ramsey Russell: When was this taking place?
Ginger: In the 1940s, I would say maybe even 1930s or 1940s, certainly into the 1950s. He’d got no running water, didn’t have a well because he’s seaside. Their only water supply was up the drainage ditches. He’s miles from anywhere. You’d have to get a boat to go into Malden from where he was, and he wouldn’t have had a motorboat for sure because he wouldn’t have had the fuel for it. He was so far away from anywhere. He’d have had to sail into Malden to get any further supplies. I guess he could have walked in. Hell of a long walk. But he probably could have walked in. He was right out in the sticks, nothing going. But he was a punt gunner and a fisherman. He brought up seven children to maturity. So he fed a family of nine every day of his life. Come wind, come rain, come hail, come snow, come whatever. He had to feed nine people every day. I just defy many people to do that these days.
Ramsey Russell: How did you come to know him or know of him?
Ginger: I knew of him because he was reasonably close and he’s quite famous as a punt gunner. But one of the things I did, which I’ll have to show you later, another punt gunner who’s quite famous, an artist called Julian Novril, actually had his cap box. He had percussion cap. He didn’t even have percussion guns. His was like a hammer gun hitting a percussion cap like that old one up there.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Ginger: He fired. So he had to keep the little caps, the percussion caps that fired it on him. If I can just walk over, no, I can’t do.
Ramsey Russell: No, we’ll do it afterwards. Yeah, we’ll do it afterwards. We’ll look at it.
Ginger: Got his little cap box there. But he was one of the last ones. It was dying out when he was still going. But he was such a man by living off what he could get. I’m sure there would be flounders and cockles and mussels and seafood and fish.
Ramsey Russell: And he lived off the land, in the land and off the land.
Ginger: Hardly any water and hardly anything. But he had a great life. He bore seven kids and brought them through to church. They didn’t die in his time, which is quite surprising. So they obviously all were fairly well fed to bring them up to maturity. And you think, one man feeding eight people and himself, sorry, let’s say nine people every day. If he had a cold or didn’t feel very well, well, all right, I suppose the kids would go and pick winkles or cockles or whelks or something. And as they got older, they would have helped him. But by God, that was some hard life. So you’ve got to admire men like that. And there are a lot of others like that. These guys who fished and fouled, that’s how they got their living. That’s how they survived. And it was an honorable way of doing it, but a damned hard way of doing it. But they did it. And you’ve got to admire, just admire, men like that who could do things like that. I mean, yeah, you’ve got them like backwoodsmen in America as well, same thing on there. Where they live by what they can shoot, hunt, and do, and may go into town twice a year, that’s the sort of story from America.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Ginger: These were real men. And the women with them as well, they were characters and completely self-sufficient. Didn’t need any government telling them what to do. Didn’t need anyone telling them what to do. They just needed the space to do it in.
Ramsey Russell: That’s all they needed. And the freedom to do it.
Ginger: And we’re a bit lucky. I don’t know about your waters there, but you mentioned something earlier which I wanted to say to you, we had originally the foreshore. It was called Crown Foreshore. The area between the high water mark and the low water mark is owned by the Crown. But everyone had the right to go on it. So you could shoot on it, and you could fish from it, and you could get cockles and samphire. There were other bits and pieces, driftwood and things like that. So it was reasonably free and open. But you’ve got that in America, in some of the woods and forests, you can go, and anyone can go and shoot there, I believe, still. Yeah, well, it was like that in England. But they’ve closed that down all the time over here by saying, “Oh well, if you’re out there, you’ve got to have insurance.” All the time they’re trying to close it down. All the things that you could do free, harming no one. I’ve never heard of anyone getting shot by accident out on the foreshore while someone was fowling. Unheard of. But the powers that be don’t want it. They would love to stop punt gunning. They would try and stop punt gunning. It’ll probably die out.
Ramsey Russell: You think it’s just punt gunning or hunting in general?
Ginger: I think hunting. For here, guns in general. I think everyone from the police force to the politicians to even most of the population would rather people didn’t have guns at all per se. Even though we don’t have really any problem at all with legal guns, for example. And you go to somewhere like Switzerland, and every man has to have a gun in Switzerland. But there’s no crime with guns over there in particular.
Ramsey Russell: Really?

Ginger: No, not at all.

Ramsey Russell: It’s mandatory that they have a gun.
Ginger: Yeah. Every man, because they might be called up for the army if necessary. So I think everyone has to have the use of a gun, if I remember.
Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s a hell of a rule.
Ginger: And I’ve been up there alpine stalking, and we went up to the guy’s hut, and I said, “We haven’t got the guns.” He just went to the top bunk, flicked the duvet back, there were the two guns on his hut, sorts that one out. But they don’t have gun crime. The fact is, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone getting shot in Switzerland with a gun, even though they’ve got them. So it’s not the guns. Just a lump of metal.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I don’t fall down, but liberal governments worldwide want to ban firearm control. And I’m like, wait a minute. If you’re worried about people getting killed with guns.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: I got an idea. Make murder illegal and enforce it.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: It’s that simple. Murder is illegal, its not the gun.
Ginger: Well, we’ve got knife crime here. Said they wanted to ban. We were gonna take the guns off the streets. Yeah. And what happened, they replaced them with knives.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. They can eyes of the streets, they replaced them with billy clubs or sticks or trash can lids or glass bottles.
Ginger: Bottle full of petrol.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. A thousand years ago, they were using stones.
Ginger: We better not go into politics.
Ramsey Russell: I want to talk, last question, really. It’s a dying sport. There’s four dozen punt gunners.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And my friend James has fallen under your wing, under your tutelage.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And I heard you say today, as you were showing him the ropes and we were getting everything put together, something would come up and you’d say, “Well, that’s another detail and you’ll learn,” or “You’ll do this.” And he said, “It’s going to take a couple of years.” You said, “It’s going to take a couple of years, but I’m going to teach you to do this.”
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: It occurred to me while I was laying on my belly, kind of sculling along, hoping a duck would swim out, James may be the very last punt gunner.
Ginger: Quite possible. Yeah, quite possible.
Ramsey Russell: He may be. He’s young.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: How does it feel to you to pass the torch, and what nuances or what are you going to teach people like him in the next two years?
Ginger: Well, it’s how to be a punt gunner. I mean, when I started, you asked me before, how did you start? Well, I had to do it by myself, so it was a very hard learning curve. Wadding, I don’t know if you want to go into it, but I’d been using the wadding out of that one, and when I used the same wadding in a breech loader, it didn’t work. But we didn’t realize that for ages. We were firing the gun, but it wasn’t actually doing anything. It was so loose, the shot was only going about 50 yards and dropping in the water. But we didn’t know. In the end, we couldn’t work out why we weren’t killing the birds. And we used a camera to video it, as it fired and realized that the shot was dropping after about 40 yards. And it was just the wadding. The wadding from a muzzle loader does not work in a breech loader.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Ginger: It taught me nearly a season and a lot of missed shots to realize that and find it out. And it’s all the little, tiny, silly things that we’ve come across quite a few today that you need. I spent two years learning at least, and I’ve spent the next 25 years learning how to do it. If I can save James a couple of years by telling him what to do, and hopefully he’ll improve it, I’ve improved. You’ve seen some of the things I’ve done today. I’ve found ways of making improvements, quite small, but quite there. I think that can be done better these days. In fact, James said today he wanted to get hemp rope. I said, no, don’t get hemp rope. I’ve got one hanging in the garage that’s snapped in half. That gun, when I fired, it snapped the breech rope. So I was lucky it didn’t come flying back and hit me in the face. You get the nylon ropes now. You can get climbing ropes that have a give, but not a lot of give.

Ramsey Russell: Not too much.

Ginger: Absolutely. So they make great breech ropes. You’ve got all these little bits and pieces all the way through. You can spend a long time trying to learn them. But if someone like me can tell him, and not even tell him, show him,  this is why we do it like that. If we can find a better way, I’m interested as well. As a businessman, I’m always looking for a better, cheaper, easier way of doing something. The same with punt gunning. But I can save him several years of trial and tribulation which he might give up. He might find it so hard. Other people might be the same. It’s such a hard thing. I’m not getting anywhere. So, I’m not going to be a punt gunner anymore.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ve got faith he’s going to continue for at least a year because we made plans before we got back to the boat ramp. We’ve already got at least one more, maybe two more hunts together planned.

Ginger: Not a problem. I want you down there, and James the same. I want to get down onto the Blackwater or Mersey Island to actually do that now because that is the essence of punt gunning. Very rare to do it on freshwater like we’ve done today, but it’s handy for me. I can be down there in 10 minutes. Whereas if I go to Essex, I’ve got to do a two-day, if not three-day journey to get a tow in a punt, bringing it back, finding somewhere to sleep, where do I put my dog, or this. But it will be just ideal to go down with James. He’s keen, and show him what we do. A great deal of it is stealth, and that’s a lot of it. It’s so easy to do something too quickly. It’s the patience of an old man who does it, and that is the experience. There’s a shot, which is why I said I rarely come back without a shot. If there’s birds, the birds will be somewhere. My job’s to find them, and when I find them, my job’s to get in range of them. And if that takes me the rest of the day, so be it. What else am I going to do? I’m out here punt gunning. I’m out to get a shot.

Ramsey Russell: When James and I planned this visit, my visit now to the UK, the deciding factor, the date we chose,  was a full moon because we’re leaving in the morning. We’re going to go shoot pink-footed geese.

Ginger: Yeah, up in Cumbria.

Ramsey Russell: Yep, by moonlight.

Ginger: Morecambe Bay.

Ramsey Russell: And that’s what we chose, the moon phases,  and tried to time those conditions.

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Next visit, which is imminent, we’re going to select tide.

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Fingers crossed the wind cooperates.

Ginger: Yeah. That is always the problem. It’s coastal conditions. You wouldn’t go out fishing, if there’s a really strong wind. The boats won’t go out because it’s too dangerous. It’s the same with punt gunning. If the wind is too strong or the tides are wrong, then you’ve got a problem. But generally now, at least we can get wind forecasts fairly well, and you tides are very easy, you get tide tables. I could tell you, probably within a computer now or with a tide table, I could tell you, what is a good tide. Middle of November next year, I could say, right, you’re coming over on the 14th of November. I can tell you what the tide is doing, no, it’s no good, or yes, it’s fine. Then all you’ve got to do, if you’ve got the tide right, is find what the wind is doing. That is the more tricky one.

Ramsey Russell: Well, we won’t determine that till I’m here. We’ll select the tide and then hope for the wind.

Ginger: That is the problem. Again, it’s easier a bit. Where we’ve been today, when it floods, you lose a lot of the windbreaks, so the wind comes across the water. It’s harder out there. When you’re on the coast, the channels are low down at low water, they’re hidden below, so the wind is going over the top. There’s much less wind down there than there is out here. All the wind problems are being out here. It’s amazing how those punts are 22 feet long and they weigh God knows how much, but the wind will blow them all over the place.

Ramsey Russell: I found that out, yeah.

Ginger: It’s hard. So you have to get the conditions right. If I can get out on the coast two or three times a year, that’s lucky normally, because you only have so long. The tides come every two weeks, so in one month, and of course Christmas gets in the way,  I’m still running a business. So in January, I may only have one tide in the middle of January, if it’s somewhere like the 14th when the tides are right. And then I might only have another one, if possible, in February. We do get to February 20th in low water.

Ramsey Russell: Really? That late?

Ginger: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I bet it’s nice and warm then.

Ginger: No. I’ve had blokes in the front of the punt shivering with cold, so I make them row. That warms them up a bit.

Ramsey Russell: I was surprised to learn or hear that punt gunners today don’t shoot many divers. You all don’t shoot many poachers?

Ginger: No.

Ramsey Russell: Why?

Ginger: Not many people don’t shoot them at all. They don’t taste good. They don’t eat well.

Ramsey Russell: So you’re not targeting them.

Ginger: No

Ramsey Russell: Are they any harder to hunt than puddle duck?

Ginger: No, probably easier.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Ginger: Especially if you get tufted when it floods up like this. All the dabblers, wigeon, teal, mallard, all those which we have pintail out there. There feeding in the shallows on the edge. When it comes up too high, that’s not good for them. You saw where today the edge is quite near the farm or where people are. They don’t trust that edge very much to feed on. They’d much rather be farther out. That’s why, remember, we had that grassy island. That was ideal because they can feed on that, but it’s a long way from anything still.

Ramsey Russell: I see.

Ginger: When you come in, the divers, however, are quite happy because they can upend and dive down and get all the dead worms and snails and stuff that’s been drowned out there in this flood. They can go down and get it all. So they’re overjoyed. So you get quite often down there, packs of tufted ducks. But they’re not very good to eat, so we don’t bother shooting them.

Ramsey Russell: Well, the Brandt got thin. The Brandt geese, you all called the Brandt. The Brandt seemed to have their population diminished with the bombing range and World War II and everything else.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And then they closed the season.
Ginger: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Are they coming back or their population rebounding?
Ginger: They’re coming back. Yeah. What also happened was that Brent and the wigeon, their favorite food was called eelgrass.
Ramsey Russell: Eelgrass, yes.
Ginger: The eelgrass disappeared. Whether it’s pollution, that happened a fair bit with boat antifouls underneath boats they put on back in the 1950s and 1960s. So the eelgrass went, and that was the main food for the Brent and wigeon as well. Wigeon seemed to manage to swap over more to being inland a bit more like here. They were generally in the past a coastal bird when I was young.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Ginger: Now, of course, you saw them all today in fresh water.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Ginger: They’ve swapped their feeding habits reasonably successfully. The other year they were all on, you know, rape fields. When it was snowy and cold, the wigeon were going into the rape fields eating the rape.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Ginger: Because some of the guys were shooting them over rape, which I didn’t really approve of, but there we go. And the Brent again now have also gone onto fields because down in Essex, they put gas guns out. The gas guns will be in a field to fill, and they’ll be banging away. The Brent are in the field. They take no notice of it. So I should imagine they’re eating old seed rape plants.
Ramsey Russell: Well, over on the Atlantic Flyway in the United States, they’ve lost a lot of eelgrass and they’ve transitioned into city parks. Eat turf grass and sea lettuce. And it’s changed their palatability quite a bit.
Ginger: Well, I’ll have to leave. I’ll just turn this off.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, but that’s okay. That’s okay.
Ginger: Oh, it’s David at Mersey. I’ll turn him off. I asked him. I was speaking to him the other day about that breaching.
Ramsey Russell: His ears were burning.
Ginger: Yeah, must have been.
Ramsey Russell: Ginger, I appreciate the day. I appreciate your time. I appreciate the conversation. Thank you very much for your hospitality. I’ve greatly enjoyed this.
Ginger: Well, I’ve enjoyed you having here as well. I mean, I say long live punt gunning.
Ramsey Russell: Long live punt gunning.
Ginger: It’s nice that other people know it’s there and there is still people carrying on that traditional hunting.

“I just kind of wanted to go shoot a punt gun today, that’s all. Just to say I did it. Now I really, really want to come back.”

Ramsey Russell: Well, thank you very much, especially for a proper introduction to the sport and the art of punt gunning. I greatly enjoyed it, and I’m really, truly looking forward to. I just kind of wanted to go shoot a punt gun today, that’s all. Just to say I did it. Now I really, really want to come back.
Ginger: Get you down at Mersey or Blackwater.
Ramsey Russell: I want to pull the trigger on some ducks, yeah.
Ginger: Have to stalk them really, really tight in that open bill.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. And folks, you all been listening to my friend Ginger over here in the United Kingdom, the last of the punt gunners. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo Ducks season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.