i've heard of a 8 guage shotgun , it's an older guage and was for some reason banned , does anybody have any info on the 8 guage and the guns it was in , some historical info would be good too does anybody have any pics of the shotshell , or some comparison pics with it and other guage shells.
P.S. , why was it banned ???

I use to have some 8 guage ammo around, but i guess it's long gone???

8 ga. use to be made along with 6 ga, 4 ga., and even a 2 guage. (commonly called "punt" guns) I've seen 8 guage guns long ago, but they were mainly used for comercial hunting. 2, 4, and 6 guage were mostly mounted on the front of a boat and fired into a flock of ducks or geese that were on the water.

You can own a bigger guage that 10 guage, but the hunting laws have banned anything bigger than 10 guage for sporting use.

Drilling Man

I wish I could remember the details better as I saw one as a small kid. It was single shot and the shell was full length brass. The owner lived near the Platte River in Nebraska. The market hunters were old when I was a kid so I wish I asked for details back then. But I have heard this...

"Getting your ducks in a row": I heard this started when they went out in the dark morning hours. They had the punt gun that they mounted on a pintle on their boat. They had a lantern, and the glass was a peculiar shade. When it was lit, the ducks would form a line but not raise from the river. Thus, they would fire the punt gun, getting as much of a head shot as they could on the flock for less meat damage. Cool beans!

They still make 2,4,6, and 8s in England.

My father works for a cement quarry and they had an 8 guage shotgun mounted on a stand that was used for busting "klinker" off the sides of the kilns. The cement dust would mix with moisture and form on the walls making it like cement, the shotgun was the only way to break it up. My dad used to bring home some of the shells (they were 4" long) and cut the solid lead slug out of them and melt them down to cast his muzzleloader bullets. Ill have to ask him if they still have it.

The 8 ga.,the 6, 4, and 2-ga., were all banned in order to give the poor ducks and geese a chance to recover from the butchery of the 19th Century market hunters who damn near wiped out everyduck & goose in North America! (Just like they did the buffalo.)

To give you some idea if the size of an 8-ga., keep in mind that a pure lead ball the size of the bore weighs 1/8 of a pound, or 875 grains!!

There were also 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2-bore RIFLES built to shoot dangerous game, and each of these usedthe number of round balls the diameter of the bore required to weigh a pound. Ie., the 4-ga shot 1/4-pound balls (1750 grains), the 2-ga shot half-pound (3500-grain!!) balls, the 6-ga., 1/6 pound balls, etc.

All of these ponderous gauge guns had to be a lot of fun to shoot(!!), plus you'd need to travel on a horse to move the bigger onesfrom one place to the next. No wonder the old African hunters all had gun bearers!!

They use them for cleaning scale buildup off the insides of boilers too.