56 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



are examples of the many strange doings that were related of 

 him in his day ; but Brown's poachings and pilferings have 

 long since ended, and he has joined the "great majority" of 

 Breydoners. 



The "last of the punt-gunners" proper was "Johnny" 

 alias "Pintail" Thomas, who died in the Fishermen's Hospital 

 in 1901. Thomas, like most of his congeners, was born of a 

 Breydon sire, his father and grandfather having lived, and one 

 of them died, on Breydon. His earliest associations centred 

 in and around his father's old flint-lock punt-gun, the mullet 

 and smelt nets, and other paraphernalia of their calling ; and 

 he was rocked as much in the punt as in the cradle. When 

 old enough, like most of his class, he went to sea in fishing 

 boat and smack, and when tired of that rough, wild life, took 

 to pursuits, and lived amid scenes hardly less rough and wild. 

 He followed Breydon assiduously for nearly all the thirty- 

 odd years I knew him. As a boy his shop-window was a 

 kind of wonderland to me. Meat was sold on one side and 

 vegetables on the other, fronting them being huge dishes, 

 sometimes empty, but often full and piled with knots, turn- 

 stones, dunlins, and ringed plovers, that had been slain by 

 "Johnny." Rows of gulls, ducks, and curlews adorned the 

 hooks outside. The rarer birds that fell to his gun were 

 always in demand by certain collectors and dealers, and a 

 brisk trade was occasionally done in the commoner fowl for 

 the table. The gulls, when there was no demand for their 

 wings and plumage by millinery firms, were stripped of their 

 feathers for the making of pillows, etc. ; and the smaller ones 

 went into John's saucepan. Before the close season was 

 instituted, Thomas shot all the year round, except on 

 Sundays ; but the sight of an avocet or a spoonbill was too 

 much even for his scruples, and he fell from grace, and 

 sneaked out after them. Long after close times had been 

 ordained, he would take sly shots, and by some means 

 smuggle home rare birds, and birds in their nuptial attire, 

 well knowing there were methods of disposal, and buyers 

 always ready to take them. 1 But close time was a death-blow 

 to the professional gunner, although the altered conditions of 

 Breydon, the drainage of the surrounding lowlands, added to 

 the constant noise and turmoil of traffic all round the estuary 



1 Vide Nature in Eastern Norfolk, pp 40-43. 



