Cart rifle
A cart rifle is a historical hunting weapon in use from the 18th to the 19th centuries .
It is a box or hook box with an excessively long barrel , which for reasons of weight was only carried on a cart and supported there. This was camouflaged as a hay wagon, for example, and made it possible to hide weapons that were up to three meters long from the prey to be hunted such as cranes , geese , bustards or herons . Usually several cart rifles were carried in order to ensure a rapid rate of fire. Multi-barreled rifles that were fired with a lock were also possible. The long barrel should increase accuracy at long range.
With regard to the long barrel and the purpose of hunting, the weapon is also reminiscent of the punt gun , which is, however, a shotgun .
Cart rifles were also used as weapons of war . Such a weapon was also known as "King Carl's cart rifle", which was named after the Swedish King Karl, who had suggested its manufacture in 1869 with detailed information.
The cart rifle became superfluous with improvements in short-barreled weapons in the 19th century.
The description of a cart rifle as a hunting weapon from 1731 gives the following:
"Cart rifle, is a fire rifle, so fastened to a cart, which is called the shooting cart [...] The cart has two wheels, behind it is a strong iron fork, which one with a trade, now and then , high and low, can turn. In this fork lies a double heel or large metal tube with a fire or rifle lock, and right hand shaft like a target tube with a comfortable stop and reticle, which is fastened to the fork with an iron thread that it does not wobble or can push. [...] "
literature
- Johann Christoph Adelung : Grammatical-critical dictionary of the High German dialect. Volume 2. Leipzig 1796, p. 1505 ( zeno.org digitized).
- Pierer's Universal Lexicon . Volume 9. Altenburg 1860, pp. 337-338 ( zeno.org digitizedversion).
- Johann Georg Krünitz : Economic Encyclopedia. Berlin 1775 ( zeno.org digitized).
- Christoph Otto, Johann Friedrich Stahl: Onomatologia Forestalis-Piscatorio-Venatoria or complete forest, fish and hunting lexicon. Second part, 1773, p. 475.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Henry Darapsky: King Carl's cart rifle. In: Polytechnisches Journal . 193, 1869, pp. 15-17.
- ↑ General economic lexicon ...: In addition to an appendix to a country and house-economic calendar ... JF Gleditschens blessed son, 1731, p. 1181 ( books.google.de ).