When cartridges could not be bought, it must've come as a terrible blow to shooting folk. Indeed, it must have done so all over again, after the last war in this country, when they were simply not available to be bought, even by those who did have the money. Any decision would be arbitrary, but seeing the Victorian bag was twenty on opening day up until only fairly recently, it would be reasonable to call it anything over that. Punt gunners have been thought by some to have been big takers of wildlife, but that is mostly not the case, as many would only fire one or two shots in a season. At any rate, punt-gunning is about dead, as much through incorrect perceptions of it by lawmakers as through anything else.
Bureaucrats assume large-bored guns take more game.
This is not necessarily so, but it doesn't stop them framing laws banning them. In the fifties, in the large areas of undrained swampland, it was not unusual to see husband and wife out shooting together. Today, another change of equal importance has already come about. The move to non-lead shot over two decades in the United States has caused a big alteration in the guns that people have come to accept there. They have already undergone change, with ten gauges and extra-long chambers coming back into use.