La Barca Tales

The Potatoe Gun

I'd heard about potatoe guns for years but had never seen one. My neighbor here has this friend from Oregon who is a junk yard wizard. Herbie can make anything out of anything and sometimes more. He is ex Navy Engineer and a Swordfisherman and loves fixing up old trucks.
His latest invention was a cooling system consisting of a couple vacuum cleaner filters with the windshield washer diverted to drip on them and the fan blowing the cool air out. Automotive Swamp Cooler
Anyways, Herbie builds this potatoe gun and they are shooting it off the bluff. It's about 5' long 2" black abs with an igniter. (top secret)
They invite me to shoot it and it looks fun so I give it a go. Here at the beach there are many birds that fly by because of the winds. These gaviotas are flying by and they tell me to shoot one. Having shot a bird before, I knew the consequences so I gave it a flying start. And, having shot skeet before (did I say that?) I had some idea of what was up. I followed this bird to about 100 yards up the beach, took my bearings with trajectory, wind, distance and fired.
Now, a potatoe isn't the fastest projectile in the world so we got to watch this here tuber flying for what seemed like 5 minutes. Until, it came down on the birds back.
Feathers went flying, the bird headed straight down to the beach, and started eating the potatoe!
My first time! Direct hit! And I have a bunch of witnesses.

Potatoe guns are a kick !!

I wish I could have seen that bird.
we used to make those way back. and one day my son made a watermelon canon. it was assume it would make a big noise and a bigger mess.

Big guns in Oregon

Cute story. Those Gulls certainly are scavengers!

Potatoe.....????
Dan Quayle hence "Quayle Gun" ?


Potatoe


Very funny.