Smokey the Cannon is an artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

 piece used as part of the pageantry of college football

College football

College football refers to American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges, and military academies, or Canadian football played by teams of student athletes fielded by Canadian universities...

 games of The University of Texas Longhorns

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

. Smokey is operated and cared for by the Texas Cowboys

Texas Cowboys

Texas Cowboys is an honorary men's service organization at The University of Texas at Austin. Founded in 1922, its members include some of the University's most distinguished students and alumni...

, a University student organization. Smokey is fired each time the Longhorns score, at every kick-off, and at the end of each quarter. The cannon is present for all home games, and for some away games when not prohibited by local rules.

History

The original cannon, Smokey I, was constructed at the University's mechanical engineering lab in 1953, in response to shotgun blasts often heard at the Red River Shootout — the annual Texas-Oklahoma football game.

Smokey I was modified in 1955 to shoot twin 10-gauge shotgun

Shotgun

A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...

 shells. This revision was renamed Smokey II.

The current version of the cannon, Smokey III, weighs 1,200 pounds and fires up to four blank 10-gauge shells at a time. The cannon was built in 1988 by Lupton Machinery of Austin

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

 out of the trunk of an oak

Oak

An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

tree. Alumni donations were raised to cover the cannon's $25,000 cost.