The weight spectra of high-rate punctured convolutional codes are evaluated under the hypothesis of a low-rate structure. This interpretation yields results slightly different from those obtained when weight spectra are evaluated assuming a true high-rate structure for punctured codes. The paper also extends the search for long memory punctured codes by providing new punctured codes of rates 4/5, 5/6, 6/7, and 7/8 with memories M ranging from 9 to 19.