Ordered a back issue of True West magazine - Dec 2000 and its on the mountain men.
One mountain man from 1842 ran with Bill Williams and this was a very good article! I learned some stuff and was stumped when I read Hamilton's remark about 6 trappers ( he included) trading in their Hawken rifles:
"Six of us traded our old hawkins rifles for sharps rifles brought in by emigrants. The barrels of the hawkins made good substitutes for crowbars. Those were the first sharps we had seen and we found them most effective weapons, our only criticism being that the triggers pulled too hard. We had a gunsmith resight them and fix the triggers, and securing lots of tape caps and ammunition, we practiced for several days. They were equal in accuracy to our old rifles and far superior in effectiveness."
CROWBARS??!?!! WAGH!
One mountain man from 1842 ran with Bill Williams and this was a very good article! I learned some stuff and was stumped when I read Hamilton's remark about 6 trappers ( he included) trading in their Hawken rifles:
"Six of us traded our old hawkins rifles for sharps rifles brought in by emigrants. The barrels of the hawkins made good substitutes for crowbars. Those were the first sharps we had seen and we found them most effective weapons, our only criticism being that the triggers pulled too hard. We had a gunsmith resight them and fix the triggers, and securing lots of tape caps and ammunition, we practiced for several days. They were equal in accuracy to our old rifles and far superior in effectiveness."
CROWBARS??!?!! WAGH!