Muzzleloader magazine

[exMember]

So I just recently picked up 71 issues of this magazine from 1998 to 2015. I've only thumbed through a small portion and noticed that a lot of the articles are more eastern long hunter than mountain man era. Is this what I should expect to find as I start reading through them? I already round one article that I had to roll by eyes over and that was the round ball sprue.

A lot of info in them, but.... the eastern forest hunter isn't really my thing and there is a LOT of it in these magazines.

 

[Randy Johnson]

You are a victim of your times.
When I started out nobody was "into" eastern longhunter. It was all western fur trade, and Rendezvous were all tipis and lean-tos. The National Bicentenial started a change, and now it is rare to see western fur trade types anywhere.
A magazine that stayed largely western fur trade was the Buckskin Report. If you are willing to spend the bucks this is a wonderful find on EBay.
https://m.ebay.com/itm/BUCKSKIN-REPORT-Big-Timber-MT-MUZZLE-LOADING-Complete-69-Issue-Run-1974-1979-/112591745645?hash=item1a36fdb26d%3Ag%3AFjMAAOSwCU1Y4Vt2&_trkparms=pageci%253A99b4d53a-b4b3-11e7-85b1-74dbd180e66d%257Cparentrq%253A340ee75c15f0a86c146fc80cfff84c46%257Ciid%253A4
It was one of if not THE best muzzleloading magazines ever printed

 

[Kentucky Colonel]

As a boy, I remember the bicentennial celebrations that highlighted the flintlock long rifles and the Brown Bess. My youth was also a time of the Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett television series on television. These were centered on the Ohio Valley and Tennessee mountains largely. Then, later, I found a time that seemed to focus more on the west- Buffalo Bill Cody, Kit Carson, Simon Kenton, and others before moving onto later times and the battles with outlaws in places like the OK Corral. Teddy Roosevelt was huge for a while. I think these things go in cycles. The Florida Frontier look is still a little jarring to me having grown up with a more eastern long hunter look and those brightly colored blanket outfits of the west still surprise me. How does one move through the countryside stealthily in that garb?

 

[BrownBear]

...those brightly colored blanket outfits of the west still surprise me. How does one move through the countryside stealthily in that garb?

Most folks overlook the fact that the western countryside, warfare, trapping and even hunting was all about horses.  You could often be seen for miles, so color didn't matter two bits at a $10 poker table. Once you got off your mount and into cover color would be an issue, but mostly the bright blankets stayed furled on your pack horse til winter came along and you holed up somewhere. Indians ran along about the same pattern I think. 

I kinda get a giggle out of the thought of guys today dreaming of packing 12# Hawkens and all their trapping gear and camp gear on their back like an eastern hunter. Didn't happen.  A man without one horse at least, and better yet a pack horse or three as well, was just about worthless in the real world of the West. Of course, today the horses are all made by Ford, Chevy and Dodge and the pack horses by Honda, Polaris and Yamaha.

 

[Buck Conner1]

You will find if its a long hunter Hollywood movie, then the country goes in that direction (want-a-bees) living that movies story line. When Daniel Day Lewis and Russell Means played long hunters every person you ran into had a gunstock war club and a rifleman's knife.  Then when the Glass movie came out many where pretending they had a part in that flick. 

This is quite common we have found with guys claiming they had been in the TV series "Centennial" then in "The Mountain Men" again in "Dull Knife". Several of us that worked in those movies would look at them, ask a few questions they should know and find they didn't have a clue about these movies, just blowing smoke (they weren't within a 100 miles of them when made).

That said these publishers just follow the trends, if its history in North America from the F&I War to the Civil War that's what they print. I told Schurlock that "we could tell which way he would go by the current movie", he didn't reply to the remark.

Back east its easy to see what was going on just the distances between fights - F&I War to the Civil War, only the officers rode the rest walked. Out west if it hadn't been for the Spaniards bringing their horses the country would have developed much slower. That's just fact ...