Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2022 i Guns of the Old West

The Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) and Guns of the Old West have been intertwined since our first issue. Many of the guns you read about in these pages are suitable for Cowboy Action Shooting (CAS) competitions. For this reason, I like to keep readers up to date on SASS goings-on. CAS began in Southern California, and for many years one of the premier SASS events, END of TRAIL (EoT), was held in Norco. The first match was in April 1982, some five years before SASS was formally organized. EoT stayed put in Norco until 2004, when SASS purchased a 480-acre ranch near Edgewood, about 20 miles outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. The HQ complex included a 20-bay shooting range, campgrounds and an Old West town replica. EoT was held at…

Photographs courtesy of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum and the Donald M. & Louise Yena Collection. If any group of lawmen are worthy of the moniker “gunfighters,” it’s the legendary Texas Rangers. Doug Dukes, native Texan and retired career Austin police officer turned full-time historian, spent years analyzing thousands of historical records held at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas, as well as interviewing scores of former and present Rangers, to put together a detailed picture of how this force was armed from its start to the present day. In 2020, the product of all this research came together in Dukes’s book Firearms of the Texas Rangers: From the Frontier Era to the Modern Age, published in 2020 by University of North…

DURING A RECENT VISIT TO the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky, I discovered a great piece of firearms Americana for a bargain $100. It was a Harrington & Richardson Safety Hammer Double Action pocket revolver in great shape. This simple, compact, solid-framed, 15-ounce, .32-caliber revolver with a 2.5-inch barrel featured a patented spurless hammer designed for a snag-free draw from concealment. It’s a variant of H&R’s inexpensive and hugely successful American Double Action revolver line, of which more than 850,000 were made from 1884 to 1941. Most were six-shot .32 S&Ws. The five-shot .38 S&W was the next most popular, and the rather rare, larger-framed .44 Webley model a distant third. They shared a simple mechanical design with a fixed cylinder, and no ejector other than your…

During the “taming of the West,” repeating rifles were in great demand, just as they are today, with lever-actions at the top of the list. Many lever-action rifles appeared, but only a few still survive. The one that remains king is the Model 1894 designed by John Moses Browning for Winchester. Offered in dozens of calibers and styles, the 1894 saddle ring carbine, especially in the caliber .30 WCF (.30-30), remains the most sought-after by collectors and hunters alike. The saddle ring was used with a leather loop to hang the rifle over the saddle horn in front of the rider. I grew up with an 1894 and have had many go through my hands. It comes up to my shoulder and cheek as if I was born with it.…

“Yesterday’s Gone, and we can’t get it back” This sage remark was made by Augustus “Gus” McCrae, former Texas Ranger captain and one of the main characters in the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Lonesome Dove (1985) by noted author Larry McMurtry. This novel was adapted into a screenplay, spawning a four-episode, Emmy Award–winning TV miniseries of the same title in 1989. The series has become an iconic Western, retaining its popularity to this day. McCrae and his partner Woodrow F. Call, also a former Ranger captain, have retired to a rundown, dusty town on the Texas-Mexico border called Lonesome Dove . McCrae and Call are the proprietors of the Hat Creek Cattle Company & Livery Emporium. They’re assisted by two other former Rangers, a Mexican cook and a 17-year-old boy believed…

With its terrible carnage, the Civil War did push technical innovation. A new rifle was needed to replace the muskets and one of the first attempts, the Volcanic Repeating Rifle—which fired a “Rocket Ball” bullet with a hollow base containing powder and priming compound—never achieved popularity. In 1857, the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company went bankrupt, and Oliver Winchester reorganized it as the New Haven Arms Company. His plant superintendent was Benjamin Tyler Henry, who in 1860 redesigned the Volcanic action to fire a .44-caliber rimfire brass cartridge loaded with 25 grains of powder behind a 216-grain bullet. The Henry rifle was born. The Union, though, was overrun by firearms inventors, crackpots and other shysters and not very receptive to new weapons. Many were leery of repeaters, which they believed expensive,…

I attempt to get to the shooting range once a week, and so far this year I have averaged a bit more than three times a month, including in the winter. I usually take one of several centerfire handguns—a .44 Special Colt New Frontier being a favorite—and always take three .22 rimfire handguns. These are a Ruger 3-screw Single-Six, an old High Standard Double-Nine and a 1911-style semi-auto pistol. The semi-auto is a Colt 1911 conversion unit mounted on a stainless steel Wilson Combat bottom half. After finishing with the centerfire handgun, I shoot 150 to 200 rounds of .22s. The two revolvers (I can’t say “six-guns,” as the Double-Nine is a nine-shot double-action revolver) have had the fixed sights removed, so most of my rimfire shooting is point shooting…

How does a guy from Brooklyn make Old West heritage guns? ■ The company dates back to 1911, when John Jovino operated a gun store in Manhattan and made holsters and sold guns to the NYPD. The Manhattan store was sold to Frank Albanese, who hired my father, Lou Imperato. My father expanded the company, and when I took it over, I acquired the Henry name and eventually moved it out of Brooklyn to Bayonne, New Jersey. What makes Henry rifles so special? ■ We take pride in everything we do at Henry, from sourcing materials to craftsmanship to customer service. We are consistently rated at the top when it comes to customer service with our no-small-print guarantee. Our slogan remains “Made in America, Or Not Made at All.” With…

Uberti Winchester 1873 Sporting Rifle Caliber: .44-40 • Barrel: 24.25 inches OA Length: 43.25 inches • Weight: 8.20 pounds (empty) Sights: Adjustable square post front, adjustable buckhorn rear • Stock: Walnut Action: Lever • Finish: Color-casehardened, blued• Capacity: 13+1 • MSRP: $1,349 Uberti Colt Cattleman II Revolver Caliber: .44-40 • Barrel: 5.5 inches OA Length: 11 inches • Weight: 36.8 ounces (empty) Sights: Front square blade, rear notch • Grip: Walnut Action: SA • Finish: Color-casehardened, blued • Capacity: 6 • MSRP: $579…

A common image of the U.S. Army on the frontier in the 19th century was one of a hardy force that spent its days hunting the Native Americans, and typically looked a little the worse for wear. That goes hand-in-hand with the myth that frontier forts resembled those from a John Wayne movie or perhaps a child’s play set with wooden barricades and watch towers. Moreover, there is the largely mistaken belief that regulations were relaxed and the soldiers took on a rugged or disheveled appearance. In reality, it was rare for walls or defensive works to be built around most frontier posts, which were actually little more than collections of buildings positioned together in the middle of an often featureless frontier. Larger posts may have had a stockade, and…