Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2023 i Guns of the Old West

• WESTERN WORDS • “WHERE LEGEND MEETS PERFORMANCE” is the slogan of Taylor’s & Company, one of the world’s leading importers and marketers of historic replica firearms for more than three decades. I have worked with Taylor’s & Co. for more years than I care to mention, and their heritage products have done much to “Keep the Legend Alive.” Western Action Shooting enthusiasts, collectors and even the entertainment industry have turned to Taylor’s when they need the finest in authentic Old West reproduction firearms. Because of their historically correct firearms, parts and accessories, customers have made Taylor’s & Co. their first choice. Taylor’s & Co. 35th Anniversary This year marks Taylor’s & Co.’s 35th year as a company. As part of its mission, Taylor’s is offering their New West brand…

From the mid-1950s into the 1970s, there were three Hollywood holster makers. These were Arvo Ojala of the Hollywood Fast Draw Holster shop, Andy Anderson of the Gunfighter Shop and Alfonso Pineda of the Alfonso of Hollywood Holster and Gun shop. Journey Begins Ojala came to Hollywood in the early 1950s. He had designed a fast draw holster with a unique steel insert that encircled the revolver’s cylinder. This allowed the cylinder of the single-action revolver to revolve freely while in the holster. Using his unique holster, Ojala had developed a fast draw where he thumb-cocked the SA revolver with first hand contact. He soon had the reputation as the fastest gun in Hollywood. He started marketing his holsters as well as teaching actors how to safely fast draw their…

ITWAS DATE DAY, my favorite time of the week. Each week, I take my bride of 34 years out for a meal and a walk in the park. I know that makes me seem old, but that’s more accurately what keeps us both young. On this particular day, my wife also wanted to hit the antique mall before we headed home. Groan. Antique malls, in general, are not man spaces. At least in my experience, your typical antique mall will be full of stuff like costume jewelry, musty outdated clothing and old spoons. I resigned myself to finding a handy chair and playing on my phone. This particular antique mall was inde c ed awash to its gunwales with handmade crafts and vintage ephemera. However, one corner of the place…

• HERO OR VILLAIN • Though Robert Ford was the better-known of the two Ford brothers, Charles had his own claim to fame by participating in the Blue Cut Train Robbery, with none other than Jesse James himself. This train robbery, occurring on September 7, 1881, was nothing exceptional by any means. The money gained was minimal (around $3,000), and the robbers even had to steal from the passengers to make up the difference. However, this somewhat unremarkable robbery was a turning point in the lives of most of the outlaws involved. The James brothers broke up soon after with Frank retiring from a life of crime. Jesse James was shot dead by Robert Ford, and Charley, never achieving top-tier outlaw status, died by suicide just a few years after.…

If there’s a modern name synonymous with the American West it’s probably Louis L’Amour. I read my first Louis L’Amour Western novel when I was about 9 years old, and I’ve read—and re-read—every one of his books since then, including one just last week! On this 70th anniversary of publishing his first Western novel—Hondo—it seems fitting to take a look at the life and times of a man many Old West lovers have admired since childhood. In The Beginning The fantastic lives portrayed in L’Amour’s novels pale in comparison to the man’s real-life experiences. Born Louis Dearborn LaMoore on March 22, 1908, in Jamestown, North Dakota, he was the last of seven children in the family. Through exposure to cowboys traveling through the area, along with ranching uncles, L’Amour was…

OLD WEST FORTS Not all Old West forts were built as outposts for Army troops to ride patrols from or to protect settlers on the western end of civilization from outlaws and hostile indigenous people. In this issue, let’s take a look at a fort that is better known as a nearly inescapable prison and has been featured in a number of movies and documentaries over the years. Fort Alcatraz, California While better known nowadays as an infamous penitentiary, Fort Alcatraz played an important part in the defense of our nation. Historians tell us that 11 cannons were mounted on the Alcatraz Island in 1854, and construction of the fort was completed in 1859. By the early 1860s, the fort had over 100 cannons. Originally built to protect gold and…

Three publishers, 11 years and 28 issues ago, American Frontiersman magazine was born. Its premier annual edition struck a significant chord in those wanting to be immersed in both the old and the new “American Spirit.” Before long, AF became a quarterly affair alongside its longstanding sister publication—Guns Of The Old West. GOW and AF’s editors and designer have been office colleagues and friends for more than 25 years. Combine all the firearm and hunting special-interest magazine titles the three have worked on together, and it’s fair to say that the total number of issues is upward of 2,000. Enough horn tooting, though. The matter at hand is that we recently made the difficult decision to discontinue standalone American Frontiersman print and digital editions, and AF magazine and its loyal…

In late 2020 I was looking into doing some articles on guns collected by Wendell Grangaard purported to be the largest and best documented group of Indian-used arms of the Old West. Mr. Grangaard was previously unknown to me, but by forwarded e-mails, the basic information about him and his collection made it to my desk. He spent most of his life among the Indians, loved and respected their culture, started collecting in the 1960s, and was now in his 80s and looking to sell his $58 million collection. His sales agent, a personal friend of his, was completely forthright about his intentions in reaching out to writers. He hoped to get some articles published in national magazines to raise awareness of the collection, which would translate into higher sale…

SOME YEARS are tougher than others as far as the introduction of Old West-type firearms is concerned. This year was definitely an improvement over 2022, but still, there wasn’t exactly a “bumper crop” of new offerings. One of the most interesting trends that I noted was three replica Single Action Army six-guns are now being chambered in 9mm, plus there’s even a “Space Cowboy” looking lever-action carbine chambered for the same cartridge. If you’ve been to your local gun shop, big-box sporting goods store or shopped online, you’ve noticed a lack of a lot of traditional “Cowboy” cartridges. Even if you handload, you have a tough time finding components, especially primers. What’s out there is scarce and expensive. However, 9mm ammo is plentiful and inexpensive. You can shoot up a…

Colt’s PATENT FIREARMS CO. HAD SEVERAL “IRONS IN THE FIRE” IN 1873. The big news was that their .45-caliber Single Action Army revolver has been adopted as the new service handgun by the U.S. Ordnance Department. From 1873-1891, Colt would produce 37,063 of these six-guns under various government contracts. Colt was making up for lost time as Sam Colt let the Rollin White patent for a bored-through cylinder slip away from him and land in the lap of Smith & Wesson. It was the dawn of the metallic cartridge era, and Colt had to wait until the patent’s expiration in 1869. Colt began a firearms diversification program in 1873 that lasted into the 1880s. They began producing derringers and odd-looking little Cloverleaf House pistols with four chambers in the cylinder.…

Not only did the Ford brothers eventually collect the $10,000 reward for killing Jesse James, but others also profited from his demise. Jesse James’s son, Jesse Edwards James, authored a book about his infamous father, which brought him considerable income. Additionally, James’s grandchildren appeared in a movie about him, titled Jesse James Under the Black Flag. But the oddest profit made from James’s death involved his mother. Although she refused to sell Jesse James’s dead body to a promoter (for $10,000, no less), she did decide to sell pebbles that covered his gravesite for a quarter each to eager visitors.…

I started shooting Cowboy Action entirely by accident. I was at my local range one day teaching a new shooter, and afterward, I saw the competition bays full of people dressed up in Old West clothing. I wandered over to see what was happening and ended up not just being invited but being encouraged to shoot a Cowboy Action stage. While I was familiar with competition shooting, I was not at all familiar with single-action shooting or shooting a stage with a required sequence of target engagement. I shot the stage and was instantly hooked. If it had not been for the kindness of a stranger welcoming me in and offering to let me shoot his guns and his ammunition, I might never have found Cowboy Action Shooting. Governing Body…

Throughout history, firearms designs have failed. Some were poor designs. Some were vastly ahead of their time but failed to overcome preconceived notions of the public. Some lacked the marketing horsepower to succeed. And some “looked good on paper” but failed to achieve full production status due to difficulties in executing the design. I suggest many of the most innovative developments in the advancement of small arms occurred between 1800 and 1900. From black powder to smokeless, from flintlock to percussion caps, from rimfire to centerfire, from single-shot breechloader to lever-action repeater to gas-operated machine gun, from revolver to magazine-fed semi-auto pistol, all occurred between 1800 and 1900. Let’s face it, gunpowder, cartridges and the basic operation of today’s firearms have not progressed significantly since the days our country was…

ON THE COVER IT WAS TO BE EXPECTED: The cavalry always came to the rescue. That’s the way it played out in countless television and motion picture Westerns, but the anticipated arrival of mounted soldiers with guns blazing away was far more than the fertile imagination of novelists and screenwriters. It was grounded in fact. The U.S. Cavalry—a designation given to the mounted Dragoon forces of the United States Army by an act of Congress on August 3, 1861—had proven itself to be an elite fighting force since the first Continental Dragoon regiments were authorized in 1776 to counter British Light Dragoons. Of course, back then, soldiers dismounted to engage the enemy; horses simply having been a more expedient way of moving troops. However, by the late 1840s when Sam…

OLD WEST RIGS The TV show Yellowstone has become a huge hit. The series centers around a Montana ranch family—the Duttons. The series has become so popular that fans of the show began to ask, who are the Duttons and where did they come from? Well, some of these questions have been answered in the Yellowstone prequel, 1883, by Taylor Sheridan. While the pace of the series is a little slow in some episodes, 1883 works effortlessly as a stand-alone story in the late 19th century. The show demonstrates a deliberateness as to how the story is told. Each of the main characters demonstrates their depth and eventually reveals their reasoning for their actions throughout the series. It’s apparent James Dutton (Tim McGraw) and Margaret Dutton (Faith Hill) search for…

Robert Ford wasn’t a nice guy. He was, in fact, an outlaw. However, he gained recognition for the killing of another individual, one who dwarfed his own infamy by a landslide, one who has gone down in the history books as being one of the most famous outlaws of the Wild West ever—Jesse James. Ford’s life, as short as it was, was filled with many ups and downs. So much so, that he went from a young criminal to a follower of other criminals, then to gang member and to murderer to public celebrity. And finally, a traitor in the eyes of those that admired him, all in the span of about a decade. Here we’ll dig deep into the life of this “man who killed Jesse James” and explore…

One fact about Jesse James that, no doubt, kept him alive throughout his criminal career was the fact that he was known to never take off his holster that housed his twin Colt revolvers. James loved his guns and enjoyed the flair of using them during his robberies. Although as fate would have it, one of the few times James removed his holster was in the presence of Robert Ford, just prior to a robbery. However, that robbery would never happen, as Ford, using his own revolver, shot James at point-blank range in the back of his head, killing him instantly.…

HISTORIC GUNFIGHT EXTRA ★★★★ “You damn dirty cow thief, if you’re anxious to fight, I’ll meet you!” Wyatt Earp to Ike Clanton before the fight at the O.K. Corral. OCTOBER 26, 1881 Less than a month after the shootout occurred, it was labeled by a Tombstone newspaper as the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.” Stuart Lake’s 1931 biography of Wyatt Earp now considered mostly fiction—dedicates a whole chapter to the incident, called “At the O.K. Corral.” Even a hand-drawn sketch of the gunfight by Wyatt Earp himself in 1926 shows the action taking place at the rear entrance of the O.K. Corral. The problem is that the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which is the most famous shootout in Western history and has cemented a great number of cowboy and…