644 
FOREST 
AND STREAM 
December. 1919 
THE RIFLES OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
CONCERNING A FIND COLLECTION OP OLD-TE\IE GUNS AND A MAN WHO 
USES THEM IN THE FIELD IN PREFERENCE TO THOSE OF MODERN JMAKE 
By LIEUT. WARREN H. MILLER. U. S. N. R. 
, T~\ HE romance of the Winning of the 
I West revolves around the pioneer, 
his rifle, and his coonhound, — the 
Man, the Dog and the Weapon. By this 
doughty trio the land was cleared of sav- 
ages, so that the husbandman could come 
after in safety, and to them we owe this 
broad continent that is our heritage to- 
day. Like a fine violin, or a fine axe, the 
rifle of that period is a poem of symmetry 
and beauty, and in fitness for the purpose 
for which it was used. One handles a 
Kentucky rifle w'ith a feeling of reverence, 
for this was the weapon that gave us our 
country. Mingled with this reverence is 
sure to be a rifleman’s admiration for its 
perfection in form and workmanship, for, 
it is far more perfect than a casual glance 
would reveal. It differs in many points 
from the modern rifles which we have 
come to consider the last word in fire- 
arms, but in the essential, the great es- 
sential, of getting game it is a more 
perfect device than anything that we use 
now. 
This may seem a strong statement for 
a man who has known rifles and used 
them for years, hut consider that our 
pioneer forebears lived by the game that 
they shot, and owed their personal safety 
to the accuracy and reliability of the rifle 
to keep hostile Redmen at bay, and you 
will readily see that such a weapon as 
they used had to be a survival of the fit- 
test, and embody perfection in every good 
point that a rifle should have. For the 
pioneer, his rifle should combine flat tra- 
jectory with cheap and easily carried am- 
munition, all of which (but the powder) 
could be home-made, and should have 
accuracy as great as that of any modern 
rifle, up to one hundred yards. Beyond 
that, the pioneer rarely had to aim, for he 
would be a poor woodsman indeed who 
could not get that close to his game, even 
if he could see that far in the woods. 
The sights must he hunter’s sights, 
Bomething that would give the greatest 
visibility on the dim forms of game in the 
woods, and must be of a design that 
could not be broken, nor deranged, nor 
clogged up with dirt and needles when 
going through thick brush. The ammuni- 
tion must be cheap, for accuracy does 
not come by wishing for it but by assidu- 
ous practice, and rifle practice was one 
of the principal recreations of our pion- 
eers. It must also be light, as often they 
undertook long wilderness campaigns, 
when a fresh supply was out of the ques- 
tion, and even thus replenishment often 
had to be done in the backwood.s, where 
a bar of lead, a bullet mould and some 
beeswax served to cast a new supply of 
bullets. The pioneer’s rifle had to be easy 
to aim, and lie steady on the mark, for 
one had neither powder nor lead to lose 
Loading an old-timer. 
on misses, and each shot had to count; 
wherefore the barrel was heavy, the heav- 
iest part of the rifle, with the balance 
was up near the end of the forestock. 
Such a weapon, weighing from nine to 
fifteen pounds, will lie as quiet as a solid 
bar of steel in one’s hands, with the sights 
hanging steadily on the mark. Finally, 
to take advantage of this property, the 
trigger was made double, the set trigger 
being pulled as the sights swung into line, 
and then, during that instant when they 
hung steady on the mark, a mere touch 
on the hair trigger released the load. 
With such a rifle you can shoot! 
T oday we have none of the.se things. 
In exchange for more shots and a 
greater range, our ammunition costs 
ten times as much; is four times as 
heavy; is impossible to replenish, once 
away from a gun store; our sights are a 
joke, meant principally for paper targets; 
our barrel has no stability and wabbles 
about like a cane; and the actions of our 
rifles are so complicated that there is 
little reliability in them, and a visit to the 
gunsmith’s necessary in case they do 
break. It’s a safe bet that the old-timer 
of 1840 would, if handed a modern rifle, 
be delighted with the toy for perhaps a 
week, after which he would begin to 
scratch his head about carrying two hun- 
dred rounds of its ammunition into the 
woods for the season, worry about what 
had become of all his good shooting, look 
askance at his empty pocketbook, and 
finally sneak back to his old Trjmn or 
Krider, — and that would be the rifle he 
would take into the woods with him! 
I know at least one man who has done 
this very thing, in modem times, a man 
who really prefers the old-time muzzle 
loading rifle for his big game shooting. 
He is M. Ingo Simon, the French-English 
opera singer, famous in England as an 
archer. Like most Englishmen he has a 
hobby, and, like most of them, he rides it 
thoroughly. His hobby is firearms, and 
his specialty is a collection of Kentucky 
and Pennsylvania hunting rifles. Unlike 
most collectors, who are content to keep 
the rifles in some gun cabinet, to be 
looked at only, M. Simon uses every rifle 
in his collection, of some thirty of them. 
They are all in first-class working order, 
just as they were when used by the 
original pioneers, who hunted and fought 
Indians with them. Deer and turkey 
rifles of the eastern states, percussion 
nippled, and with rather short thirty-two 
inch barrels; old Kentucky rifles of 1812, 
with flintlocks and long barrels that reach 
up to a tall man’s chin; buffalo guns of 
the ’60s; old Sharps — one and all, they 
shoot and shoot well. 
Naturally, I was intensely interested in 
all this, for the art of the old-time muzzle 
loader rifleman is nearly all forgotten 
nowadays, and I seized eagerly the oppor- 
tunity to put down in print the whole 
story of our pioneer’s weapon, and how it 
was loaded and used. Simon and I went 
out for several matches together, on old 
Cape Ann, for he loves to spend an after- 
noon with one of his old rifles, firing at 
a bobbing Stero alcohol can adrift on the 
waves. That is not an easy mark to hit, 
for it is small, 2% inches in diameter, 
and it bobs exasperatingly up and down 
on the waves. But we hit it, time and 
again, at ranges from forty to eighty 
yards, and once I sunk one more than 
100 yards off that was getting away down 
the tide. 
One of Simon’s pets, a Tryon .43 calibre 
of 1860 will do to describe, as a t3T)© of 
the lot. It weighs nine pounds, has a 31% 
inch barrel and a curly maple stock, 
stained dark, and oil polished. The stock 
length is 14 inch, drop 3% inch, 1% inch 
at comb. Like all of them, the rifle has 
two triggers, the rear one a set trigger 
which is pulled just before firing, and the 
forward one a hair trigger, which just 
needs a touch of the finger at the right mo- 
ment. The butt-plate is a poem, with a 
beautiful swallow-wing curve, made ta 
