smoothbore vs rifle

[Mitch]

Rereading Denig and came across this comment- They are excellent foot hunters, perhaps the best in North America, and shoot their northwest guns with nearly the certainty of rifles. This is from the chapter on the Cree or Knisteneau.
Any thoughts,discussion,etc??

[greg]

I believe that to be a true statment, smootbore are by far under rated,as far as accuracy and range. But I am a little bias, since I shoot, hunt with one, a true survial gun in the time frame they are from, and other than firepower (mass rounds per minute) they are now. I M O

[blackhand]

Beware of the man with just one gun.....

[Mitch]

Most of us know "what" a smoothie is capable of....this quote was interesting to me as it seems the Cree were the exception to the "NDNs can't shoot straight" theme .....

[Rod]

I was going to post this sooner, but calving has been so hectic that I didn't get to it right away. Seems that not everyone was so enthusiastic about the rifle:

Rifles are supposed by many to cause a saving of Amunition, but I am now fully convinced of the contrary...[The rifle is] so easily deranged and when it becomes so at least twenty shots must be fired ere it is again allowed to be in order[.] no allowance is made by the marksman[.] So vain are the generality of Columbia hunters that the fault of their missing is attributed to the Rifle[,] they never take into consideration the distance they fire nor the uneven ground on which at times they fire from[,] but according to their erronious ideas with them a ball from a Rifle can reach almost any distance[.] Far different is the case with the Gun[,] here the hunter is fully impressed with the idea that he must be almost within twenty yards of his subject....from a Gun every ten shots six generally kill[,] but from a Rifle including the shots fired at a mark to keep it in order it will bear an average from ten shots one onley kills[.] Three years sojourn with Hunters has fully convinced me of the correctness of the above calculations and remarks. We are indebted to the late American Fur Company [Pacific Fur Co.] for introducing Rifles to the Columbia and I for one do not feel obliged to them for it.

---Peter Skene Ogden, Snake Country Journal 1826-27


Rod

[Lloyd]

Ogden being from a smoothbore society wouldn't be a little prejudice would he??

The rifle society coming from the other direction seemed to think differently... Otherwise, they would have all carried shotguns instead of those larger bore rifles....

[Rod]

Exactly! One of my points in the never-ending rifle vs. smoothbore debate is the one of cultural preferances---people tend to stick with what they know, what they've always used, what their parents used, etc. I wouldn't expect that an American from back east would be carrying a NW gun (although sometimes there were exceptions--see W.A. Ferris for that), by the same token, I'd expect a Red River Métis to have one----even though those two guys might be in the same fur brigade.


Rod

[sean]

Rod,

I completely agree with your point, but I also find it interesting that not every American was part of the rifle culture. Smoothbores started to become more common as you got north of the Ohio river, and by the time you get up to NY they predominate. So there were white guys who would use a smoothrifle, but might still see a NW gun as a foreign thing only to be used by Indians. Hence the record of the AFC employee special ordering a smoothbore Hawken in the 1830s. I suspect there were also whites who grew up amongst Indians on the frontier who did not see the NW gun as such a foreign thing, but I would not expect those men to be in the majority by any means.

Sean