One Big-Ass Hawken
Package Carson is a person of the most major of the Frontier Partisans — so considerably so that he was the emphasis of the extremely to start with Frontier Partisans Podcast series. He’s archetypal, coming from common Scots-Irish frontier stock that followed Daniel Boone’s path into Kentucky and then Missouri. Carson crossed the plains to Santa Fe as a teenager and turned a Mountain Guy operating out of Taos and traversing the West from California to the Blackfoot Place of Montana. He was a trapper, an explorer, an Indian agent and a military leader.
He is a determine of controversy now, mainly owing to his part in a grim and unpleasant Civil War-period marketing campaign from the Navajo. I extensively take a look at all of this in the podcast.
Carson was a hunter and a rifleman, and when he became popular, people today gave him rifles — a civic gesture that I endorse and would like to see revived. Some of his rifles endure.
I did not know that Theodore Roosevelt had two Hawken rifles that purportedly belonged to Kit Carson. Just one of them is an abnormal specimen — a around-20-pound .70 caliber behemoth. This pleases me drastically. Hat idea to Rock Island Auction Co. for sharing its tale….
Unlike the other Package Carson Hawken Roosevelt owned, this rifle is much from your typical Hawken “Mountain” or “Plains” rifle even although it retains many of the more basic Hawken characteristics. Presented this rifle’s basic configuration, and enormous excess weight, it was obviously meant for highly precise shooting from a relaxation these kinds of as a pair of cross-sticks. The large caliber is unquestionably not normal of focus on rifles of the interval suggesting stopping power was a key concern, and all of these properties taken with each other would unquestionably have designed it a primary candidate for hunting bison on the plains. In the mid-19th century, thousands and thousands of bison however roamed the plains, and Carson participated in looking.
The most evident variation environment this rifle apart from most Hawken rifles is its immense fat. Whilst observed as weighing 18 lbs previously mentioned, we locate that it in fact weighs 19 lbs. 3.3 oz. on our scale. A lot of that excess weight arrives from its hefty barrel. The bore evaluate somewhere around .70 caliber (14 bore) which is noticeably larger than the normal .54 caliber (28 bore) uncovered on lots of of the typical Hawken rifles. The browned barrel is cleanly marked with the “S. HAWKEN ST. LOUIS” marking made use of next Jacob Hawken’s loss of life in 1849 and by the Hawken store even after J.P. Gemmer experienced acquired the shop. The muzzle is slice round for making use of a bullet starter, and the barrel capabilities 7-groove rifling, common dovetailed blade and U-notch sights, and a incredibly properly shaped breech plug. A incredibly not often seen adjustable peep sight is equipped to an integral base on the higher tang.