The most important weapons of the Wild West were revolvers and rifles, but we couldn’t forget shotguns. These firearms played an important role in hunting and self-defense too.
At first, talk about the caliber.
I think, you noticed the number 12 in the name of the Remington 12 shotgun. The “12” is the caliber of the shotgun, but it differs from the mark of the revolvers and the mark of the rifles. The mark of the caliber of the firearms shooting bullets means the diameter of the barrel.
The shotgun’s caliber mark is different. The “12” means that 12 pieces of ball were made of 1 pound lead, that fits in the barrel. So the smaller number means bigger diameter of the barrel.
The biggest caliber is “3”. The owner shot 113 arctic geese with one shot. The average caliber was the “12” and the “10” on the Wild West.
Function of the shotguns
Hunting
Bison-hunting is a well-known part of the Wild West. The hunting of the small game is a less-known part of it. Small games are very important parts of human feeding, in particular of the feeding of railway workers. This was a kind of livelihood, a job for the small game hunters. They produced to markets the same way as bison-hunters.
Self-defence
Shotguns were the best weapons in short distance in the past, and nowadays too. They were used in the cities, and were the firearms of stage-coach’s drivers. Some of the Western legends preferred this weapon such as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, and of course Biondo. 🙂
The first pages I wrote are based on technical information, I want to do something different. Which one do you think is the better approach?
*LAME* SAPE
Sape, one of your photos had been stolen and displayed here: http://east-blue.forumieren.de/t2970-revolver-johnny-uf
(Google transalte: http://translate.google.it/translate?hl=it&sl=de&tl=hu&u=http%3A%2F%2Feast-blue.forumieren.de%2Ft2970-revolver-johnny-uf).
To see the photo you have to click the second “Spoiler” (a blue line).
Actually they didn’t steal the photo, they made a link to the one displayed in our blog.
Nice post, Sape, you are the true clan’s armorer!
Thanx Mope. I modified the “Members” page. 😉
Wow I saw now this page, very interesting and nice pics 🙂
Nice gun Sape, i love the sawed of shotgun.
Accurate information. Nice Sape i waiting a continuation.
This picture is in this age terrible.
Thanks Biondo.
I will write more information about bison hunting, when I will write a page about Sharps, because it was a legendary bison hunting rifle.
Yes, this is a shocking picture nowadays, but I don’t know what we meant about it if we lived on the ages of Wild West. I think they couldn’t size up what they did.
Interesting page, Sape! (Though I’m totally ignorant about real weapons). Well written, and nice photos.
I also appreciated your reference to “Western legends” 😉
And talking about bison (or buffalo) hunting I can’t refrain from posting a link to this shocking photo found in Wikipedia
Be careful, Full resolution is 5,689 × 4,448 pixels, file size: 2.36 MB.