Buffalo Guns
I
magine yourself as you might have looked 140 years ago, clad in blood stained buckskins atop a Plains hilltop, sighting down a heavy barrel rested on pair of crossed sticks. Picture your shoulder suddenly and violently slammed backwards, and how almost as quickly the rest of an unwilling torso is compelled to follow. At the sound of the muzzle’s blast tall grasses two feet to the front of you part
like a biblical sea. Small seed-eating ground birds flutter upwards briefly before settling back down to their own hunt for food. Ravens or crows – you can’t tell which – complain about the sound even as they zero in on the smell of spilt blood. No matter how big or how braced you are, the kinetic force of the “Big Fifty” is irresistible. You recover just in time to witness the effects of its 457 grain bullet, ideally sending the targeted buffalo to its knees.... but this time missing cleanly, throwing up an angry cloud of dust at the startled animal’s feet. The word most often used to describe such recoil is “punishing,” though in truth the effects are far more traumatic at the other end. Even at 500 yards the force of the big slug is sufficient to
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August / September 2008
punch deep into your well muscled quarry, and powerful enough to penetrate most barricades that an enemy might hide behind. Your well cared for rifle came with double-set triggers, which means that by compressing the main spring with one, the second “hair” trigger would then release the hammer with a minimal amount of pressure and movement. At these kinds of ranges, one has to make the most of every bought or gifted advantage. In your case this includes a special 14 pound Sharps with a particularly stiff barrel for improved accuracy, a tang sight graduated out to 1000 yards or more, and a pair of stout sticks to brace your aim. You notice none of the other buffalo have run off yet, and so you give it another try. Buffalo were generally easy to spook, their dense muscles and thick skulls requiring a telling wound. While individual animals were dropped by
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