@chix2111 ,
There was a great discussion of this topic with lots of pictures several months ago, on this forum. Here is a link to that thread:
Hanging over the fireplace
Regarding heat, soot, smoke, and so forth, I would like to state that for the first 35 years of my life, we used a fireplace as the primary source of heat in our home. You expect a little ash to come out onto the floor, and you sweep it up with the hearth broom, but if you are having soot and smoke come out of the fireplace and into the house, something is wrong! As for heat, I think something like 90% of it goes straight up the chimney, and the smoke should go with it. If smoke and soot come into your house, the fireplace and chimney are not "drawing" correctly. If you burn properly cured hardwood, soot is minimal, and what of it there is winds up mainly in the chimney. You sweep it out once a year with a chimney brush. The masonry around the fireplace would get warm to the touch, but not hot. The house we lived in was made of fatwood, and we kept a kerosene lamp on the mantle, where it could be readily found in case of power outages. I suppose the Fire Marshall would have had a conniption over all of that, but house & family survived intact. My only real concern about hanging a rifle over the fireplace would be the drying effect on the wooden stock, and it would only make sense that a powder horn hanging there should be empty.
I found this interesting quote from Frederick Gerstaecker's
Wild Sports in the Far West, in which he comments on the furnishings of an 1830's-era Arkansas pioneer's cabin:
Note that the rifle and its accouterments hung over the door, not the fireplace. I suppose this would be so it could be collected easily while heading out. I'm pretty sure I've read about this elsewhere, but I would need to hunt for the quotes. Gerstaecker did provide some interesting comments on the items that
were stored near the fireplace.
Anyway, between comments on this thread and the posts and pictures in the one that's linked, you should get some good ideas about how to hang your rifle. Good luck with it!
Notchy Bob