Rifles of the Fur Trade

[ronaldrothb49]

Does the J Henry style rifle in post #1 have a single set trigger? I know I'm in the minority, but I prefer a standard un-set trigger. I guess I have spent too much time shooting MLs from the War of Northern Aggression era.

I quit using set triggers probably 40 years ago. If the trigger is installed correctly and you are following through the is no need for a set trigger. The rifle I just finished has maybe a 2 to 3 pound pull.

 

[French Colonial]

I would have to disagree here. Smoothbores remained popular with westren tribes even after rifles were made available.
Many MM in the west were French Canadians and not a small percentage were Mexican. They too tended toward smoothbores.
We think of the Rockies and Americans but while we were pushing west HBC was pushing east from Fort Vancouver.
When we busted through south pass we didn’t run in to unknown country as English was trapping the same area and doing so with smoothies.
North of our line is the Canadian plains. It’s hard to tell Saskatchewan from Dakota Montana. Here the Metis were building an economy based on pemmican trade. And hunting with smoothbores. In 1847 Levine, an HBC officer told new Englishmen coming to Canadian Frontier to get a smooth bore, since he said it shot true as a rifle to sixty yards and that was the range most hunting took place in
Canada had little interest in rifles until the adoption of breechloader in the 1870s
While a rifle could get good hits At two hundred yards, the ballistics of ball just don’t serve well past a hundred. I dare say most game killed by a plains rifle was killed within smoothbore range

In a nut shell this is the never ending argument of whether more smoothbores were sold "back in the day" or rifles.

Most put their modern preconceived prejudices on the subject but I lean toward rifles being most dominate and would gladly change my mind if someone showed documental evidence otherwise.

Opinions are like............ well you know that cliche. Everyone has one.

 

[waksupi]

It seems the trade gun WAS quite popular. Notice the number of percussion caps as compared to flints being shipped.

http://www.mman.us/tradeguns.htm
Look up other fur trade manifests, the smooth bores were always well represented.

No.	Units	Description	Cost
84	each	Northwest Guns, Best Quality	$4.50/each
5	each	American Rifles, Steel Mounted	$19.00/each
10	each	Hawkens Rifles	$24.00/each
		Hawkens Pistols	$15.00/each
4	pairs	Pistols
1	dozen	Brass Mounted Powder Horns	$1.14/each
80		Powder Horns	5.2¢/each
2	gross	Gun Worms	5.5¢/each
1,504	pounds	Small Bar Lead (1 pound)	7¢/each
1,000	pounds	Gun Powder	29¢/pound
2,000	each	Gun Flints	~4 for 1¢
3,000	each	Rifle Flints	$2.50/500
15	each	Leather Powder Bag	$3/each?
24	each	Gun Locks	$5.00/each
6	each	Rifle Locks	$5.00/each
2	bags	Shot
10	boxes	Percussion Caps 100/box
22	pounds	Fusil balls

 

[French Colonial]

I have recommended this book before but with the number of new forum members here it is again.

Frederich Gerstacher, Wild Sports in the Far West. Available free on the Kindle App.

Get past the first chapter or so and you have a hunter who lived "off the end of his gun" and spent almost every night and day outdoors for months at a time even in winter. Starts about 1837 if I remember correctly.

He hunted exclusively with a rifle (even ducks and turkeys) and it was a curiosity among him and his friends when a smoothbore made its brief appearance. His crawling in to caves after bears is not something I would care to do.

 

[tenngun]

In a nut shell this is the never ending argument of whether more smoothbores were sold "back in the day" or rifles.

Most put their modern preconceived prejudices on the subject but I lean toward rifles being most dominate and would gladly change my mind if someone showed documental evidence otherwise.

Opinions are like............ well you know that cliche. Everyone has one.

If you’re doing an ‘American’ trapper, a peron of Anglo, Celtic or German background from the states or territories of the US then rifle should be you number one choice.
Most were company guns coming out of Pennsylvania. Few of the ‘enterprising young men’ had the wherewithal to buy a rifle of their own when they signed on. And many of the MM were Eastren tribesmen that signed on too, looking to have a taste of their culture
If you were French, Mexican or English you had a smoothbore. Many French Canadians and English from the Oregon did desert for better pay from Americans. And Mexicans, who didn’t have very much of a trapping culture drifted in to the business after the opening of the Santa Fe trail.
Lots of French Canadians were still in the Mississippi valley, and they too moved in to the trade as to some extent they had been in it all their lives.
I can think of buckskins here. Miller put all MM in skins, but records show premade wool and linen or cotton clothing with tons of shoes and boots.
A look at the inventories of what went west, not just to voo but to post and along tge Santa Fe Trail demonstrates lots of fusils.
Did they all go just to Indians? We just can’t know who bought what.

 

[tenngun]

Something of interest always caught my attention. And that’s weight vs food.
A .54 shoot’s about thirty two shots to a pound of lead. Sort of.
You won’t cast thirty two ball from a one pound bar sitting at fireside. You always get spillage and waste
But let’s keep it simple, about three pounds per hundred shot
A hundred shot from a pound at seventy grains. You might need a bit more for flintlock, and again spillage, let’s say a pound and a quarter for a hundred shot.
So a hundred shot cost you four to five pounds.
With that you could in theory get a hundred deer. Plenty of meat for a year. Provided you had time to process it all, and you didn’t just eat a few of meals off your deer.
One load of shot in a smoothie is a might heavier. Say five to six pounds for a hundred shots. But what’s for dinner? One squirrel isn’t going to go far. A turkey will feed you for a day
Small game is just very ammo hungry, in terms of weight, and importantly calories getting it.
A pack horse can carry about a hundred and fifty pounds. Blankets, traps, shelter, axe, shovel tobacco, some odds and ends tools a little rope, can suck up some weight. Five hundred shots will run twenty to twenty five pounds. You need a big pay off for each round carried.
Yet
We see shot as part of the loads going west.
Men were hunting small game with shot in a weight conscious world.

 

[waksupi]

Something of interest always caught my attention. And that’s weight vs food.
A .54 shoot’s about thirty two shots to a pound of lead. Sort of.
You won’t cast thirty two ball from a one pound bar sitting at fireside. You always get spillage and waste
But let’s keep it simple, about three pounds per hundred shot
A hundred shot from a pound at seventy grains. You might need a bit more for flintlock, and again spillage, let’s say a pound and a quarter for a hundred shot.
So a hundred shot cost you four to five pounds.
With that you could in theory get a hundred deer. Plenty of meat for a year. Provided you had time to process it all, and you didn’t just eat a few of meals off your deer.
One load of shot in a smoothie is a might heavier. Say five to six pounds for a hundred shots. But what’s for dinner? One squirrel isn’t going to go far. A turkey will feed you for a day
Small game is just very ammo hungry, in terms of weight, and importantly calories getting it.
A pack horse can carry about a hundred and fifty pounds. Blankets, traps, shelter, axe, shovel tobacco, some odds and ends tools a little rope, can suck up some weight. Five hundred shots will run twenty to twenty five pounds. You need a big pay off for each round carried.
Yet
We see shot as part of the loads going west.
Men were hunting small game with shot in a weight conscious world.

Good question. Did the old timers use as large of charge as we do now? Lead could be recovered from game, and I seem to recall at shooting matches at rendezvous or eastern turkey shoots the fired lead was a prize at the end. Trappers could and would eat what they trapped. Shots in hostile country draws too much attention. A brigade would not all carry individual cook ware and related gear, it would be a communal use group. And horses easily carry more than you indicate. I doubt small game was shot. As you infer, losing proposition, and only sensible in extreme circumstance.

 

[ronaldrothb49]

Something of interest always caught my attention. And that’s weight vs food.
A .54 shoot’s about thirty two shots to a pound of lead. Sort of.
You won’t cast thirty two ball from a one pound bar sitting at fireside. You always get spillage and waste
But let’s keep it simple, about three pounds per hundred shot
A hundred shot from a pound at seventy grains. You might need a bit more for flintlock, and again spillage, let’s say a pound and a quarter for a hundred shot.
So a hundred shot cost you four to five pounds.
With that you could in theory get a hundred deer. Plenty of meat for a year. Provided you had time to process it all, and you didn’t just eat a few of meals off your deer.
One load of shot in a smoothie is a might heavier. Say five to six pounds for a hundred shots. But what’s for dinner? One squirrel isn’t going to go far. A turkey will feed you for a day
Small game is just very ammo hungry, in terms of weight, and importantly calories getting it.
A pack horse can carry about a hundred and fifty pounds. Blankets, traps, shelter, axe, shovel tobacco, some odds and ends tools a little rope, can suck up some weight. Five hundred shots will run twenty to twenty five pounds. You need a big pay off for each round carried.
Yet
We see shot as part of the loads going west.
Men were hunting small game with shot in a weight conscious world.

As the frontier moved west and the areas became more settled larger game became increasingly harder to find you see the calibers of the rifles getting smaller. On the frontier you see a lot of large caliber smoothbores but I think that had more to do with they were a lot cheaper than rifles than anything else. The fur companies had to equip many of the guys going out beyond the frontier. The Life expectancy of someone beyond the frontier was not good. So the question becomes would the guys the companies equipped even live to pay off the debt.

 

[tenngun]

As the frontier moved west and the areas became more settled larger game became increasingly harder to find you see the calibers of the rifles getting smaller. On the frontier you see a lot of large caliber smoothbores but I think that had more to do with they were a lot cheaper than rifles than anything else. The fur companies had to equip many of the guys going out beyond the frontier. The Life expectancy of someone beyond the frontier was not good. So the question becomes would the guys the companies equipped even live to pay off the debt.

I wonder about that
Was trapping worse then going on a whale ship or gold prospecting.
Ashely wanted his enterprising young men there to be employed for one two or three years.
I’ve never seen any info on turn over.
If I may I’m forced to think about longhunters. We see that class of men always on the frontier but how long did they stay. Most seem to have hunted a season or two, then got some land and started a family.
Boone was always looking, always moving west. But most who went in to the Caintuck. Stayed there
Privateers also comes to mind.
Washington lost his Marbelheaders because there was more money to be made as a privateer. Men died in fights, they also died just working the ship. Most made a few bucks and bought a farm or fishing boat
Back to Ashley we see a roll call of famous Frontiesmen. Some who died in the mountains, but not all it seems. Smith would die on the Santa Fe trail after he quit trapping.
How high a percentage of men made a few bucks for the company over a few years and then bought a farm in Missouri or homesteaded in Iowa or Arkansas
I wonder how many MM just did it a few years, had an adventure then just became a faceless settler, or even, dare we say it, Townsman.
Was MM as dangerous as going on a cattle drive later, was it as much of a young man’s one time adventure like whaling and less of a career choice.
Did they see the elephant and go home?

 

[reddogge]

Has anyone done any research into maybe some mountain men carried two guns, a heavy plains rifle, and a smoothbore or smaller caliber rifle? It could be done on a pack horse.

 

[ronaldrothb49]

I wonder about that
Was trapping worse then going on a whale ship or gold prospecting.
Ashely wanted his enterprising young men there to be employed for one two or three years.
I’ve never seen any info on turn over.
If I may I’m forced to think about longhunters. We see that class of men always on the frontier but how long did they stay. Most seem to have hunted a season or two, then got some land and started a family.
Boone was always looking, always moving west. But most who went in to the Caintuck. Stayed there
Privateers also comes to mind.
Washington lost his Marbelheaders because there was more money to be made as a privateer. Men died in fights, they also died just working the ship. Most made a few bucks and bought a farm or fishing boat
Back to Ashley we see a roll call of famous Frontiesmen. Some who died in the mountains, but not all it seems. Smith would die on the Santa Fe trail after he quit trapping.
How high a percentage of men made a few bucks for the company over a few years and then bought a farm in Missouri or homesteaded in Iowa or Arkansas
I wonder how many MM just did it a few years, had an adventure then just became a faceless settler, or even, dare we say it, Townsman.
Was MM as dangerous as going on a cattle drive later, was it as much of a young man’s one time adventure like whaling and less of a career choice.
Did they see the elephant and go home?

The fur trade was the gold rush of it's day and I think like a gold rush few people actually made their fortune. This goes all the way back to the long hunters. How many went into the wilds and were never heard from again. Boone and a group of others lost a huge quantity of furs to the Shawnee, luckily they were only told to leave and not come back. The number of those that became famous seems small to me and even some of those didn't survive the mountains. Hugh Glass comes to mind, Look at what he survived only to die a few years later in an attack by natives and there were others. Groups of trappers would leave the main camp and never be heard from again. Some I'm sure quickly decided the danger just wasn't worth it. The trappers weren't working for wages they were paid for the fur they trapped and many were in debt to the companies from the start. Some of the earlier ones when they returned to ST. Louis may have made enough to get a small farm and get out. After the Rendezvous started I doubt anyone other than the company owners made any money. The further they got from St. Louis the more expensive the supplies got and they didn't have any choice in who they bought from. If you get a chance watch the series Into the Wild Frontier in INSP it has a lot of good info on this era.

 

[tenngun]

The fur trade was the gold rush of it's day and I think like a gold rush few people actually made their fortune. This goes all the way back to the long hunters. How many went into the wilds and were never heard from again. Boone and a group of others lost a huge quantity of furs to the Shawnee, luckily they were only told to leave and not come back. The number of those that became famous seems small to me and even some of those didn't survive the mountains. Hugh Glass comes to mind, Look at what he survived only to die a few years later in an attack by natives and there were others. Groups of trappers would leave the main camp and never be heard from again. Some I'm sure quickly decided the danger just wasn't worth it. The trappers weren't working for wages they were paid for the fur they trapped and many were in debt to the companies from the start. Some of the earlier ones when they returned to ST. Louis may have made enough to get a small farm and get out. After the Rendezvous started I doubt anyone other than the company owners made any money. The further they got from St. Louis the more expensive the supplies got and they didn't have any choice in who they bought from. If you get a chance watch the series Into the Wild Frontier in INSP it has a lot of good info on this era.

Fortune is a hunk, but enough to make a start
We could say the same for privateers or whalers. You wouldn’t walk away from a voyage at sea with a fortune. Only the owners got rich. But you could get enough to get a good start.
Sort of collage or a hitch in the military when the GI bill was in force and war was cold. You could come out ready to start a life.
I’m put in mind of tge Santa Fe trail contemporary to the MM.
make a trip as a mule skinner you came home with just wages. Enough to start a small farm, or buy w few goods of your own and join the next train.
Smith is a good example. Started as a grunt, became a partner, sold his intrest and bought a wagon to Santa Fe, where he died. He was at-least on his way up.

 

[Mulemauler]

Life was tough no matter what you did. Kit Carson's father died while felling a tree on their homestead and most men were considered "Old" in their mid forties. Studying the order invoices from the major fur companies seem to show they were all over the board on the caliber rifles ordered. Just about as many .40 calibers as .54s and everything in between. Most companies hired the bulk of the men as trappers and traders with only a few designated "Hunters". A "Free Trapper" on his own hook had to do everything so most likely carried something big enough to take game as well as protection. There are so many instances of fur brigades facing off against grizzlies with multiple men firing into the animal with little or no effect so I suspect most were armed with smaller calibers and lighter loads.