Horace Kephart was a firearms writer of the early 1900s. His book "Sporting Firearms and the Hawken Rifle, Rifles for Big Game and the Hunting Rifle" is a treasure of comparison details of rifles and calibers. There is good information on the Hawken family and their rifles. I got my copy from Half Price Books.
In 1894 he bought an unused Sam Hawken rifle, about 40 years old. He describes it as almost identical in appearance with the Kit Carson rifle, 10 1/2 pounds, length 59 3/4 inches, 34 inch barrel, about .52 caliber, a "very slow twist" taking a 217 grain ball.
His length was really 51 3/4 inches, the barrel really 33 3/8 inches long, which I deduced from other dimensions he gave. The rifle is very similar to Jim Bridger's Hawken, which he did not know about. Here is my copy of the Bridger Hawken compared to a full length photo of the Carson rifle.
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But it was his shooting that interested me. He had a charger that held 41 grains of 2F Deadshot powder, and he shot multiple charges of that, 41 grains, 82, 123, 164 and 205 grains, using a greased linen patch and ball "which practically swaged into the barrel through that very slow twist" (it would have been one in 48 like most Hawkens- HT). He shot these loads off-hand, and the barrel fouled considerably "with these excessive charges". I have no idea why he did this.
What got me was his statement "With the 82 grain charge, I would land in the 12-inch black of the German ring target when aiming at top of bull, unless there was a wind blowing. This was at 200 yards."
So I copied his experiment, shooting from bench rest at 100 yards, using my Bridger copy with a 33 1/8 inch .54 caliber 1 1/8 inch barrel of one in 48 inch twist weighing 11 1/4 pounds, .526 Rush Creek roundballs from Track of the Wolf weighing 217 grains, (very good balls), and Goex 2F powder. I made a "charger" for 42 grains by mistake instead of 41. That is of no practical difference. I used .016 tan linen patching that crushes to .010, and of 34 shots fired, was able to find only 18 of them, the rest falling into a pile of cottonwood branches and leaves some ***** dumped in front of my bench. All patches were whole except for one torn. My lube was Murphy Oil Soap and alcohol. I seated the balls with a wet cleaning patch on the seater jag, not wiping between shots nor cleaning between increased powder charges. All loaded easily except for the 210 grains, that bore was gritty!
The 42 grain charge averaged 1085 fps for four shots, 52 fps spread, sighting in a new set of sights at 50 yards. Seven shots of 50 grains of Goex 3F, my standard sighting in load, were used to adjust the sights to group one-half inch low at 50 yards. They averaged 1251 fps with 121 fps spread. This one in 48 inch twist doesn't care much for light loads.
I shot the 84 grain load at 100 yards, where five shots averaged 1531 fps with 80 spread and grouped five and a half inches low. I adjusted the sight for lateral zero. Using Hornady's Ballistic Calculator, I adjusted the zero distance to bring the group to a 100 yard impact. That load would then strike 27.5 inches low at 200 yards, well below Kepart's 12 inch black bull. So he was holding his front sight up in the horns of the rear sight.
The 126 grain load averaged 1818 fps for five shots with 59 spread. That was a lot of recoil, but OK for a shot at an elk. For the next heavier loads, I wore a shoulder recoil pad and held a sawdust bag between the butt plate and me. I did not hold the rifle down on the sandbags, rested just behind the entry pipe. It was free to kick, and it did! I now used a 3/4 inch diameter thin leather over-powder wad, starting it about 1/4 inch into the bore so it would stay cupped to receive the patched ball. My one torn patch may have been from an OPW going in edgewise, but I don't know on what group. A photo of the first day's shooting.
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The 168 grain load (four chargers of 42 grains each) averaged 2101/47 fps for four shots and 2091/76 for six shots the next day. These balls loaded OK with not much fouling. I got vertical dispersion in my groups and found I could not really see the top of the rear sight sharply enough. So for the second 100 yard session, I taped three-inch black stripes at 9, 12 and 3 o'clock on the target to help me hold the same elevation. I think it helped, but holding consistently through that much recoil might have been a factor.
I really agonized about shooting the next load, but if I wanted to check his report, figured I had to do it, shooting a five-charger load of 210 grains of 2F powder. As Kephart wrote, "the old gun reared and snorted, and the bore fouled considerably", and that was my experience. It took a lot of jabbing to get those balls seated. Three shots told me what I wanted to know, they averaged 2245 fps with 13 fps spread and grouped in 4.4 inches centered 9.4 inches high. The high group must be a result of the recoil, but I am not going to shoot any more of that load to examine this! Putting that result into the Hornady Ballistics Calculator showed a 215 yard zero, using a Ballistic Coefficient of .073. This is a grossly impractical load for any shooting, and I stoutly recommend against anyone else shooting any load over 120 grains, Lyman's handbook maximum. It has been done.
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