Warning to any black powder cartridge rifle (BPCR) types out there: This post references some BPCR loading practices that, in all liklihood, are unsafe. It is presented here only because of its relationship to our discussion, and is NOT recommended. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!!
The following is excerpted from The Great Buffalo Hunt by
Wayne Gard. Doesn't even mention the use of shotguns, but does provide a pretty good overview of the rifles used. Hamp
The hide hunters used a great variety of weapons, from old Kentucky muzzle-loaders to condemned Spencer military rifles. The Henry, the Remington, and the Winchester had their partisans. Other hunters agreed with Bill Cody in preferring the .50 caliber, single-shot, breech-loading Springfield, which some called the Long Tom. But most of the professional hide men who could afford one clhose the Sharps /Big Forty-five or Big Fifty, whose long range made them especially effective in killing buffaloes.
Bill Tilghman and Billy Dixon preferred Sharps when they had a choice, and Wright Mooar used two of them for most of his killing. With its strong action and breech, the Sharps could handle unusually heavy bullets land powder charges. It suited those hunters who wanted to place a big piece of lead accurately at long range.
The term needle gun, which crops up in some accounts of buffalo hunting, was used loosely. Originally it appears to have been applied to the Dryse rifle, which a German, J.N. von Dryse, developed in 1836. This was a single-shot, breech-loading rifle, with a bolt breech closure. It fired a conical bullet encased in a paper cartridge, together with a powder charge. The Prussian Army used it against Austria in 1866 and against France in 1870. But on buffalo ranges, as one of the hunters, John R. Cook, pointed out, and trap-door breechblock might be called a needle gun.
Sometimes a hunter would have a gunsmith make a change in his rifle to adapt it to his special needs. Charlie Justin had metal sights taken off his guns and bone ones put on to avoid the reflected glare of the sun.
Of his Sharps rifles, Mooar preferred the smaller one. I killed 6,500 buffaloes with my fourteen-pound gun, he estimated, and 14,000 with the eleven-pounder. The barrel was octagonal half way up from the breech, then it was round. The brass shells, some of them bottlenecked, were three inches long. Many hunters, including Mooar, preferred to load their own shells with black gunpowder.
Wright Mooar, who bought bullets by the thousands and powder in twenty-five pound kegs, used to wrap a piece of paper around each bullet before he put in the shell. Wrapping the bullets instead of greasing them, he explained, kept the interior of the rifle barrel from becoming coated with lead. The bullets were made with a concave butt. When the barrels of our guns became so hot that they began swelling, the bullets with the concave butt would be expanded when shot by the charge of powder, thus filling the barrel and making it true.
When he loaded the shells, Mooar said, I would fill the shell with powder within half an inch of the top. When I got the powder in, we set the shell down and put the rimmer in and hit it a lick with the hammer, putting a wad on top and then a little powder on top of the wad and the bullet on top of the powder. As time went on, we went a little stronger on powder until we loaded a 90-grain cartridge with 100 to 110 grains.
Since every type of rifle made a different boom, the hunters soon learned to tell one from another. I knew the sound of every one of my guns, said Mooar. The white men on the range felt safe as long as they heard only the big guns of the hide hunters. But the sharp crack of a smaller rifle alerted them to a possible attack by Indians.
From Hamp: Any idea what a "rimmer" is (next to last paragraph above)?
