Handgun Hunting Chapter 2

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Handgun Hunting by Lee Jurras and George Nonte (published in 1972, this book has been long out of print. My purpose is not to reproduce the entire book, but to give excerpts from it. Here then is is chapter 2)

History of Handguns in Hunting

I don’t suppose it would ever be possible to pin down a particular point in time or geography when and where some pistolero drew down with a flintlock horse pistol – or perhaps a wheel lock or a matchlock in an even earlier period – and slew some animal for food, sport, or protection. Whenever it was, it’s extremely doubtful that he was engaged in serious hunting. He was probably simply confronted with an opportunity to bag the main course of a meal, or found himself suddenly threatened by an animal, and dispatched it with his firearm from belt or saddle holster.

Certainly firearms were used for various sports of hunting soon after their appearance on the scene. Contemporary writings often refer to any firearms other than cannon or artillery as "handguns." In the context of the day, I suppose then that we might even say handguns have been used for hunting from the very beginning. But of course the handgun we speak of today is capable of being aimed and fired by means of only one hand, in spite of the fact that the second hand is often used to steady it. Even though those earliest cannon-lock guns may have been called handguns, and were held and aimed ("directed" would be a better word) with only one hand, they don’t really qualify. The only reason they were held and aimed with one hand was that the other hand was occupied in introducing a slow-match or other glowing or hot instrument to the touch hole to fire the piece.

Be all that as it may, it’s certain that at some point in time some pistol-armed gentleman drew down upon an animal and dispatched it. We can only speculate, but it seems most likely that some cold and hungry soldier, far from his rations, probably even separated from his comrades, resolved tat the pistol in his belt or saddle holster would provide him with fresh meat. Perhaps his target wasn’t even wild game, but some unfortunate farmer’s goat or sheep. Considering the quality of our hungry soldier’s firearm, he probably faced no more difficulty at a few paces than we do today at long range on the wildest of game. Actually, it our hungry trooper had the foresight to load his shortgun with "swan drops," some form of shot, or even gravel, that first kill might not have been difficult at all.

Hunting with any pistol loaded with a single ball could not have become practical until the advent of the rifled barrel. Not until then could one reasonably expect to hit a target even the size of deer at more than a handful of yards. Hunting also did not become practical until the introduction of the wheel lock with its reasonably certain ignition.

Even long before practical firearms existed, hunting in Europe was the right of the privileged aristocracy, and anyone else caught taking game was likely to be summarily executed to reduce possible future transgressions by his peers. All game belonged to the landowners or landholders, the aristocracy, who treated it as a crop which served the dual purpose of filling the larder and providing sport. Considering that the aristocracy took great pride in their sporting accomplishments, it is quite likely that at some time they used pistols for hunting, probably from horseback on game that could be run down, simply stepping upward from the practice of killing it with the lance which had been in vogue for centuries.

In North America, the New World, game was plentiful, easily approached, and firearms were often held dear. While legend has it that the frontiersman never stepped out the door without his long Kentucky rifle, there is evidence that some carried pistols of similar type as a matter of greater convenience. There are also references to the use of these pistols in killing predators or bears and other dangerous animals that might come along when the rifle was no in reach. I’ve seen a casual reference in old writings to killing alligators with flintlock pistols in Louisiana, indicating it was considered quite sporting. And when Washington Irving wrote about his tour of the Western prairies in the 1830’s , he mentioned the use of pistols in hunting buffalo from horseback.

Probably, though, deliberate hunting with the handgun received its greatest impetus among foraging soldiers during the American Civil War, and among those mustered-out soldiers who trekked homeward or west to the frontier after that bloodiest of conflicts. The cavalry trooper, trained to kill the enemy from the back of a galloping horse with a pistol or revolver, would logically have applied the same tactics to game or stock if he got hungry.

A good friend of mine tells of the ordeal undergone by an ancestor who left central Texas to fight for the Confederacy, mounted on the finest horse in the county, sitting the best saddle money could buy, and carrying a pair of brand-new Colt .36 Navy revolvers. The end of the war found this gentleman battered but not beaten, facing a 1500-mile journey home, much of the way across a devastated land. Without money, but with powder, lead, caps, the pair of Colt Navies, and the horse to ride, he headed west. Months later, barefoot, clad in tattered rags, and retaining only one other important possession - a single Navy Colt - this indomitable Texan returned home afoot. During at least half of the journey every bite of meat that sustained him was brought down by a round leaden ball from the Navy Colt. He never claimed it was all wild game, and it seems likely that an occasional shoat or calf might well have collapsed to the bark of the revolver. Being a thrifty man, though, unless forced into it he wouldn’t have shot anything too big to eat or carry. That’s the story of one man who was forced to hunt with a handgun to survive, over 11 decades ago. Quite a few other Texas families can tell the same kind of tell about a scarred veteran who survived the long walk home – or perhaps to a new land – only by using a pistol to defend and feed himself.

From that point onward, the mid-19^th Century, we see frequent references to handgun hunting. The outlaw who feared to enter the towns took with his revolver whatever livestock or game was handy; the out-of-work cowboy riding the grub line welcomed a jackrabbit, javelina, or deer to complement the beans, flour, and sowbelly that might be in his saddlebags; and certainly the homesteader with a raft of hungry kids would carry a pistol in preference to a rifle when working in the fields, and hope for a shot at something suitable for the pot before the day was out. And there’s plenty of evidence that game was taken with revolvers purely for fun.

Some of the best-documented sport hunting with handguns occurred late in the third quarter of the last century. Artists and authors of the day have depicted several well-known figures galloping across the vast plains, sixgun in hand, overtaking a stampeding buffalo and planting several bullets in his ribcage. The .44 and .45 revolvers of the time didn’t have the power to put a bull buff down quickly – except by a spinal hit – but bullets into the lungs were certain if not instant killers. The equestrian sportsman could then veer off to reload safely, knowing the buffalo would run on a way, then drop, and there would be hump meat and tongue for supper.

General Custer hunted this way, along with other frontier figures. The Grand Duke Alexis of Russia made a special trip west to hunt buffalo in this fashion while visiting this country to procure arms for his government. Other foreigners, intrigued with the buffalo, came and did the same.

The other side of the World was not without its handgun hunters. British officers and dignitaries of the "Inja Service" were often avid sportsmen, devoted to "tent-pegging," taking game with a lance at full gallop, and also with revolvers from horseback. Even tigers are reported to have been killed in this manner. Cavalry officers of the day were accustomed to pistoling enemies from their saddles, so the transition to tiger, bear, or boar wouldn’t have been considered difficult.

Other printed records of the exploits of the early handgun hunters are rare. Not until the 1920s did such matters begin to see print in periodicals to any significant extent. In the middle 1920s a young cowpoke from Montana began writing letters to the National Rifle Association about his experiences with sixguns in the game fields. The by-line that appeared thus in The American Rifleman even before I was born is still seen regularly. Its owner no longer punches cows or runs packstrings for a living; he has become one of our best-known proponents of handgun hunting. That cowpoke in the broad-brimmed, high-crowned Stetson was named Elmer Keith, and today he expounds his theories and recommendations from Salmon, Idaho.

Keith’s writings for over half a century have probably done more to encourage the use of the sixgun (he loathes autoloaders for such activities) than any other single factor. Most of the other writers who today deal with the subject were unknown a couple of decades ago and until then, anyone who wanted to read about handgun hunting hied himself to the newsstand and bought whatever magazine was publishing Keith’s current work.

Some pistoleros may have killed game the size of elk and moose before Keith did in the 1920s, but they never told the world about it. Keith told the world, not only about what he did, but how and why. Others followed in his footsteps, and a decade later, Colonel D. B. Wesson (of Smith & Wesson) toured North America taking numerous big-game trophies as part of his development and promotion program for the then-new .357 Magnum revolver and cartridge. Others took heart and tried the same, and Elmer Keith’s old correspondence files are filled with letters from men (and a few women) from all walks of life who ventured into the timber with the most potent sixgun cartridges of the day.

Still, not until the mid-1950s did we begin to see repeated references to this great gunning sport. Since then, it has increased rapidly and today it is difficult not to find a handful of handgun hunters in any town of reasonable size. Handgun hunting now seems to be entering its golden era, with special guns, cartridges, and equipment of all sorts.

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