How much ammo did the average Cowboy carry?

[saltydog452]

Bianchi's Collection

John Bianchi was (is?)a collector of authentic leather goods. Years ago I saw some images of his collection. I wouldn't know where on the 'net to view his collection.

I'd imagine an answer to the original question could be found by viewing authentic scabbards, holsters, sheaths, saddle, and tack gear.

Any authentic photos out there? Paging OldFuff.

salty

 

[THe Dove]

I found it interesting that in past a person could buy cartridges individually.

Hell, when I was growing up in SE Oklahoma, we use to go to the Cottonwood store and buy a can of Vienna Sausages and the guy would open a sleeve of saltine crackers and sell us how many crackers we wanted..... Can't find that around here nowadays! Gotta buy the whole danged box.

The Dove

 

[baylorattorney]

Now I'm curious, what is the preferred method for this situation?

An Act of God


Waste not want not.

 

[Old Fuff]

Any authentic photos out there? Paging OldFuff.

Yes indeed: See this quote from post No. 5

If you're really interested in frontier leather, buy a book: Packing Iron; Gunleather of the Frontier West by Richard C. Rattenbury. Lots of B&W and color photographs of the real rigs. Don't expect them to look like tipical Hollywood.

Also see: The Taming of the West - Age of the Gunfighter by Joseph G. Rosa; And The Peacemakers, by R.L. Wilson.

Copies should be found at www.amazon.com

Most of John Bianchi's collection of western guns and leather is now in the
Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles, CA

 

[hogshead]

Avoid the situation altogether.Would be the prefered method. Next you would hopefully have a hold of at least one rein and jerk his teeth out till he stopped.Most of the horse I have owned stop when you fall off.I think they are laughing at me.

 

[whalerman]

PICATINNY coffee Cup. Thanks for that post, Certaindeaf. This is why I love this site sooo much.

 

[tnxdshooter]

Well as you know buscadero gun fighter rigs were developed in Mexico in the early 1900 so they did not have the buscadero gun belts with alot of bullets on them like you see in the movies. Instead cattleman, gunfighters, and lawmen of the day carried their guns in army flap holsters with the flaps cut off. Alot of them wore cross draw because they could draw faster. The fastest gun alive that killed 44 men and used to be an attorney after he got out of prison John Wesley Hardin wore two pistols in shoulder holsters as it was quicker to draw from and easier to conceal. I would say he just carried the ammo that was in his guns and maybe some rounds in his pocket but that is probably it. One of John Wesley Hardin's guns was a Smith and Wesson double action as he said he could fire it faster than a single action.



Sent from Droid Incredible on Verizon Wireless

 

[Iggy]

What Cajun Bass said:

From what I've read, "cowboys" didn't wear or carry guns on their person all that often. They were more in the way than anything else while working cattle. They might keep them in their bedroll, or back at the wagon, if they even had one. A cowboys job wasn't to fight indians or bad guys. It was to work cattle. Plain, hard, dull, boring work.

I grew up on a ranch. I knew guys who rode with and were friends with Tom Horn when I was a kid. A hired hand was on the jury that convicted him. I rode a lot of miles with those old timers and I pulled a lot of sweaty saddle blankets off a lot of good ol ponies.

When I was young, I envisioned myself as one of those ol cowboys, and I strapped on a Colt and off I went. Well that lasted about 2 days.

I soon found out just what the old timers had been telllin' me. Unless you was expectin' a fracas, the guns stayed in your bedroll in the chuck wagon. Ain't nuthin' worse than havin' a hunk of iron bouncin' around when your chasin' a critter. Your rope kin git hung up in it.

If your pony comes unwound, that gun is beatin' the heck out you on ever jump. If you git bucked off its just one more thing to bust you up when you hit the ground. If yure on the ground wrasslin' critters and such, a dammed gun is just in the way. You can git it hung up on a critter or in a fence or a hunderd other ways to git kilt a little.

As for Elmer's story of shootin' his horse while bein' drug. That's pure horse pucky. I kin tell you if you're bouncin' around on your back, ass forward under the feet of a runnin' horse, that gun belt is up around yure neck and the gun is back a half a mile. You couldn't reach it, and if you could, you'd be beat up so bad and bouncin' so hard that you couldn't hit that horse in the gut, let alone in the head.

No sir, there was times to carry that hunk of iron. Mebbe to the saloon in town, or to git your picture took, but not out there on the range.. No sireee.

What JMR said:
Real cowboys probably carried very little ammo after metallic cartridges became the norm. Most carried a handgun in their saddlebags, if at all. Unlike in the movies it is much harder to do the work real cowboys did with a gun belt on.
By the time I returned to the ranch I was 40 and I had got some smarter.
I carried a 6" S&W Highway Patrolman and two speed strips in a cantle bag on my saddle for over 20 years. Never saw an Injun or a rustler in all that time.

 

[kb58]

they didn't shoot much because they couldn't afford to.

I suspect, as much as many would like to believe otherwise, that this is the truth for the vast majority of ranch-hands back then... and pretty much verbatum what Iggy wrote above. Their job was taking care of the livestock, not playing parts in movie westerns.

 

[Certaindeaf]

What's all this talk here then? I think bisecting a spine is better than playing kissyface with a hoof. Discuss.

 

[clem]

When I was a Deputy Sheriff out here in Southeastern Arizona, I carried 22 rounds on me and another 50 in my horse. (.45 ACP).
Then there was my rifle with 20 rounds and a extra 40 more for it. (7.62X51).

 

[ilbob]

From what I can tell, many cowboys were unarmed as they were poorly paid and guns were a luxury. Those that were armed usually had single shot milsurp rifles or black powder muzzle loaders.

Revolvers were very pricey and very few actual cowboys could afford them.

It was not until around 1900 that it became affordable to have better firearms on the frontier. And by then the Indian danger was mostly over.

TV and movies almost never get the actual history right.

 

[Ryanxia]

This was a good thread to read, very interesting things, and I agree the Sarge seems to have good genes

 

[longspurr]

Dragged by a horse; The only 3 ways I know of to deal with this is
1) Have the stirrups covered on the front so your boot cannot slip through. This is fairly common.
2) Loose boots so your foot could slip out of the boot that is hung up in the stirrup.
3) Pray quick

Ammo? Quoting the book COWBOYS & TRAPPINS OF THE OLD WEST

“During the late 1870’s and 1880’s saddle makers designed cartridge belts, an innovation which significantly changed the design of cowboy gunleather. A cartridge best carrying 35 to 45 cartridges was useful to a cowboy who traveled long distances between ammo suppliers.”
“ammo was expensive in the old west and many revolvers took unusual cartridges that were not easily available. Cowboys often had plenty of time in the winter to reload their own cartridges. Inexpensive hand held pliers like reloading tools were popular. These kits only cost $2 during the early 1880’s”

Keep in mind the Colt peacemaker was an 1873 model as well as the very popular 1873 Winchester lever rifle. My guess would be that these would not have been common items for several years after introduction. Wild Bill Hickok carried 36 caliber cap & ball revolvers. As others have said cap & ball was likely very common into the 1880’s and later.

 

[Jim NE]

Speaking of Winchester capacity, my brother inherited my dad's Winchester '73 in .38-40 caliber. It has a LONG octagonal barrel. Since I don't have the gun, I don't know exactly how long the barrel is, but the overall length of the gun is roughly the same as an old Springfield trap door 45-70, standard length (He had one of those, too. Not a carbine). So it's a pretty long gun. Any idea what the magazine capacity is?

Don't know if there was only one standard length for the really long barrels on old Winchesters or not. If there was more than one length for the long barrels, then I realize it would be hard to determine exactly what the capacity is. I could ask my brother, but I'm fairly sure he doesn't have any 38-40 ammo to load it up with and find out. Did they put 36" barrels on them? Something tells me that might be about right.

Just curious. Thanks

Okay, this is the same gun my dad had (now owned my brother) not a 36 or 30" barrel, but 32" apparently. I knew there had to be one other one out there somewhere.

http://www.collectorsfirearms.com/admin/product_details.php?itemID=37490

 

[exavid]

The whole question is silly. Everyone knows cowboys never ran out of ammo with their sixshooters. They just kept on shooting and shooting, you could always tell the good shots by the color of their Stetsons, white Stetson wearers were excellent shots and black Stetson guys could hardly hit the side of a barn. A typical white hatted cowboy could hit the gun in the hand of a black hatted fellow at 50yds while both were riding over broken ground on horses who never seem to bet winded.

 

[CONNEX 3300]

Unlike in the movies it is much harder to do the work real cowboys did with a gun belt on.

Very True. I work cattle fairly often and ride horses occasionaly. It is a royal pain to wear the drop loop "hollywood" style holster with a revolver. I had a friend who swore up and down that he could wear his six shooter in a cowboy rig while working. I soon discovered that his definition of "work" meant playing with horses and just riding around for the heck of it. When he came up to my place and did REAL work, feeding cattle from a feed truck, bucking hay bales, building fence, cutting firewood, clearing brush and roofing a barn, he quickly realized that the hollywood gunfighter rig is useless. He eventually started carrying his gun like my brother and I. In a cavalry flap holster on his regular belt. There is NO way that the original cowboys used the classic drop loop rig. They probably just kept an old civil war surplus pistol in the saddle bag, and then tucked it in their belt if they anticipated trouble.
I have done fairly extensive research on the old west in western Oklahoma, and I have decided that while nearly everyone always carried a gun, it was usually concealed, and rarely carried more than a handful of extra shells if that. Most of the court records I have turned up indicate that cowboys accused of shooting up the town had purcheased a box of shells right before they got out of hand.

 

[saaman]

My Daddy was born in 1915 and as a child often rode horseback with my Grandfather who was a cattle trader in Texas. Dad told me about one trip to a large ranch where they were allowed to stay in the bunkhouse with the cowboys. When the cowboys came in from the day's work they would take off their gunbelts and pile them on a table in the bunkhouse. One cowboy my Dad remembered wore a sawed-off shotgun on his gunbelt instead of a pistol.

I grew up in West Texas and frequented pawnshops as a kid--and drooled over the Colt Single Actions brought in and sold or pawned by old retired cowboys. Caliber was invariably .45 and barrel length 4 3/4".

 

[crracer_712]

From the western's I've watched at my dad's house, they tend to have an infinant supply of ammo and seldom ever have to reload, they just keep blaster away with those revolvers!

 

[crracer_712]

Avoid the situation altogether.Would be the prefered method. Next you would hopefully have a hold of at least one rein and jerk his teeth out till he stopped.Most of the horse I have owned stop when you fall off.I think they are laughing at me.

So you ended up with my horse.

 

[Dr T]

I think that part of the answer depends on the point in time. During the late 1850's and into the mid 1860's, my great-grandfather (and yes, that is the correct number of generations ago) go conscripted to ride with the Texas Rangers for several months every other year. In 1864, he moved into the Concho Valley in West Texas which was Indian territory. I would image his habits of personal armament changed with that move, and then again when he made his first cattle drive in 1867.

Looking at pictures taken on the family ranch (7-D) in 1892, there is no sign of any side arm carried by any of the cowboys, nor is there a sign of a rifle scabbard on any of the saddles.

In the 1930's, when my late father was a foreman on the Bar-S he occasionally carried a rifle on his horse. However, this was usually when they were hunting feral hogs (on horses with ropes) or coyotes (by coursing them with greyhounds).

And, having busted enough brush on horseback (and with enough involuntary exits from the saddle), I can think of a lot of things I would rather land on than a handgun in a holster.

I did try carrying a Ruger Blackhawk in 45 Colt with a 7.5 inch barrel in a tie down holster on horseback once. It did get in the way. I went to a Single Six with the 4 5/8 inch barrel in a belt holster after that. It was much handier for the occasional rattlesnake.

I would never be so foolish as to fire a gun while mounted. I don't think any of my horses would have liked it very much.

 

[BBQLS1]

My Dad grew up in the open country of northern Montana between the years after WWI and when WWII started and he went to the service.
My Granddad raised horses for the cavalry that ranged over hundreds of miles of unfenced country.
No hostile injuns or desparados ripping across the range then.
he said he and his brothers, all 5 of them, all had rifles and handguns.
But, he said they didn't shoot much because they couldn't afford to.
If they were going to be out gathering horses for some days they usually had a rifle along for some meat. Sometimes just a .22.

This sounds familiar!

 

[Geno]

clem said:

When I was a Deputy Sheriff out here in Southeastern Arizona, I carried 22 rounds on me and another 50 in my horse. (.45 ACP).
Then there was my rifle with 20 rounds and a extra 40 more for it. (7.62X51).

I just went green with envy.

Geno

 

[Ky Larry]

They were probably just like us. Some carried very little, some carried as much as they could.

 

[Jim K]

"A cowboy always carried a pistol."

Well, no. On some ranches it was prohibited for a cowboy to carry a handgun. If they hired a hand who had a gun, it would be kept in the office safe until he left or until he had some need for it. Rifles were issued, as needed, for controlling wild animals and for protection against Indians or rustlers. A few cowboys did own horses or saddles, but most got around by stage or (later) train, until they found a job. Once hired on, the ranch provided food, shelter, horse (first come, first horse at the remuda), equipment and weapons. The ranch would even provide, or advance money for, clothing and boots. And cowboys weren't always cowboys. They were drifters who worked at any job to make money. That romantic cowboy could have been a hostler, or a cook, or a gandy dancer yesterday.

And the typical "cowboy gun" was not a Colt SAA or S&W No. 3, it was more likely to be a solid frame (suicide special) or an inexpensive breaktop that sold mail order for $2-5. A Colt SAA cost around $16, half a month's pay for a cowhand. As for needing a gun to shoot up saloons, most cowboys who got to town had other ideas about using a gun that didn't involve pumping bullets into the ceiling (and getting thrown in jail - there really was law in the Old West!).

Jim