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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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Every day on this side of the ground is a win.
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 37,881 |
A participant in the Red River Wars, the Black Seminole Scout Adam Payne. ![[Linked Image]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/Black%20Seminoles/seminole4.jpg) Well over 6ft tall, Payne cut a distinctive figure in his buffalo headdress, having been captured by and lived with the Comanches for some years in his youth. One one occasion Payne and a party of Indian scouts were trailing a band of Comanches well in advance of MacKenzie's column. The scouts followed the trail to full dark and, having the bearing, pressed on further before stopping for the night. Turns out both sides had made cold camps that night, the morning light revealed the Comanche camp within sight, the Comanches immediately attacked the little band of scouts. In the scramble to get away one of the scouts, a Creek Indian, lost his horse which ran away in a panic. Payne gave the man his own horse, stood his ground with his rifle and then shot the lead Comanche and took THAT horse. A running fight ensued, Payne bringing up the rear, pausing occasionally to shoot at his pursuers. By the time he made it to MacKenzie's camp the lathered horse was on the point of collapse. MacKenzie, no slouch in the warrior department hisself, awarded Payne a Medal of Honor for "habitual boldness". Shortly thereafter Payne left the employ of the army and took up horse theft along with a White partner, one Frank Unwin. To add context this was in the Backettville/Uvalde/Eagle Pass area, then the domain of the notorious cowboy mafia leader John "King" Fisher. Payne got in a fight in a Brownsville bar and killed a soldier with his knife, a warrant was put out for his arrest. Sheriff Clarence Windus of Uvalde and his deputy confronted Payne in a Bracketsville saloon. All three men were armed, Payne with a Winchester rifle on the bar and his revolver on his hip, and he was just too dangerous a man to take on in anything approaching a fair fight. Payne backed down both men and made his escape. After that episode tho Payne's eventual death was a certainty. It is a testament to Payne's formidable reputation that Windus waited until a New Years Eve celebration at the Black Seminole community outside of Fort Clark, stepping out of the darkness to shoot the unarmed Payne in the back point blank with both barrels of a shotgun, the blast so close as to set the man's shirt on fire. No coward, Windus hisself had previously won a Medal of Honor in combat with the Kiowas back in his cavalry days, this Payne incident being the only case in American history where one Medal of Honor recipient slew another. Birdwatcher
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
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Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Jul 2004
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Col. Mackenzie and the 4th Cavalry were able to capture more than 1,400 horses belonging to the tribe. I think they ended up shooting over a thousand of em'. I believe that is right. I also seem to recall that Mackenzie had lead an expedition up on the plains a year or so earlier, captured a huge number of horses and tried to get them back to civilization. The Comanches casually stole them back. So the second time around Mackenzie just destroyed all he couldn't hold on to. The Comanches had been decimated by disease, saw the buffalo being exterminated and finally encountered a white soldier who could carry the war to their homeland and callously destroy their wealth. Quanah was smart, he decided to bow to the inevitable and make the best deal he could with the government; it worked out well for his tribe until Congress decided to break up the reservation.
'Four legs good, two legs baaaad."
----------------------------------------------
"Jimmy, some of it's magic,
Some of it's tragic,
But I had a good life all the way."
(Jimmy Buffett)
SotG
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Campfire Regular
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It always amazes me to hear those who say Billy's shot was a fluke, lucky, probably not as far as stated, etc., even though he said it was a scratch shot himself. He was shooting at the bunch on a hill and hit one. I don't count that as luck.
Had he been blindfolded, spun in circles, handed a rifle and told to shoot while everyone around him ducked and knocked one off the hill, that would have been luck. He hit what he was aiming at, even if shooting at the bunch.
How many obama supporters does it take to change a light bulb? None, they prefer to remain in the dark.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
~Molɔ̀ːn Labé Skýla~
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Joined: Aug 2002
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 37,881 |
No flies on MacKenzie, or Parker...
...but the Comanches had been seriously into cattle since at least the 1860's, when in the absence of serious opposition they started running off Texas stock in a big way. By the 1870's, the free-living Comanches and Kiowas were living an essentially pastoralist lifestyle, which was only common sense when the buffalo were declining but where livestock abounded.
Quanah Parker might have led a band of Traditionalist holdouts but MOST Comanches were settled in Oklahoma by that time, raising cattle. This is why Parker was able to slip so easily into cattle ranching after hostilities ended. Quanah Parker was one of a number of Comanche combatants during those years, WHY he got so singled out after the wars were over was of course because of his pedigree.
Birdwatcher
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 53,303 |
Having pulled targets at Raton, 1000 yard Creedmoor Match,
5-600 grain slugs singing overhead,...
I always muse on being in that group of Horsemen,...
Watching the BP smoke drift away from the lone shooter below and way so far out there,....than hearing the rolling boom of the shot,...THEN hearing that big slug come arcing in and thumping my Compañero.
....talk about one of those "Oh Chit!" moments.
GTC
Member, Clan of the Border Rats
-- “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”- Mark Twain
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 1,361 |
Having pulled targets at Raton, 1000 yard Creedmoor Match,
5-600 grain slugs singing overhead,...
I always muse on being in that group of Horsemen,...
Watching the BP smoke drift away from the lone shooter below and way so far out there,....than hearing the rolling boom of the shot,...THEN hearing that big slug come arcing in and thumping my Compañero.
....talk about one of those "Oh Chit!" moments.
GTC Greg, you painted a LMAO picture. Thanks.
How many obama supporters does it take to change a light bulb? None, they prefer to remain in the dark.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
~Molɔ̀ːn Labé Skýla~
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 54,284
Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 54,284 |
Having pulled targets at Raton, 1000 yard Creedmoor Match,
5-600 grain slugs singing overhead,...
I always muse on being in that group of Horsemen,...
Watching the BP smoke drift away from the lone shooter below and way so far out there,....than hearing the rolling boom of the shot,...THEN hearing that big slug come arcing in and thumping my Compañero.
....talk about one of those "Oh Chit!" moments.
GTC The Comanches who witnessed it said the guy didn't die. I think he was just bruised badly. ![[Linked Image]](http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m8/kiddglock/000_0721.jpg)
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Nov 2005
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Joined: May 2007
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Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
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Billy Dixon's shot was not pure luck. The man was a practiced, cool shot and acknowledged as a superior marksman. He was shooting a weapon he was intimately familiar with. Now. Here's the rest of it.
According to Dixon's biography, in his own words, the buffalo hunters passed a lot of time at Adobe Walls shooting at a mark. It seems that a favorite target was a big rock on the side of the hill overlooking Adobe Walls--the same spot the group of indians that Dixon shot at had stopped their horses.
How do we know this? A number of years ago, a group of graduate students from the history department of Texas A&M were doing research at Adobe Walls and decided to go to the spot on the hill with a metal detector and look around. They found a large number of spent bullets and bullet fragments on the ground around a particular large rock--and the rock itself was pock marked from bullet strikes.
Dixon and his friends had been using the rock where the indians stopped as a target. That means he already had the elevation setting for his ladder sight, and knew where to hold for bullet drift. He had in fact been practicing for the shot, and didn't realize it! I would say that it was a good shot, but hardly pure luck. A Sharps buffalo rifle handled by a man that knows how to use it is effective at that distance, and Billy Dixon definitely knew how to use a Sharps.
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 31,602 |
I will add that before the Comanches became in volved with Cattle as Birdy mentioned, in the late 18th and early 19th century they were the premiere horse and mule raisers/traders on the western frontier. White traders such as Anthony Glass and Philip Nolan left Natchitoches La on a regular basis, and traveled west to do trade with them.
Nolan had a slight run in with Spanish authorities he did not survive. This occurred on the Brazos River between present Cleburne and Glen Rose Tx.
Founder
Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester
"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."
WS
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Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
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The old buffalo hunters were very skilled rifleman, they had to be if they were going to make a living at it! There is no doubt about this shot, yea he had to walk his bullets up and hit on the third shot, Ok, guys did the same thing in the 21 century in the current war! He may have called it luck, but there was also a great amount of skill too!
"Any idiot can face a crisis,it's the day-to-day living that wears you out."
Anton Chekhov
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Campfire Member
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Campfire Member
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Posts: 206 |
Great song. Who's singing it?
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 53,303 |
Was my neighbor once, long ago, in a place far away....The High River Country, in SW Alberta.
Ian Tyson
GTC
Member, Clan of the Border Rats
-- “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”- Mark Twain
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Joined: Dec 2009
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 31,602 |
About 35 years ago I got to examine a buffalo shield that came from the Mackenzie raid. It was in a private collection and was going to auction. Still had one revolver projectile Inbedded in it.
Founder
Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester
"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."
WS
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Joined: May 2007
Posts: 1,867
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
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What is your source for the statement that Dixon walked the bullet in and made the hit on the third shot? I have researched this a lot, and never heard that.
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 18,005 |
As for Billy Dixon's famous shot, I am fully prepared to believe it may have been from the better part of a mile away, mostly because of the testimony of Billy Dixon hisself, who alway said it was a "scratch" ie. lucky shot, almost a fluke. Of course, if he weren't an outstanding shot, the shot would never have connected, lucky or not. I've read that having a few drinks, while pelting away at rocks up on the ridge on which that poor Comanche bastid caught some of Bridgeport's finest had been popular for some time prior....e.g. they already HAD the elevation sorted out.Thinkin' Red Meineke ( sp ?) wrote about that in his series in SPG's BPCR News. GTC I read something of the same, Cross. When I was much younger and knew a lot more "settled shooting science" than I know now (ahem) I scoffed at such long-range shooting claims. How could a primitive weapon like a Sharps rifle possibly perform at long range to such exacting specifications? Impossible, I'd say. As for Elmer Keith's claim of shooting a wounded mule deer at 600 yards, well, that had to be one of the most laughable tall tales of all time. Right? Wrong. When I started working heavy-duty revolvers a dozen years ago out of curiosity I thought I'd try ol' Elmer's "long-range" shooting technique to see if I could plunk some 265 gr bullets into a bucket at 100, 200, and 400 yards. I had time on my hands, y'unnastan. My initial results weren't good. It was hard knowing just how high I was holding the front sight up above the notch of the rear sight, so my shots were falling long and short all the time, but pretty good for windage, with some practice. So then I used some super-glue and fine gold fly-tying wire to make some horizontal hashmarks on the front sight of my Ruger Bisley revolver, in much the same manner as Elmer had the gold bars notched into the front sight of his No. 5 sixgun. Well, lo and behold, I found that once I could consistently index my front sight, I could lob 45-caliber bullets onto a 12" steel plate at 200 yards, and I did it often enough at 400 yards to know I could probably get pretty good at that range, too, if I took the time to practice. (This was not guessed-at 400 yards. This was on a NRA-certified 100-, 200-, 400- and 600-yard rifle range.) And using the vernier sights on my eye-talian replica 45-70 Sharps rifle, I could do the same at 400 yards. That's as far as I took it, but I know sharpsguy here on the 'Fire has experience ringing gongs way farther than that with his smokepoles. As have others, like jorgeI and Eviltwin. Now, as to range: I read an interestin' column by a BP aficionado who goes by the handle of Duke. Y'all who know who he is, he's the guy who gave Shrapnel his handle. I happen to have a PM link to Duke on another site, and we have been known to discuss things Darksiders are interested in at length and in detail from time to time. Stuff that non-Darksiders aren't that interested in. So he and I discussed this following incident at length. Here's the article:
HOW FAR WILL A SHARPS RIFLE SHOOT?
Mike Venturino
In the fall of 1992 the people at Shiloh Sharps were approached by a group of forensic scientists who were going to have a meeting at the Yuma Proving Grounds early in November. The were going to be allowed to use some newly unclassified radar devices to test the performance of various types of ammunition. Shiloh was invited to bring down some rifles and participate in the doings. Especially they wanted was a .50-90 So, Wolfgang Droege, previous Shiloh owner, Kirk Bryan, one of the present Shiloh owners, and Dennis Bardon, Shiloh’s custom gunsmith began making plans to attend. They also asked yours truly if he wanted to go, and I said I wouldn’t miss it.
However, I must admit to being a bit puzzled as to why they wanted to use such new—fangled radar gadgets to test such old guns. Well, when we got there we found out. It seems that one of the forensic scientists wrote an article in their newsletter saying that the Billy Dixon shot at Adobe Walls in 1874 could not possibly have happened. (Remember Billy Dixon knocked an Indian off his horse at a distance later surveyed to be 1,538 yards.)
Anyway, this particular forensic scientist did some calculations and arrived at the conclusion that a .50-90 Sharps (What Billy Dixon said he used could not have a bullet out that far. When I heard what this was all about thought, “That scientist is going to be embarrassed. He must not have fired Sharps Before. We all know they’ll throw a bullet that far.”
When we arrived at the Yuma Proving Grounds I was suitably impressed by it all. We had to have badges pinned to our shirts to move about the place, and I couldn’t take my camera out of the vehicle. A picture of the row upon row of Russian T—72 tanks would have been neat, but if I had tried we would have been thrown out. The test facility was a large bunker filled with electronic equipment, and covered with armor plate. I asked why and was told it was also the bunker from which they tested tank guns and the plate was to protect the inhabitants in case something blewup during testing. Since they weren’t too worried about our Sharps blowing up and killing the crew, we were free to roam out to the machine rest, which happened to be a modified gun carrier from a Russian T—72 tank.
This whole assembly was not about just testing Sharps. Many of the scientists brought their own weapons to gather data on ranging from .38 Special handguns to 12 gauge shotguns up to even a 20mm cannon. Finally time rolled around to try the Sharps. They elevated the gun carriage to 35 degrees and touched off a round of Dennis Bardon’s loads using a 675 grain bullet powered by about 90 grains of FFg. All the scientists running the equipment started stuttering and stammering, collectively saying, “It couldn’t be!” They just couldn’t accept that a bullet launched by black powder and starting out at a muzzle velocity of only 1,216 fps landed over 3,600 yards away!
I heard mutters of, “Shoot another one, something must not be working right.” So they turned loose another shot. This time the bullet weighed 650 grains and the muzzle velocity was 1,301 fps. Again the muzzle was elevated to 35 degrees. That bullet landed 3,245 yards downrange. The fellow who wrote the article saying Billy Dixon couldn’t have hit the Indian got real quiet and very red in the face.
From there on it was all fun. We elevated the muzzle to 45 degrees. The bullet again was 650 grains and started at 1,275 fps. It landed at 3,190 yards, but the most amazing thing was that it went up to a few feet shy of 4,000 feet and was in the a full 30 seconds!
One of the scientist there had a laptop computer and he did a bunch of tapping with the data accumulated so far and said, “Elevate the muzzle to 4 1/2 to five degrees and you’ll get a Billy Dixon shot. That was done with the same load and the bullet landed at 1,517 yards. I’d say that scientist was on the ball. Incidentally, five degrees of muzzle elevation can easily be gotten with only the rear barrel sight on a Shiloh Sharps. -
We tried one light bullet in the .50-90. It only weighed 450 gralns, and had 100 grains of FFg under it. It started out at an impressive 1,406 fps but with the muzzle elevated to 35 degrees it landed only 2585 yards away. That extra bullet weight sure makes a difference.
Next we played with a .45-110 (2 7/8 inch case). Using a 550 grain bullet with about 100 grains of Ffg. With the muzzle elevated to 35 degrees it started with a muzzle velocity of 1,322 fps and landed 3,575 yards down-range. Next we dropped the muzzle to five degrees. The small bullet started at 1,361 fps and the bullet went 1,430 yards. Interestingly, it was stil traveling 669 fps when it went into the ground.
The last Sharps we test fired was Dennis Bardon’s .40—70 Sharps Straight silhouette rifle. The bullet weighed 403 grains. I don’t have the exact powder charge at hand right now but it would have to be in the 58 to 60 grain range. The muzzle was elevated to five degrees and the bullet started out at 1,333 fps. It hit at 1,155 yards and was still traveling 688 fps.
The forensic scientists generally agree that any projectile from BB'S on up needs in the area of 300 fps to inflict a fatal wound. The .50 caliber Sharps bullets which started at 35 to 45 degree angles were coming almost straight down out of the sky, but they were still traveling at 350to 400 fps. In other words they were still deadly even at 3,500 yards!
A heavy,soft lead bullet travelling at 400 fps is a deadly projectile. I have killed deer DRT with my old Hawken-style muzzleloader with a dead soft round ball travelling at velocities approaching that. (Yes, I put a telescopic sight on a front-stuffer. I may be a Darksider, but I ain't no politically-correct purist.) I have no doubt that Billy Dixon killed that Comanch at 1538 yards with his Sharps rifle.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
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Campfire Outfitter
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Thise guys shot enough that they became very good at range estimation and the correct holdover. I have no doubt he did it either.
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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I suspect the scientists' surprise is they were used to tracking projectiles that stayed supersonic throughout their effective range. The round nose on a typical Sharps bullet is not very efficient at supersonic speeds, but very efficient subsonic - which is why airliners flying at Mach .9 have round noses.
"...the designer of the .270 Ingwe cartridge!..."
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Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Apr 2010
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Lots of folks don't have a 'clue' as to how to use iron barrel sights! Here's an example of how to use: ![[Linked Image]](https://c8.staticflickr.com/8/7404/27482082143_920a7cef6d_b.jpg) Using_the_Peephorn by Sharps Man, on Flickr At 200 yards I can put all my shots into the size of a baseball cap (not counting the bill) shooting my left-handed Hawken caplock using a tight-patched .54 caliber round ball! With any rifle....one has to shoot it to find out what it's capable of!!
Even birds know not to land downwind!
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