Home Forums Hunting & Shooting BPCR Saw a 45-120 Shiloh yesterday!!!!!

Geeezzz what a cartridge!!! Looked like an artillery round. Don't think I have much desire to light one off though. The owner had some cut outs of steel targets with serious dimples and the slugs firmly welded into place.

In a book I have written from the diary of Andrew Garcia he talks about his 45-120 Sharps and the Griz he killed with it. If you're not familiar with the book the story takes place in Montana between 1878 to 1879. One night he and his Indian wife were bother by a Griz trying to get into his buffalo hide mansion I believe he called it. He shot the Griz at the door flap which puts the Griz about 15 feet from the muzzle when he touched it off. The shot blew the Griz about 75 to 100 feet from the door flap backwards. He said he waited until morning to check out whether the bear was died or not. I believe he said he was using around a 650 grain paper patched bullet and he was wondering if the Griz was dead or not. Rightttt!!!

BTW: I estimate about 2300 foot pounds of muzzle energy.

Looked like it might toss the shooter about the same distance in the opposite direction. The muzzle blast alone should have cooked the bear.

Here's the name of the book for anyone who might be interested.

"Tough Trip Through Paradise-1878-1879" by Andrew Garcia and Edited by Bennett H. Stein.

Stein acquired the book from the Garcia estate and finished what Garcia was unable to do before he passed away. I did some research on Garcia for a Montana history course I took a couple of years ago in college. He was quite a charcter who lived into the 1920's. My history instructor who is the State of Montana's interpative historian says Stein had the credentials to edit the book so the book is accurate. The book is an interesting read on Montana history of the time and the Sharps rifle he mentions a few times as well as his Winchester 1873. Garcia's first wife was a Nez Perce Indian and was at the the Battle of the Big Hole at the time it was going on. In fact Garcia and his wife visited the battle site about three months after the battle to look for her father and uncle I believe to bury them. A good read for the black powder buff who wants to know how they did it in the day.

I can believe the 650gr bullet would have quickly killed the grizzly... However, blowing the Grizzly 75 to 100 feet backwards, is a little too much for me to believe... If the bear actually traveled that far, he did it under his how own power...!

I even doubt it the 45-120 was available in the 1878-1879 period. I don't think Sharps ever chambered the 1874 Sharps to 45-120, However, I do believe that Sharps may have RE-CHAMBERED some of their rifles to 45-120, but I think it would have been after 1879... Someone else may have more definitive information on when Sharps rechambered some of their rifles to 45-120.

I will have to look in my Sellers book, on the Sharps, for better information...

Bill

The 45-120 and the 50-140 did not even exist until 1884. The Sharps Company closed its doors in 1881. Some rifles were re-chambered to the 120 but it was never used in the buff fields to any great extent and it was not a Sharps factory re-chambering. The bullet was far more likely to be a 550 grain paper patched bullet. Hell, in the "Big 50" the heaviest bullet loaded was a 473 grain paper patched bullet. There are a lot of misconceptions about the old cartridges these days.

I knew somebody would have the right information...

There is so much BS written in old books and manuscripts, enough to float the Battleship Missouri...!

Bill

An old brain being what it is I went and got my book and I did make some mistakes. The rifle is a Sharps 45-120. What model it is I don't know but he does say that the rifle is a buffalo gun, it weighs over 15 pounds, and it cost him $75.00. He says he could have gotten a lighter one, a 45-90 number 13 for the same price but being a kid he went for the biggest baddest one they had. The name of his rifle is Betsy Jane and I don't why.

As to the bear, he shot the bear at about 25 feet away and not 15 feet. Garcia had picketed a horse about 75 yards away and some how this feeble old brain had assumed the bear had flew that far after it was shot I guess. The bear died closer to camp and had dropped on the spot but did not die right away. Garcia had hit the bear at the base of the neck so the bear wasn't going any where but he put a finishing touch in the brain to make sure. That makes two shots. I could not find the grain of bullet but for some reason I had thought he said it was around a 650 grain paper patched bullet. I think Garcia's trading partner had a 45-120 Sharps as well but I could be wrong.

Sorry for the confusion. That's what happens when a feeble old man tries to tell a story that he read about 3 or 4 years ago. This book is still a good read and the Griz story will keep you on the edge of your seat even with my terrible re-hashing.

I've always been amazed that many of Fifty's had lighter bullets than the forty-five's. I guess it has something to do with sectional density or something. If the Fifty's had the same sectional density as the Forty-fives the bullets would have to be really big. I don't know why that is but I'm sure some mathematician could tell me.

Derby_Dude:
Thanks for the update...

I am a native Montanan myself, being born in Columbus, Montana in 1936.

My grandfather who lived from 1850 to 1950 arrived in Montana in 1866. My grandfather was a hunter and trapper until the start of the Buffalo hunt. He hunted buffalo into the very early 1880's.

He hunted Wolves until he finally bought himself a small cattle ranch around 1883.

When I was a child, I used to plead with him to tell me stories of the buffalo hunts and the Indian fights he had participated in, during the late 1860's, and the Bozeman trail era.

Now that I am retired and have the time to study his era, I find his stories to be very factual.

I miss that old guy more, and more, as the years keep passing by.

Bill

DD, I own and shoot (a lot) an original Sharps 45-110. With a charge of 105 gr GOEX Express FFG and a 500 grain bullet, the recoil is an attention getter. This from a 14 lb rifle. Those old time buff hunters would be letting go from 150-300 rounds A DAY during the hunt. I have fired 80 rounds in one day and it is physically exhausting. The big 50 killed well at ranges under 600 yds and the recoil was reasonably tolerable. The lighter bullet helped. The actually more popular cartridge up until 1874 was the 44-90. These days our BPCR shooters are having the Devils' own time getting the 44-90's to shoot!! The refernces in old writngs to 45 caliber rounds over 3" long generally refer to the 45-110. With nearly any decent bullet, they reach 3.25" overall easily.

I think the old buffalo hunters were a whole lot tougher than any of us modern pansies are today. A friend of mine whom's grandfather has long since passed has pictures of his grandfather when he worked as a type of deputy sheriff in Canada where the grandfather was born in heavy fur coat etc.. His grandfather was a French Canadian trapper (among other things) probably Metis as the grandfather moved to Browning MT and lived on the reservation for a while. When my friend's grandfather was well into his eighty's he would walk 3 or 4 miles to his friends in the dead of winter, 25 or 30 below to have a cup of coffee and jaw bone and than would walk back home and thought nothing of it. The grandfather did this a lot. Today if most of us were to do that we'd be dead before we got there.

They may have been tougher, but they were smaller too. And they may have been used to living rough, but it takes a toll. So was the toll it took equal to the conditioning it provided, plus the fact of smaller statured people? I kinda think it all equalled out.

Most of the buffaloes were killed off by the time the high-powered Sharps cartridges came out. The great Kansas herd was probably killed out by 50-70 Allin Conversions and 45-70 Trapdoors along with some of the 44-77's and 45-70 Sharps pre-1874 models. The Texas herd was the province of the 44-77 and Big Fifty, with the Colorado herd being where the smaller calibers and larger capacities really started to come into play. That would leave only the Northern Herd. By then, everybody knew they were shooting the Buff into extinction.

I had an original 1859 50-70 Conversion carbine. It was a nice handling little gun and was almost pleasant to shoot with my 500 grain cast bullets backed up by as much FFg as the case would take.

I have no desire to shoot over 90 grains of black in a case.

Wise words, indeed.

I wince anytime a prospective BPCR shooter starts asking about getting a .45-120 or even a .45-110. Although the 110 has it's place, it definitely isn't a round for a beginner. Somebody once very aptly called the ultralong BP cartridges "expensive fireworks". I love my .45-90, and it has plenty of punch at both ends. I really know it when I've fired a string at a match, especially a 25 shot rapid fire string at the steel buffalo at Ackley, Iowa. It holds up just fine to 1000 yards, but if I weren't planning to shoot over 800, I might just stick with a .45-70. "Magnumitis" doesn't transition well to shooting BP guns, IMO.

Paul

A friend of mine is the mountain man/cowboy type with a large collection of original firearms of the black powder era. He has both 45-70 and 45-90 of the two he likes the 45-90 the best. Used the 45-90 a lot in cowboy action shooting for the long shots. FWIW.

The 45-110 was the premier big game cartridge. It was not used on the competition ranges. That was left to the 2.6" and 2.4" 45 caliber rounds.The 110 is STILL a premier big game cartridge. I would not hesitate to use my Sharps on ANY North American big game critter. It IS a helluva lot of fun to shoot but it definitely is not for everybody. Any of you fellas have my standing invite that if you ever get lost in my neck of the woods, you are welcome to drop the hammer on my cannon. There's an invite! How often does someone offer you a chance to shoot a vintage Sharps big gun???

Thanks ET. I wish I still had my little Sharps, even though it wasn't in the same category as yours. I found out exactly what was said as a criticism of the one I had, which was the extractor was weak and wouldn't always do the job. Spot-on. The 1874 and pre-1874 models are out of sight now and rightly so. So much history and such a near-flawless gun.

I'm pretty satisfied with my Pedersoli. It's a lot better than the San Marcos guns I've owned and I got it for the price of a San Marcos. If I ever run into a deal like that on a Shiloh OR C. Sharps, I'll own one of those someday.

There's nothing like shooting the original...the real thing though.

My grandfather lived from 1850 until 1950. My grandfather moved to Bozeman, Montana, from Clarinda, Appanosse County, Iowa, arriving in Montana, in the spring of 1866. My grandfather lived for one hundred years and a few months. At 5'11" and at 240 pounds, my grandfather wasn't a little man. He was a tough old bird, until the very day of his death. He started his hunting of the Buffalo using a muzzleloader and then a Henry rifle. When the Trapdoor Springfield rifle became available, he used the Springfield until the Sharps rifles became available.

To be frank, I don't think the men of the old days of the west were any tougher than we are now, unless evolution has evolved us... These were men who were used to working long, hard hours, at very hard work, because this was what was available to them.

However, if is a matter of record that the average height of men, in the Old West, was about 5'6" during the Buffalo hunt era. Kit Carson was only 5'4" tall.



I would like to ask you some questions. These questions are for my information, not intended as a flame at you...! I say that, because some posters have tender feelings...!

How do you know, "everybody knew" they were shooting the Buffalo into extinction?

Please explain smaller calibers and larger capacities. I'm curious. Can you document the assertions you have made in your post? I am collecting material on the Buffalo hunters era, as a hobby. I am not planning on writing a book.



My grandfather hunted the whole time of the buffalo hunting era, first with the northern herd, and then with the southern herd.

The Buffalo in Colorado were part of the northern herd, not an individual herd, on their own. The northern herd of Buffalo covered kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, eastern Montana, eastern wyoming and eastern Colorado. In other words, the herds, both northern and southern, foraged the great plains.

I maintain that while Buffalo hunters took many, many thousands of buffalo, yearly, during the era of the Buffalo hunt, that Buffalo hunters and Indians were not the main cause of the decimation of the buffalo herds. In fact I don't think they could have put more than a dent in the number of Buffalo, if you consider the amount of the natural increase by the birthing of Buffalo calves!

The main cause the precipitous decline of the Buffalo herds, both the northern herd and the southern herd, was the introduction of cattle into the Buffalo habitat. The cattle brought diseases that the Buffalo did not have a natural immunity to.

The introduction of domestic cattle brought such diseases as brucellosis, Bangs disease, hoof and mouth disease, Malignant anthrax and other cattle born diseases into the Buffalo habitat.

At seventy-one, and as I enter my eighth decade, I have been studying the Old West for quiet some time, more than sixty years in fact. I have a library of over 1000 books, of which ninty percent are on the old west. In fact I started at nine years old, because of my grandfathers storys about the Buffalo hunt and Indian battles he had participated in. My studies have proven to me that what my grandfather told me was very accurate.

It is kind of interesting, academically, why the subject of cattle diseases have never been taken into account, with the decline of the Buffalo herds. In fact, it is very short-sighted of historians to lay the complete responsibility of the Buffalo herds decline on the Hide Hunter and the Indians...!

Blaming the Buffalo hunter for the decimation of the Buffalo herds seems to be a politically correct attitude to have in existing academic circles.

Another consideration in the life of the Buffalo herds is the influx of settlers onto the prairie land where the Buffalo formerly foraged. With the westward expansion of settlers, the Buffalo would have soon ran out of room to roam. A field of corn, hay, or wheat would have been a tasty repast for the wandering buffalo herds.

You don't think that the settlers would have put up with the distruction of their crops by wandering buffalo, do you? The Buffalo were in the way, and eventually, they would have had to go, anyway...!

Bill

I am relieved to see (hear?) someone whose thoughts on the demise of the bison pretty much coincide with what I surmised some time ago. If anyone cares to look there is a parallel experience from Africa not so long ago-within the 20th century I believe. Rinderpest decimated the cape buffalo herds in a large part of the continent faster and more thoroughly than hunters ever could. Stillwater, I agree that it is the PC promoted line as to the demise of the American bison.

Stillwater you have some good points on the end of the Buffalo. The Eco-nuts want to bring back the Buffalo and I always say where. Their answer is well build a corridor for them. Right, as if they would stay in a corridor and besides who's land are you going to take for the corridor. The point being is that I think you maybe right Buffalo are not compatible with modern life except on Buffalo ranches.

Of course if the Buffalo did run amok they could be the largest varmints we have and just think of all the varmint hunting with Sharps rifles we could do then.