"I would think that a Hawken Rifle would have been pretty rare and hard to come by on the TX Frontier. Every novice that ever watched Redford in Jeremiah Johnson think the Hawken was what everyone had"
Yes! I saw Jeremiah Johnson at the theater in January 1973. This movie just blew me away. My buddy and I traveled in June from Atlanta to the wilderness of Ft. Nelson British Columbia. We rented horses from an outfitter and we spent the summer camping out, and riding through the wilderness like Jeremiah Johnson. Of course we had a pack horse, and panniers, and we knew how to throw our own diamond hitch. Fortunately we were not attacked by any Crow Indians. Thankfully we were not attacked by griz, though there are many grizzlies up there. We were way out in the wilderness.
I still have my TC Hawken. I have killed 6 whitetail with it. That .490 round ball is murder on deer. One shot to the lungs is all it takes. Never had one go over 50 yards when hit with the round ball, where I have had to track blood trails for well over 100 yards, with a deer hit in the lungs with a 30-06.
Jeremiah Johnson is set in the Rockies in 1847, so I didn't know if the Hawken had made it down to the plains of Texas in 1837. Having used the Hawken quite a bit, I can assure you that it would have been a perfect weapon against the Comanche, and with the shorter barrel, it would have been easier to carry in a saddle scabbard than the Pennsylvania long rifles that y'all mentioned.
Sorry to offend some of you guys with my question.
