I know a sample of one don't mean anything but back when we had jackrabbits I used to shoot them with a 38 while I was mowing cotton stalks in the fall.
I would guess a sample of one, plus your grandfather, means quite a lot
For Comanche bows, might have been Fehrenbach but somewhere I'm recalling a figure of 30-40 pounds. Come to think of it, surviving Indian arrows often look often look sort of slight.
Ford writes....
Never ride upon a bowman's left; if you do, ten to one that he will pop an arrow through you. When mounted, an Indian cannot use his bow against an object behind and to his right.Hmm... other Indians must've known this too, one would think a Lefty could clean up the opposition that way. Maybe there were cultural inhibitions like in many societies, one hand for eating one for "other stuff".
The bow is placed horizontally in shooting; a number of arrows are held in the left hand; the bow operates as a rest to the arrow.
The distance - the curve the missile has to describe in reaching the object - is determined by the eye without taking aim. Arrows are sped after each other in rapid succession.
At the distance of sixty yards and over, arrows can be dodged, if but one Indian shoots at you at one time. Under forty yards the revolver has but little advantage over the bow.So... did Ford mean that OVER forty yards the revolver was better?
Um... I'm gonna plead the Fifth...
...and more seriously ask you to point out when the Texans started piling up dead Comanches after they got this new superweapon.
Ford does state elsewhere re: the Walker Colt during the Mexican War...
While at this camp the men made a trial between the Mississippi rifle and the six-shooter of Colt's latest pattern. The six-shooter threw a ball a greater distance than the rifle. . .
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Odd, he seems so lucid everywhere else.....
Birdwatcher
