Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Just Say, It was 1820

1820, or so, and you were 24. A mountain man. How would you go about the life, what would the gear be?

hummmmmmmmm

1820 in what now is Utah.........?

be a tough livin' fur sure......

Run down to Bass Pro shop, pick some cshit out.

First I need to find Hatchet Jack so I can get a Hawken rifle.

Chances are I wouldn't have survived all the childhood diseases I had to even see 10 years of age.

I'd have 3 less teeth.

Slow!

Yup, a pair of flinter 50 cal pistols and a damn sharp fighting Bowie knife.

My gear would be 3 sqaws. Someone needs to know how to survive.

Well it wouldn't be called a Bowie knife, because old Jim likely hadn't come up with the idea yet.

Most MT men worked and trapped all year to blow there money at rendezvous...much like the oil boom guy today nothing new just human nature...me I did many oil booms and walked away with some good dough......I would like to think I would have done the same in 1820...first stop would be st Lou's as that was where to get outfitted....would have to have a hawkin and a good knife...as for other gear I have no idea but it would have to be of the best quality available...your life depends on it...

I thought 1820's thru about 1860's Bowies and flint/percussion pistolas ran strong until the mighty Colt 45 six shooter put em all outta business.

You may be right but the Bowie knife was made for Jim Bowie, not sure when but I doubt it had gained much fame even if it did exist by 1820.

i'd be a lipan apache in south texas

Make it 1823. I sign on with Ashley. I am 17 years old. My rifle is a 62 caliber trade flintlock smoothbore. I carry a butcher knife and a small hatchet. I use a flint and steel to start my cooking and camp fires. I wore homespun until it wore out and then got deerskin breeches and a shirt from some Shoshone we traded with at Fort Kiowa. My gear is all my own except for the traps. I have an epishmore and a blanket that was issued by Ashley when I signed on in St, Louis. I survive the up river fights with the Arikara and have a fair trapping season. Hugh Glass is known to me, as is Bridger.

When we return to Ft. Kiowa near present day Chamberlain I leave Ashley and hook up with other free trappers. We head west into the present day Wind River range and we are at the first rendezvous in 1825. I don't miss any of them except the last one in 1840. We joined up with Bridgers brigade and I spend the rest of my life in the fur trade. Trapping for a time, then clerking for the fur company, then hauling furs in and supplies out for a few years. My travels take me from the Missouri river to Taos and back a few times. I go to Westport three times. As the trade dwindles I take up Buffalo and work the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains for a time. In 1840 my current rifled flintlock that replaced my smoothbore gives way to a rifled percussion gun with a hook breech. It is 53 caliber and a powerful weapon in the mid part of the 1800's. I become a scout for the Army in the 1850's and after that I live out my life near Fort Laramie. I pass from this earth in 1870 at 65 years of age.

My best living was from 1830 to 1840 when myself and a couple of long term trapping associates lived with a band of Shoshone Indians in the area around present day Cody Wyoming.

A top-notch canoe.

I'd head back to Louisiana, drink Mint Juleps on the porch and watch the 'help' pick the fields.

10-4, well, if the Bowies weren't available I'd have a coupla throwing boot hatchets and axes to go with my pistolas and long rifle.

The most famous version of the Bowie knife was designed by Jim Bowie and presented to Arkansas blacksmith James Black in the form of a carved wooden model in December of 1830. Black produced the knife ordered by Bowie, and at the same time created another based on Bowie's original design.

The Bowie became famous after the Sandbar Fight in 1827. Jim had a history before then with a knife, a couple of involved Jean Lafitte's boys.