Where are Wyatt Earps Guns Today?

[Mike Wood]

Click on the Link to go to Firearms Collectors to read the story, and Join while your there!

A reprint from Tombstone Historical

[anthony martin]

  Mike,

  Thanks for the Morey article.It articulates the plausibility of the Ned Buntline presentation guns and is great food for thought.I have a friend named John who is very serious about his depiction of Wyatt Earp and wiil brook no naysayers on the Buntline matter.Wyatt Earp certainly arouses passions  among all these folks.Of course I tease John about it and tell him he carries his Buntline because he suffers from "pistol envy"!I still owe you that derringer material and am still digging to find it!

[Mike Wood]

Thanks Anthony! 

 

I sure appreciate all you can find!  I am a believer in the Buntline myself as well! On a side not, I will be posting a photo I took yesterday at the Dallas Arms Collectors Assn. NRA Exhibit. I have a great shot of John Wesley Hardin's pistol which has confirmed history. I wish we had that "confirmation" for Wyatt's pistols.  

[C. F. 'Charley' Eckhardt]

If you buy the 1st vol of Lee Silva's biography of Wyatt--WYATT EARP, THE COWTOWN YEARS (it'll set you back all but a corner off a C-note)--there's a 100+ page appendix on the Buntline Special.  Lee's the go-to guy when it comes to Colt SAAs.  When Colt has a question they can't answer about the SAA, they go to Lee.

It's also the very best bio I've ever seen of Earp, & there are 2 more volumes to come if Lee lives long enough to finish them.

 

According to Josie, at least one of Wyatt's pistols is at the bottom of the Inside Passage.  They were sailing from Seattle to Alaska & one of his pistols--she said it was the Buntline but it was probably just a 7.5"--was on the seat of their Franklin touring car when the ferry hit rough seas & the pistol was thrown overboard.  A Franklin was probably the most sensible choice for Alaska--Franklins were air-cooled.

[Mike Wood]

Thanks for the info Charley, that is a great story.  Please feel free to join

The True West Firearms Collectors Group!    (Click on link)

True West Firearms Collectors Group

[Steve McCarty]

Okay, now bare with me here - I'm Wyatt Earp.  I usually carry my pistol in my coat pocket.  No need to carry it in plain sight and insight a shooting response. I want a pistol that shoots hard,,straight, and points naturally. I do not want one that is going to catch on  my pocket when I jerk it out.  So why am I going to carry a 10 incher?  A Smith no. 3 is the longest barreled pistol I want to pocket.  You know, like this one:  

[Al Kanka]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp

 

Hi

Im new here. Found the Link at GT and started reading.

At wikipedia is a Pics,showing one of Wyatt Earps Pistol he left behind.

I generally believe that everyone exchanged after some Years his Gun to a newer Version,which would explain the difference in the Stories about his Gun

[janice lee weiss truitt]

personally, i have a great admiration for the sharps and the hawken, and would truly enjoy owning and shooting either...at one time i had a old navy arms cap and ball pistol that was horribly inaccurate at a distance greater than about 10'...hard to clean, load, and shoot...

[C. F. 'Charley' Eckhardt]

I own a replica Sharps.  It's the best hog gun I've ever had.  The only trouble is, you better not miss.  500 lbs of feral boar hog with a bad attitude is something you want to tangle with only at a distance.  I will say when you hit a hog with a 300 gr solid out of that .45-70 he goes down, & it doesn't matter a whole lot where you hit him with it.  You can now get 300 gr slugs, HP or solid, for use in replicas only.  They're a much higher velocity than the old 405 gr loads, which, for a long time, were all you could get for a .45-70.  They were the smokeless equivalent of the old .45-55-405 load for the cavalry carbine & were loaded down where they wouldn't damage an original trap-door.  Until about 20 years ago, if you wanted anything hotter in a .45-70 you had to load it yourself.

I've owned a couple of Colt '51 Navy replicas.  The best one I ever had I gave to my now-ex son-in-law.  It was made by Uberti and it would shoot dead on, but Uberti's Colt replicas, all of them, are factory-sighted for 40 yards, so with anything closer you have to aim low.  I've currently got a Uberti replica of a Paterson & it's also factury sighted for 40 yds.  Curiously, their Remington replicas are factory sighted for 20 yds.

I had, at one time, a CVA Hawken replica.  I don't know who made it, but it wasn't up to Uberti quality.  The folks at Uberti are so good that when Colt was 'reproducing' a number of their black-powder revolvers several years ago, they actually bought the parts 'in the white' from Uberti and finished & marked them over here. 

Uberti was the company chosen by what was then Chase-Manhattan Bank to reproduce 100 exact copies of the Burr-Hamilton dueling pistols for the US bicentennial in '76.  The pistols originally belonged to James Church, Hamilton's brother-in-law.  When Uberti disassembled the one remaining flintlock of the pair--the other had been converted to percussion by Church's grandson, who carried it as a Union officer--they found a couple of oddities.  First, the pistol had blind rifling.  That is, the 1st 3 inches of the barrel were smoothbore--dueling pistols were supposed to be smoothbore--but the rest of the barrel was rifled.  It also had a concealed set-trigger.  If you pulled the trigger in the normal manner, you got about an 8-lb pull.  If you pushed the trigger forward until you felt a click, you had an 8-oz trigger.  Since they were Hamilton's brother-in-law's pistols, he would have known about the set-trigger.  Burr wouldn't have known about it.  Kinda puts a whole different spin on that duel.

 

 

[Stan H]

I find that language, those labels, extremely insulting and I did long before Clinton. It is not a matter of being politicaly correct. It is a matter of respect for fellow human beings.

 

Steve, I too grew up in California, in the 1940's and '50's. I despised such names then and I do more so today.

 

Whenever something like this is discussed, one never ask the people of those ethnic groups what they think, or thought, of such names.

 

 

[Stan H]

 Sorry, but the Navajo seldom call themselves "Indian." I have been married to a Navajo lady for almost 40 years, have spent many, many times on the reservation. I have in-laws all over the area.

 

They call themselves Navajo or Dene'

 

Indians are from India.

 

Insulting names have nothing to do with "PC." It has nothing to do with liberal of conservative. It has to do with humans.

 

 

[janice lee weiss truitt]

yakoke, stan...i am chahta, and, in spite of what mr mccarty seems to think that racial epithets do no harm, they are VERY OFFENSIVE, and the people they are aimed at take them that way...

needless to say, reading his response was eye opening to me that anyone could be so oblivious to the harm saying really 'off' things to people does...

i know how it feels to be call 'half breed' or 'apple' or....not good...

trying to justify racist epithets in white man world doesnt change the fact pershing was being a RACIST...

[Murray A. Gewirtz]

"If an epithet does harm it is your (the taget's) fault. It is the individual who decides how he/she is going to respond to something..."

There is truth in this, Steve, as we wish to teach the intended victims to have a thick skin, and adopt a "sticks and stones can break my bones" attitude.

However, we still try to get the name caller to stop, as the cavalier use of such pejoratives tends to reinforce negative stereotypes in the abuser and those around him/her which dehumanize the targets in their eyes, and can lead to the use of sticks and stones, fists, knives, guns, ropes, bombs, jails, and social, job, educational, and housing discrimination. In other words, definite harm.

Anyone who is familiar with 19th century history, and has lived through a good part of the 20th century knows this is true.