No need to speculate.
Following is a summary of guns Hickok is known to have owned:
- 1847–56: Hickok hunted game with a flint or percussion lock shotgun.
- 1857: Old-timers in Johnson County, Kan., recalled that with a .44-caliber Colt Dragoon revolver, young Hickok could hit an oyster can at 100 yards.
- 1861–65: Photographic and documentary evidence indicates that Hickok was armed with one or a pair of .36-caliber Colt Navy revolvers, worn butt-forward in open-top holsters.
- 1867: Henry M. Stanley was the first to publish a reference to Hickok’s recently acquired pair of ivory-handled Navies.
- 1868–69: Wilbur Blakeslee of Mendota, Ill., photographed Hickok in March 1869 dressed in buckskins and carrying the above pistols thrust into a U.S. cavalry belt alongside a large butcher knife.
- 1869–73: The Navies remained prominent at Abilene and when he joined Buffalo Bill’s Combination theater troupe in September 1873.
- 1874: When Hickok left Cody at Rochester, N.Y., to return West, Cody and partner Texas Jack Omohundro presented Wild Bill with a pair of .44-caliber Smith & Wesson No. 3 American revolvers later said to be almost as accurate as a rifle. No further reference to them has surfaced.
- 1875–76: Reliable sources suggest that Hickok carried a pair of .38-caliber Colt Navy revolvers converted from percussion to accept either rim- or center-fire metallic cartridges.
- 1876: Wild Bill was buried with his prized sporting version of the .50-caliber Springfield Model 1870 rifle at his side.
- 1879: When Wild Bill was reburied on Mount Moriah, someone spirited the Springfield from his coffin. The rifle passed through a number of hands before landing in the James Earle collection.
