What’s a spelling NAZI and why did you all cap it? Don’t poke the toad.
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Kibler has announced a Hawken Kit in the works.
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Comfortably_Numb
The Evil Mike Brooks
It seems my grand parents talked of making a dollar a day in the 30s, so I would assume wages were half tha a hundred years before. Not that it makes any difference.
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They cost about two times a normal rifle price back in the 19th C., I think I read. They were definitely a premium item. The current interest in them is due to the romance surrounding them, and they are just simply Handsome! As well as powerful for hunting and target shooting.
Comfortably_Numb
The Evil Mike Brooks
I think John Baird chattering on endlessly about them in the 1970s is the main driver for today's worship of the 'arkins rifle
user 36911
50 Cal.
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It would be easy to buy a Hawken if earning a $1.00 a day.
Would it? How much were your lodgings? And food and other items. You couldn’t then, as now, apply your whole salary to the gun. You’d have to live.
I wish one of the good researcher guys would talk about costs of living and such.
Everyone has the thing that they get all dewey about. Harkins it, Lancaster (pronounced “Lanka-stir” by them folks what live there) guns were nice. I think Bedford rifles are swoopy, I just detest the ones ghettoed up with a bunch of ugly inlays.
user 36911
50 Cal.
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I would have found a way. Remember the gun would have earned me a living. I might have made more than a dollar a day.
I would have been hunting all the time. Cost of living would be low for me. It would be close to zero when I was out with the brigade.
Comfortably_Numb
The Evil Mike Brooks
I would have been dead with appendicitis at age 17. So there's that..... Would have been no hawkinses for me.
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I think it was the movie.
Scota@4570
54 Cal.
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Read the provided link, it has many jobs with high and low ranges..
I’m not trying to jack you up. Maybe. You could hint with a trade gun. Many did. Again, I don’t know what you do for a living now. Not everyone could do that. You could buy one of Greg’s kits now, right? It’s all good.
I saw the link. I was making a point and I don’t have time to spend today on research. Of people don’t have a high function job now, what makes you think they worked then? Life was different and hard. Cooking was hard. I am assuming that you watch Jon Townsend’s videos… I for one really would not wanted to have lived then.
user 36911
50 Cal.
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I don't do anything but hunt. I've been retired for almost 20 years.
I grew up not far from Sturmkatz and back in those days quite a few of the old timers only had one gun, a single barrel shotgun. They could cut the wad for deer or use shot for small game and they were cheap enough that they could afford them. I sure don't remember anyone toting any high dollar rifles, people bought what they could afford and what got the job done to put food on the table. I now live in a remote part of Alaska and out here people don't have a lot of money and you guessed it, they use cheap economy guns. The only time I see the high dollar hardware is when the big city hunters show up but guess what? Our economy rifles do the job the same as theirs. I can't imagine that people back then were any different than today and as far as I'm concerned whether people are shooting a cheap factory made muzzleloader, a high dollar custom muzzleloader, a longrifle, or a hawken at least it's keeping muzzleloading alive.
I'll have to admit, I've been following this thread from the beginning, but in researching the etymology of "Harkin," I found it goes way back to 2020, in an unrelated thread, when a forum member who will remain nameless wrote something about his "...Pedersolie Harkin in .54 cal." A certain frequent participant in this thread, who will also remain anonymous, picked it up and ran with it.
I would recommend that the folks who are new to this thread go back and read every post. However, if you if you are a true Harkin fan, you probably only need to read posts #51, #52, and #55.
In closing, I would just like to say I would love to be invited to a Harkins family reunion some day.
Notchy Bob
You are absolutely right, but the error was first made a long time ago. I like to read the frontier travel literature that was written in the 19th century, and you see "Hawkins" all the time in reference to these rifles. In fact, I don't recall ever reading "Hawken" in the period literature. The fascination with and loyalty to these rifles is nothing new, either. This is from Captain Randolph B. Marcy's The Prairie Traveler (p. 22), first published in 1863:
I don't know when the Hawken brothers started stamping their name on their rifles, but I think they were doing it by the 1830's, anyway. A lot of the people who wrote their memoirs back then were very literate fellows. Surely they could have simply read the name stamped on the barrels of the mountainers' rifles, but they called the rifles and their makers "Hawkins" anyway. That usage was so common, I sometimes think they applied the "Hawkins" moniker to any rifle that even looked like one, sort of like some folks call all blue jeans "Levis," or all tissues "Kleenex." I remember many years ago reading an article in one of my dad's gun magazines, in which the writer stated something like "Kit Carson's Hawken was made by Benjamin Mills of Harrisburg, Kentucky." Even then, I knew it was wrong. Not too long ago, one of the big gun auction websites had a "Pedersoli Tryon Hawken" for sale. The beat goes on.
Notchy Bob
Well… maybe.
Back when I was a teenager and first took an interest in muzzleloaders I had an older relative whom I hunted deer with. We were great friends. I looked up to him and respected him greatly and even though he has passed, I still do. He once made a remark about my choice of firearm for the days hunt, “Using a musket!” he says. “You ought to carry something that has more than one shot!” I informed him of my displeasure of calling my rifle a musket and reminded him of the difference between the two. From that day on he would continue to refer to my rifle, with a grin on his face, as a “musket” because he knew it got under my skin.
yellowhammer
40 Cal
How often we forget how lucky we are and how vulnerable our ancestors were from what we consider less threatening stuff now. Made me think: me, also, from pneumonia, my dad from early heart attack, my b.i.l. from strangulated hernia, my cousin from sepsis from cutting off his toe, neighbor kid from tick bite, list goes on... not to mention smallpox, yellow fever, typhoid, etc. Puts things in perspective.
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