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If you say so.
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I saw you thought the same about flintlocks.
It’s a killer, but we all have to suffer through it. Me thinks you need some more range time.
I know, I know, the very picture of hell on earth. But it’s just the cross we must bare to be frontstuffers, oh the horror the horror oh the humanity!!!!😊
 
I think @Sun City is a rifleman, and is expressing a good-natured opinion to open a conversation.

I am less well informed about colonial days than a lot of others here, but in the reading I've done in the literature of the early 19th century, white frontiersmen had a decided preference for rifles. This is from W.N. Blane:

W.N. Blane pp.301-302.png

Natty Bumppo had this to say in The Pioneers:

Natty Bumppo regarding Smoothbores.png

Washington Irving mentions this preference several times in his book, A Tour On the Prairies. This quote, from that book, sums it up:

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As for myself, I like 'em all... Smoothbores or rifles, cappers or flint. They all have a place.

Best regard,

Notchy Bob
 
I’ve often wondered about the popularity and unpopularity of Rifles. Rifles became on of Americas first home grown industry. Being largely confined to Pennsylvania at the end of the French and Indian war, they spread in a dozen years to all the colonies that had exposed frontiers.
It was almost universal issue to the fur companies employees.
Yet between 1787 and 1821 the us government had a hard time selling them to Indians. And trade rifles were never as popular as fusils as long as guns loaded from the muzzle
Rifles were known and the UK, and fine one’s were made. Many of the rifled barrels on American guns were made in British shops. Rifles were well known in Canada, but fusils remained the stock in trade.
Métis would build their economy on hunting. And they much preferred fusils.
An HBC official wrote for newbies of the gentleman class that rifles were a waste of time, this was in 1847, when getting an English hunting rifle was no biggie.
Gentlemen’s smoothies would be the primary gun the Dutch and English took to South Africa.
And ultimately smooth rifles were very common right off American rifle making shops
America became a nation of rifleman. And we still kick around the argument that if the zombies are coming and civilization collapsed what would you rather have.
Not a new argument for sure
 
Mike Beliveau, as usual, provides some very interesting information and practical proof on the subject here:
https://www.mikebeliveau.com/magazine-archive/smoothbore-shootoutThat smooth bores were inaccurate compared to rifles is something of a myth, but then it depends on context, distance and who is pulling the trigger.
 
Here are a couple of illustrations by Peter Rindisbacher, one of his family home with what look like smooth bores hangin on the wall, and one of a Metis family where the man looks like he's holding a Trade gun. And then there is one of a Metis man holding what looks like a half stock rifle. Rindisbacher was from a German speaking part of Switzerland, so I assume he was very familiar with jaeger rifles.
 

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I'm a confirmed rifleman and longrifles are my focus. But I've owned two smoothbore guns over the years. But I don't shoot the smoothbore often as I don't need to. When I do shoot my 20ga it's nearly always with prb rather than shot. It has killed deer, has a rear sight and is spectacularly accurate at 50-60 yards. I sold the first (a dbl barrel) but kept the flintlock I still have.
 
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