This story just broke on NPR: Thomas Gavin may be one of the most prolific artifact thieves in U.S. history... Gavin's crime spree was so under the radar, no one caught on until 2018, when he tried to unload a rare, Revolutionary-era rifle to a local antiques dealer...It wasn't just any old gun, but one of the few surviving rifles made by master … [Read more...] about Taken Down By Long Rifle

Lynda Sanchez scouted up a remarkable photographic odyssey undertaken by Pacific Northwest photographer Matika Wilbur, whose 562 Project seeks to photograph members of every federally recognized Native tribe in North America. From her website: Photographs are captured on traditional black and white film and shot in the zone system. Once … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — Photographs, Amusettes, and Captain N.

  Over the past couple of years, the Tactical Lever Action trend has heated up. It’s not just a matter of “blacking out” traditional lever guns; riflemen are indulging in race-gun builds — free-floating M-LOK handguards, picatinny rails for mounting optics including reflex sights.   It’s not clear what exactly has made this a … [Read more...] about Firearms Of The Frontier Partisans — The Tactical Lever Action

The venerable Czech firearms legend CZ has taken a page from of the buccaneering book of the likes of Sir Henry Morgan, as Matt Foster notes in Outdoor Life Magazine:  “..[W]ith the CZ 600, the company is burning its boats on the beach, so to speak, and isn’t looking back.” The CZ 600 Series, introduced this week and available in 2022, is a … [Read more...] about Firearms Of The Frontier Partisans — CZ 600 Series

“...[F]owlers originated among Europe’s aristocracy as a sporting weapon, but became a necessary tool for survival in the American wilderness.” — Tom Grinslade Eighteenth Century American Fowlers—The First Guns Made In America  “I like big butts and I cannot lie...” — Sir Mix-A-Lot The most significant firearm on the early Colonial … [Read more...] about Firearms Of The Frontier Partisans — Big Butts

    The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out The ones that crawl in are lean and thin The ones that crawl out are fat and stout Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out Your brains come tumbling down your snout Be merry my friends Be merry * OK, so, yeah, I have a bit of a skull-and-crossbones fetish. Aye, … [Read more...] about Skull & Bones

The South African historian and historical reenactor MC Heunis recently posted on social media a shot of himself with an antelope taken with a replica of a Dutch flintlock. He noted that the weapon would have been common among Boer frontiersmen in the period 1835-45. That got me to pondering upon the long reign of the flintlock on the frontiers … [Read more...] about The Long Reign Of The Frontier Flintlock

Mi compadre Lynn Woodward has insisted that we break out my original Song of the .44 this summer. The song recounts the short life and violent death of Billy the Kid. I wrote it years ago, late one night after watching The Godfather for the umpteenth time. I’d been reading Robert Utley’s Kid bio, and realized that the Lincoln County War was just a … [Read more...] about Ah, Poor Billy…

Tom Jeff Eley scouted up a piece from the John Rigby & Co. Campfire that he well knew would, well... trip my trigger. It is well-known that I am smitten with Rigby rifles, for their historical value, their aesthetic, and their legendary function. We were planning to visit the Rigby showroom in London on our COVID-aborted trip there in 2020. … [Read more...] about The Essence Of Perfection

* The Frontier Partisan Muse has sent me back out onto the Great Plains and into the Shining Mountains, in a blinding flare of synchronicity. I’ll explain that in more detail in a later post. Some cool stuff... I was actually headed back to Africa (and I’ll get there; the country north of the Limpopo River is calling), but I knew I had to take … [Read more...] about Firearms Of The Frontier Partisans — Philip Creamer, Gunsmith