Hawken rifle

Hawken rifles had a reputation for both accuracy and long range.

Site examines why the Hawken rifle became famous as a mountain man's rifle.

"Is that an authentic Hawken rifle there?"

Border hunters and mountaineers insist on the Hawken rifle."

They are famous for designing the famous "plains rifle" named after them (the Hawken rifle).

The "plains rifle" or "Hawken rifle" was a shorter, carbine variant.

The earliest known record of a Hawken rifle dates to 1823 when one was made for William Henry Ashley.

Initially, Johnson uses a .30 caliber Hawken rifle for hunting and protection, but finds it under-powered for his needs.

The Hawken rifle evolved from the "Kentucky" rifle for use against larger, more dangerous game encountered in the American West.

As a mountain man traveling light, all Summers carries is his Hawken rifle, "his old Green River knife, some ammunition and a small sack of possibles."

Jared pointed to the corner where he'd put down his bag and his old Hawken rifle; he'd fetched them from a cheap hotel where he'd taken a room before going to the Exchange.

The Hawken rifle was a muzzle loading rifle built by the Hawken brothers, and used on the prairies and in the Rocky Mountains of the United States during the early frontier days.

The stereotypical mountain man has been depicted as dressed in buckskin and a coonskin cap, sporting bushy facial hair and carrying a Hawken rifle and Bowie knife, commonly referred to as a "scalpin' knife."

A number of famous men were said to have owned Hawken rifles, including: Daniel Boone, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Orrin Porter Rockwell, Joseph Meek, Jedediah Strong Smith, and Theodore Roosevelt.

A team of archaeologists from Denver examined the site and found trader's beads, musket balls, melted lead, a percussion cap, gun flints, a musket hammer, a brass gun forestock, presumably from a Hawken rifle, and some five-hole buttons.

His experience as an explorer made him cautious to an extreme, for he also armed himself with a Hawken rifle for hunting buffalo and antelope, a Maynard shotgun "loaded as fully as it can bear with slugs" and "an air-gun to astonish the natives" plus a bag of various ammunition.