King of the Scatterguns

The single best and most economical arm for hunting and defense in the Wild West was the double-barreled shotgun.

This carte de visite shows two young Credit Dewitt, Iowa, hunters, circa 1870, with all of the appropriate muzzle-loading accoutrements. The lad at left has a fullstocked, front-loading percussion rifle with double set triggers and an elaborate patchbox. His partner sports a doublebarrel caplock shotgun and slung over his shoulders are a shot pouch and powder flask. It’s possible that the rifleman has loaded his smokepole with shot, turning it into a single-shot scattergun. Courtesy Phil Spangenberger

At the sign of trouble, the mere sight of a shotgun ready for business is more threatening than almost any other arm. As one stagecoach driver was quoted in Bodie, California’s Standard on July 20, 1881 said, “I have had a six-shooter pulled on me across a faro table; I have proved that the hilt of a dirk can’t go between two of my ribs;…but I was never really surprised until I looked down the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun in the hands of a road agent. Why my friend, the mouth of the Sutro tunnel is like a nailhole in the Palace Hotel compared to a shotgun.” Despite often being relegated to the less than glorious position of an “also ran,” in discussions of the most popular guns of the Old West, the double-barreled scattergun was often the frontiersman’s hands-down favored firearm. In the age of muzzleloading flintlocks and percussion guns, many early Western adventurers found there were often occasions where their trusty rifle just couldn’t do what was required. One traveler in the pre-Civil War West reflected on a situation if a shotgun.