El Buscaderos-Cowboy Action Shooting-Feature

Buffalo Bill died on January 10, 1917. Mr. Chauncey Thomas a well-known writer in “Outdoor Life”, knew Cody personally and had the last interview with the great scout. The following are some excerpts from that historic interview.

“It was the end and we all knew it. We talked at random. But his mind went back eagerly to the minor details of his earlier life. Then I spoke of guns, Which gun was his favorite?”

“Lucretia Borgia”, he smiled That was the name of his favorite gun.

“The old fifty-caliber Springfield needle gun?” I asked.

“No, forty-eight caliber. The muzzle loaders of the Civil War were fifty-two caliber. I liked it better than the Sharps and with it I killed 4,250 buffalo one year or 4,862 in eighteen months, besides deer and antelope– for the Union Pacific builders.”

“Did you always use the same gun?”

“Practically so. The barrel of Lucretia Borgia is now on the elk horns at the ranch with the knife with which I killed Yellow Hand. I don’t know where the stock is.”

“That was your favorite gun then?”

“It is now, but our term of service on the Plains covered so many years and so many different kinds of guns came into use that we tried out this one then that one. The ‘73 Winchester was well liked, as was the Spencer carbine, especially on horseback, but they could not shoot along side the forty-eight caliber needle gun. That carried 70 grains of powder and 470 grains of lead. ‘Shoot today !-kill tomorrow!’ was what the Indians called it.”

“I asked him about the old buffalo Sharps rifle, the .45-120-550 gun that weighed from sixteen to eighteen pounds, or the .44 caliber, eleven pound Sharps, but he didn’t say much about them. I presume the reason was he usually hunted buffalo from horseback, an so did not use these heavy rifles.

“Then I learned how he killed his buffalo and how he got his name. He used to ride on the right side of the herd as near to the front as he could, and shoot to his left hand. This method usually caused the herd to run in a solid circle or to ‘mill’ as the cattlemen call it, and this kept the herd in one place running round and round like a wheel. Thus one could kill as many as needed for the day and have them all in one spot, convenient for the skinners and meat wagons.”

“Who was the best revolver shot you ever knew?” I asked him.

“Frank North, white chief of the Pawnees. He was the best revolver shot, standing still, in the air, from horseback or at running animal or men that I ever saw.”

“Was Wild Bill one of the quickest shots?”

“Fair”, smiled Cody, and I smiled too to hear a man say that Wild Bill was a ‘fair’ shot. But this was Buffalo Bill speaking.

“Bill was only a nickname we gave him, his real name was James B. Hickcox, and we got to calling him ’Wild Bill’ because when we were all boys together there were four ‘Bills’ in the wagon train and we had to sort them out somehow. Jim Hickcox was always popping away at anything he saw move when on guard at night so we sort of got to calling him ‘Wild Bill’. They called me Buffalo Bill because I had that buffalo contract with the U.P. I have forgotten what became of the other two ‘Bills’.

“How did Hickcox get so many men?”

“Well Bill was a pretty good shot, but he could not shoot as quick as half a dozen men we all knew in those days. Nor as straight either. But Bill was cool and the men he went up against were rattled, I guess. Bill beat them to it. He made up his mind to kill the other man before the other man had finished thinking, so Bill would just quietly pull his gun and give it to him. It is easy enough to beat the other man if you start first. Bill always shot as he raised his gun. He was never in a hurry about it; he just pulled the gun from his hip and let go as he was raising it. He was not the quickest man by any means, he was just cool and quiet and started first.”

“Was any particular revolver size or caliber the favorite in the early years?”

“No, not particularly. Like the rifles, new kinds came in and put the others out..So we used all kinds and some times any kind we could get. It was the cap- and- ball Colt, then the metallic cartridge six-guns came on the plains and they saved us a lot of trouble, especially in wet weather. The only way we could reload a cap-and- ball on horseback was to have extra cylinders and change from an empty to a loaded one. So metal cartridges were a great thing.”

“Was the .45 Colt or the .44 caliber preferred by most men?”

“It didn’t make any difference. Just what we happened to have.”

‘Was any kind of knife a special favorite on the plains?”

“No. Any kind that the owner liked or could get. Such things as guns, revolvers and knives were just like any other fashion or tools. Some kinds were favorites maybe in one place or at one time here and there, then other kinds. I used all of them, I guess. But for buffalo I liked best the .48 caliber Springfield. ‘Shoot today—kill tomorrow’.”

“What kind of a knife did you kill Yellow Hand with?”

“Just a big heavy bowie blade. For skinning and cutting up meat, we used common butcher knives; no particular kind. Whatever we had or could get. Quite often we had to make such things ourselves. We were not particular, just so such things did their work.”

“Could the old-timers shoot better than the men today?”

“No. No we could not shoot as good as you do today. We did not have as accurate guns, either in rifles or revolvers or loads. And we could not afford the ammunition with which to practice. I never saw such revolver shooting as Captain Hardy did one night over at his house in that private shooting place he has down in the cellar.”

“But Hardy, one of the world’s best shots, says that Buffalo Bill was the best shot from horseback that the world has ever seen.”

“No; none of us, not even Frank North, could do such things,.C.M.McCutchen can shoot a revolver far faster than any man I ever knew on the frontier; five hits on a man at ten yards in three-fifths of a second is more than twice as fast as we could do. All of them today, the best shots, can beat us old-timers every time. But we did the work all the same. We had to.”

Source: The Last of the Great Scouts By Helen Cody Wetmore