Thirty-Something Rifle Cartridges I:  The 33s

I find the thirty-threes to be some of the most useful of the thirty-something calibers for the North American game fields.  Most of them are easily capable of taking the largest American big game.  There is a wealth of projectiles available.  Some of them, like Winchester’s excellent .338 Winchester Magnum, have been around for decades, and as a result there is a great deal of loading data available.

As a result, there are a lot of .33 caliber rounds out there to discuss.  So, without further ado…

At the End of the Black-Powder Era…

As we saw back in the series on level guns, the famous John Browning/Winchester collaboration started with a big, tough lever gun called the Model 1886, which could handle some pretty heavy cartridges.  In 1902 Winchester made this rifle available for a new cartridge, the first commercially available thirty-three, the smokeless-powder .33 WCF.

This was a pretty hot load for its time, launching a 200-grain cast bullet at 2,200 fps.  With more modern, jacketed bullets, it quickly gained a reputation as a hard hitter, ideal for deer, elk and bear at ranges out to about 200 yards.  Besides the Model 1886 Winchester, it was also available in the 1885 single-shot and the lever-action 1895 Marlin.

The .33 WCF was interesting because it came at a transitional moment in American shooting.  As we’ve noted previously, the end of the Great War resulted in a lot of American shooters and hunters returning home with the memory of their issue 1903 Springfield and Pattern 17 Enfield bolt guns in mind, along with the powerful .30-06 round they fired.  The lever gun was due to lose some popularity; the age of the bolt gun was dawning.

And the .33 WCF, while a groundbreaking round, was a rimmed lever-gun cartridge.

The .33 WCF was offered in the Model 1886 until 1935, when Winchester replaced the 1886 with the beefier Model 71 and its .348 Winchester cartridge.  But this first of the thirty-threes had set the stage for some modern bolt-gun rounds to come, and one of those pioneering bolt-gun rounds came (in part) from the mind of someone we’ve discussed before:  Elmer Keith.

The Mid-Century

Early in the 20^th century Elmer Keith, along with his colleagues Charles O’Neil and Don Hopkins, developed a new .33 wildcat based on the .30-06 case necked up.  The .333 OKH was intended to use the same .333 diameter bullets as the .333 Jeffries then popular in Britain, and while it delivered some good performance it was hampered by the lack of bullets, and since wildcatters live and die by the availability of suitable projectiles, this didn’t bode well for the .333.  The logical evolution was to increase the bullet size to .338, resulting in the .338-06 wildcat.

This same trio also developed the .334 OKH, based on the .375 H&H case; this ended up being remarkably similar to the .340 Weatherby Magnum, about which we’ll talk in a moment.

In fact, the tale of the mid-twentieth century thirty-threes is somewhat convoluted, with plenty of wildcats and experiments mixed into the developments by major gun and ammo manufacturers.  But one thing very quickly became apparent – launching a big, heavy projectile at significant velocity called for a magnum-sized case.

Precedent was already in place.  During WW2 Roy Weatherby had introduced three standard (2 ½”) length cartridges based on the .375 H&H belted case, shortened and necked down.  These three were the .257, .270 and 7mm Weatherby magnums, and they soon gained a following among those fond of high-velocity rounds.

In 1958, at the urging of Elmer Keith, Winchester took that precedent and applied it to Keith’s and others work with the medium bores.  They followed Weatherby’s example, took the .375 H&H case, shortened it to fit standard-length actions, straightened the case walls a tad and necked it down to take a .338 pill.

The result of this was the great .338 Winchester Magnum, introduced along with the .264 Winchester Magnum and the .458 Winchester Magnum as a family of cartridges.

Now the American sportsman had a real world-beater.  The big new medium-bore magnum put out a 225-grain projectile at 2,800 fps in factory loadings, and with the right slug would easily handle any North American big game, including big Alaskan grizzlies and moose.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that’s been paying attention that this round is a favorite of mine.  My .338, Thunder Speaker, is built on a 1908 DWM large-ring Mauser action with a Douglas barrel and a Bell & Carlson stock.  The .338, while delivering plenty of punch, does it on both ends, having a reputation for recoil as well as hitting power.  Thunder Speaker, in addition to the big, wide recoil pad on that B&C stock, is Mag-Na-Ported and weighs almost ten pounds loaded, which makes it very manageable – at least for me.  I’m large and not recoil-sensitive, so your mileage may vary.

My favorite load in that big, tough Mauser action is a 225-grain Barnes TTSX boat-tail over 67 grains of IMR 4350.  This gives me about 2,800 fps for almost two tons of muzzle energy.  This load will easily lengthwise an elk or moose, and that’s what Winchester intended the round should be able to do, so I’m pretty satisfied; in Thunder Speaker, with me at the wheel, it will also put three rounds into a 3” circle at 200 yards.  The best shot I’ve ever made on a game animal was with this rifle; a fat meat mulie buck in the open sage country south of Parshall, Colorado.  The buck paused to look back on the edge of an arroyo; I tossed my cap on a flat rock, laid down in the snow, laid my rifle on the rock, took aim and sent one round down the hill.  The .338 slug hit the mulie at the base of the neck, dropping him in his tracks at 280 yards.

She still does kick, though.  My son-in-law once got a case of Kaibab eye after asking to try out Thunder Speaker off the bench-rest; I warned him not to choke up on the scope!

The .338 Winchester Magnum was quickly a big commercial success.  In addition to its introductory chambering in another shooting legend, the pre-64 Winchester Model 70, it was quickly picked up in the Remington and eventually, the Ruger, Savage and many other lines.  Browning made it available in the BAR, making it the most powerful semi-auto rifle available at the time.  Wildcatters quickly picked up on the usefulness of the case, bringing about among other things the .30-338 Magnum, which Winchester later legitimized as the .300 Winchester Magnum – bringing the standard-length magnum case back to America’s caliber.

But the competition was paying attention.

Only four years after Winchester brought out their thirty-three, Roy Weatherby upped the ante.  His entry into the field was the .340 Weatherby Magnum, on the same magnum-length case as the .378 Weatherby Magnum.  This was a real whopper, sending the same .338 225-grain slug forth at 3,100 fps.  But the .340 Weatherby suffered from the same issues as the 8mm Remington Magnum we discussed in the last installment:  It was limited to a magnum-length action.  What’s more, it was a proprietary round.  When the .340- Weatherby was introduced one could only have one in the Weatherby Mark V, with factory ammo initially only available from Weatherby.  Even today, the only company loading this round besides Weatherby is A-Square, and the ammo is pricey.

The place of the thirty-three in the American shooting scene was now secure.  But the explosion of rounds to come was to prove an embarrassment of riches.

Today

In the magnum world, the .338 Winchester Magnum and the .340 Weatherby Magnum have been joined by some new contenders.  The .338 Ruger Compact Magnum came out in 2008, a 2,700fps thumper intended to be chambered in short-action rifles like the M77 Mk II Compact.

There are a couple of newer Weatherby-level steamrollers available as well.  In 1989, A Norwegian/Finnish munitions company named NAMMO (Nordic Ammunition Company) saw a market for a powerful, long-range military sniper round; their answer was the .338 Lapua, which was adopted in civilian as well as military applications.  The Lapua is a real rocker, sending out a 250-grain slug at over 3,000 fps.

In 2002 Remington responded with an expansion of their Ultra Magnum line, the .338 RUM (Remington Ultra Mag.)  This fell a bit short of the .338 Lapua and produces very similar ballistics.

But both ultra-mag rounds have the same shortcomings:  They both require magnum-length actions, and they both run at very high pressures, resulting in significant barrel wear at a much lower round count than the older .338s.  Still, there’s still news in the non-magnum world.

2006 saw the introduction of the .338 Federal, which was simply the .308 Winchester case necked up to the .338.  This introduction not only gave .33-caliber thumping to short-action bolt guns, but it also added a medium-bore alternative to the AR-10 platform that was becoming popular as the Tacticool craze accelerated.  The Federal round yielded only modest performance compared to the magnums, propelling a 210-grain slug at about 2,600 fps.  But the use of the .308 case made for a versatile round that punches well above its weight class.

Finally, in 2009, Marlin brought the thirty-threes full circle by introducing the .338 Marlin Express, a semi-rimmed lever-gun round intended to punch up the power level of that company’s 336-series rifles well above the original .30WCF level.  In fact, at ranges up to about 200-250 yards, the Marlin Express round delivers performance in excess of most .30-06 loads, which makes the 336 rifles far more versatile on bigger, thicker-skinned game – and brings the lever-gun world back to the levels of punch known in the original 1886 Winchester.

The thirty-threes are many, powerful and versatile. The late 20^th-early 21^st century proliferation of .338-caliber rounds has been interesting, but none of them have quite managed to knock the good old .338 Winchester Magnum off the top of the heap.

In the next installment, we’ll examine a group of rifle cartridges that are a little lighter on the long-range magnum loudenboomers and a little heavier on the short-range woods rounds – so stay tuned for an in-depth look at the thirty-fives.

Thirty-Something Rifle Cartridges I:  The 32s and 8mms

Mid-caliber rifle cartridges are very useful.

A qualifier:  I’ve said before that if you can only afford one rifle for big game in North America, buy a .30-06.  That fine old round, properly loaded, can handle any game in North America, even though it’s a tad on the light side for big Alaskan grizzlies and moose.

But there are a whole family of rifle cartridges that are useful, solid, and versatile; these are generally known as the mid-range or mid-caliber cartridges.  I’ll refer to them in this series as the Thirty-Somethings.  These rounds launch bullets ranging from the .32 to the .375 and have a wide range of power selections for almost any eventuality.

In this series we’ll focus mostly on rounds widely used in North America.  So, while we’ll look mostly at American cartridges, we’ll also examine some from other parts of the world that have seen a lot of use here, like the 8X57mm Mauser and the great old .375 H&H.  So, let’s start with the first group – the Thirty-Twos.

At the End of the Black-Powder Era…

Remember when we were talking about the history of lever guns?  In 1894 Winchester Repeating Arms Co. and the DaVinci of firearms, John Browning, brought out the great Model 1894 Winchester lever gun.  While that rifle is so intimately associated with the .30WCF cartridge that the terms “.30-30” and “94 Winchester” are damn near synonymous, it’s rather less well-known that the Model 94 wasn’t originally introduced in that caliber; instead, it was chambered in its first year for two thirty-somethings, the .32-40 and the .38-55.

In 1894 the .32-40 Ballard was a popular round.  It had been introduced ten years earlier in the Ballard Union Hill #8 and #9 target rifles, loaded with a 165-grain cast bullet over 40 grains of black powder, resulting in a muzzle velocity of about 1,450 fps.  The long, straight-tapered case allowed for a smooth, even powder burn and resulted in a good reputation for accuracy.  Famed barrel-smith Harry Pope was fond of the round and made it the basis of his .33-40 wildcat.  This round looks somewhat odd by today’s standard but it successfully made the transition into the smokeless powder era, and was offered in a sporadic manner in Winchester lever guns through most of the twentieth century, although mostly in the commemorative editions of which Winchester was so fond.

The .32-40 was overshadowed in 1895 when Winchester released the Model 94 in the smokeless powder .30WCF, but the New Haven gunmakers weren’t done with .32s yet.  In 1901 they released the Model 94 chambered for the .32 Winchester Special, which took the .30WCF case and expanded the neck to take a .321 bullet.

At first glance it’s hard to see a reason for this round.  The .32 WS, in its primary load, fired a 170-grain bullet, like its smaller-bored cousin.  Ballistics were near-identical, with the .32WS having less power past 150 yards or so due to the lower sectional density of the bullet.

But for the hand-loader who was sitting on a big supply of lead and black powder – not an uncommon thing in 1901 – the prevalent wisdom of the day claimed that the .32 had a couple of advantages.  First, its slightly larger bore was claimed to make for easier cleanup of the messy black powder residue.  Also, Winchester used a 1-16 rifling twist in the Model 94s chambered for the .32, as opposed to the 1-10 twist of the.30WCF; this, again, supposedly made for easier cleaning.

So, the .32 Special may have been just the ticket for the guy with a lot of black powder to burn, or maybe for the occasional recalcitrant old coot who thought that smokeless powder wasn’t here to stay.

Like the .32-40, the .32 Special hung on through most of the twentieth century, in later years mostly in commemorative Winchester models.

Another variation came from Remington, who was determined not to be outdone by Winchester.  In 1905 Remington introduced their Model 8 autoloader, followed in 1914 by the Model 14 pump-gun.  Both rifles saw a fair amount of market, and both were chambered for (among other rounds) the .25, .30 and .32 Remington cartridges, essentially rimless versions of the .25-35, .30-30 and .32 Special.  Unlike Winchester, Remington didn’t fiddle around with different twist rates in their guns and the Model 8 auto – the famed old Remington “piano leg” – was fussy about ammo, fouling and hanging up quickly if black-powder loads were used.  It’s hard to see what Remington had in mind with this range of cartridges other than ensuring that they had an offering in every bore size to compete with Winchester.

Winchester did have another .32 caliber round, the .32WCF, better known as the .32-20.  This was mostly a small-game round of modest power; while it’s a great old cartridge for big hares, bobcats or raccoons, I’m going to restrict this discussion to big-game rifles – in spite of the fact that I’d love to have an original Model 92 Winchester in .32-20 or .25-20 for hunting snowshoe hares and jackrabbits.

In 1914, as we’ve seen, the shooting world saw some new influences hit, and the thirty-something rifle cartridges were affected along with everything else.

The Mid-Century

In 1898 the famous Mauser-Werke, down in the small town of Oberndorf in Bavaria’s Neckar River valley, introduced a world-changing bolt gun, the Model 1898.  We’ve already discussed this rifle and its significance, so now let’s look at the cartridge that was paired with this rifle for use by the German military – the 7.92x57mm, more commonly known as the 8mm Mauser.

The 8mm Mauser predates the Mauser 98 by ten years, having been first introduced in the 1888 Commission rifle.  The original cartridge was the Patrone 88, launching a .319, 227-grain round-nose jacketed bullet at about 2,000 fps.  As a first-generation smokeless powder cartridge, the Patrone 88 carried over the heavy, round-nose bullet design common in the last generation of black-powder rounds.  In 1895 the bullet/bore size was changed slightly to reduce barrel wear and ease cleaning (supposedly) resulting in the .323 bullet diameter that would stick with the cartridge in military loadings.

In 1904 and 1905, the cartridge got a facelift; the neck dimensions were slightly altered, and the brass thickness increased a tad.  The new round was loaded with a 153-grain spitzer bullet, producing about 2,700 fps.  This made the new round, the S Patrone, more effective at extended ranges due to the higher velocity and better bullet design.

The 7.9×57 S Patrone was the standard German military’s rifle and machine gun cartridge in both World Wars.  Interestingly, after the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles forbade the use of the round in civilian arms, but by 1930 or so the German manufacturers were roundly ignoring the Treaty, and the cartridge again became popular in civilian hunting rifles; a rimmed version, the 7.9x57mm IRS, was even developed for single-shot and multi-barreled rifles.

The 7.9x57mm remains a popular hunting cartridge in Europe today, at least in those jurisdictions that still allow the unwashed peasantry to own rifles.  In the United States, the round gained a significant following when surplus Mausers became widely available at bargain prices; the 8mm Mauser offers performance very similar to the .30-06, and in fact the round is still loaded by many American ammunition makers today.  In fact, the 8mm Mauser remained the only .32/8mm bolt-gun round commercially loaded in the United States until 1978.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Big Green had realized a commercial success with its excellent (then) Model 700 rifle and with their 7mm Remington Magnum cartridge.  I always thought the 7mm Magnum a tad overrated; an old elk-hunting friend of mine shot one and was fond of bragging about its velocity and flat trajectory with his favorite factory load, until I pointed out that in my big commercial Mauser I was shooting a .30-06 handload that ran a 165-grain Barnes bullet at only 100fps less than his factory 140-grain 7mm loads, and took to his brother’s chronograph to prove it.

In the late Seventies, Remington determined that they wanted to compete with Winchester’s beefier .300 and .338 Winchester Magnums.  Remington’s engineers came up with the 8mm Remington Magnum, but they made one key mistake:  They used the full-length .375 H&H case as the basis for their new round, mandating its use only in Magnum-length actions.  The new 8mm round was intended to compete with the excellent .338 Winchester Magnum, but Winchester’s offering had a thirty-year head-start and could be chambered in standard-length actions.  While the 8mm Remington Magnum was a powerful round that could easily handle any game in North America, launching a 200-grain pill at a bit over 3,000 fps, it never gained much following.  The .32/8mm was generally considered a European bore size, and components (chiefly bullets) were not available in as many options as either .30 or .338 offerings.  The 8mm Remington Magnum is still in use today, but as sporting rifle cartridges go, it’s a footnote.

Today

Speaking of footnotes; since the new century dawned, the American shooting scene has seen only one new .32/8mm round.

In 2000, Winchester and Browning introduced American shooters to the .300 Winchester Short Magnum, a fat round with a rebated rim that provided magnum horsepower in a short-action rifle.  The “short fat” case supposedly allowed powder to burn quicker and cleaner, and soon the WMS rounds gained a modest following.  In 2005, Winchester introduced the .325 Winchester Short Magnum, which actually fired a .323 180-grain bullet at about 3,000 fps.

After its release, Winchester engineers allowed that the .32/8mm bullet was the largest that could be efficiently paired with the WSM case, and so no larger offerings were forthcoming.  Unlike the 8mm Remington Magnum, the .325 WSM did gain some following, and like its older brother, the .338 Win Mag, it is capable of taking any game in North America with the right load.

The .32/8mm bore diameter has never been overly popular with American shooters.  If any caliber is America’s caliber, it’s the .30.  It doesn’t help that American manufacturers have never really gone in for this bore size in a big way, and it helps even less that one of the few major offerings was a commercial flop.

But step up one bore size to the thirty-threes, and the picture changes quite a bit.  My own favorite hunting rifle is one of those; I’ve described my .338 Win Mag, the inestimable Thunder Speaker, in these virtual pages before.  So stay tuned for the next installment, in which will examine the Thirty-Threes.

The Perfect Single-Action Revolver

Resolved:  The 1851 Colt Navy is the standard by which all succeeding single-action revolvers must be judged.  Now that that’s established, let’s take a look at this ground-breaking product of the mind of Colonel Colt, how it changed forever the concept of what a revolver should be, and how it affected every single-action sixgun model that followed – including its famous offspring, the Single Action Army.

The Forerunners

Colt’s production of revolvers up to this point had not yielded a reliable, effective piece for belt holsters.  The Paterson guns were underpowered and had fragile folding triggers; their popularity was mostly due to their being the only effective mass-produced revolver available in the 1830s and 1840s.

The Paterson guns had five-shot cylinders, but prudence dictated loading only four and leaving the hammer down on an empty chamber; this precaution was required for Colt revolvers up to and including the Single Action Army.  Further, the Paterson guns were loaded using a separate tool for seating bullets.  If that tool was lost, what the shooter was left with was an expensive and rather ineffective hammer.

The later Colt Walker and First, Second and Third Model Dragoon revolvers were significant improvements.  They had a loading lever attached to the gun under the barrel.  They were also big, powerful guns, firing a .44 caliber ball propelled by a stiff charge of black powder from a six-round cylinder.  The Walker and Dragoon guns were reliable and powerful, but they were also heavy and cumbersome, so much so that many were fitted with shoulder stocks, making rather effective carbines.  But it’s important to note that these were, as named, dragoon pistols, meant to be carried in saddle holsters by mounted troops.

Contemporaneous with the Dragoon guns were a small selection of Colt “Pocket” revolvers, .31 caliber six-shot revolvers that began with the 1847 Baby Dragoon and continuing with the 1849 and 1850 Pocket Models.  These were, effectively, scaled-down versions of the Dragoon pistols.  Barrel lengths ran from four to six inches, allowing for a decent sight radius for the small-framed guns, but the .31-caliber cylinder put them back in the Paterson level for power; most loads yielded performance roughly equivalent to a modern .32 ACP full-metal-jacket round.

So as of 1850, your choice in Colt revolvers faced a strange dichotomy; you could either have a big, powerful, heavy horse pistol, or a pocket-sized pipsqueak.  Clearly something new was needed.  Colt decided the answer was obvious:  Split the difference.

The New Holster Gun

In 1851 Colt revealed their new gun.  The 1851 Colt Navy revolver was a scaled-up 1849 Pocket Model, but it differed in several significant ways:  It fired a .36-caliber ball, yielding power roughly equivalent to the later .38 Special 158-grain RNL standard loads; it had a 7 ½” barrel, yielding a good sight radius while maintaining portability; and it was lighter than the Dragoon models, making it easily portable in a belt holster.  It did retain the odd sighting arrangement from the earlier guns, using a small conical brass front sight and a notch on the hammer as the rear sight; despite the rather crude sighting arrangement the new gun quickly developed a reputation for accuracy.

Another innovation, oddly, didn’t quite catch on; some early Navies were made with a “safety peg” in between chambers on the six-shot cylinder that fit into a recess on the hammer face, allowing the gun to be safely carried with all six chambers loaded.  For some reason this feature wasn’t carried over into later models, and even the famous Single Action Army is only safely carried with the hammer down on an empty chamber.

The new revolver was well received, and with good reason.  It was more powerful than the Pocket Models or the Paterson guns, while still being light enough to allow easy carry in a belt holster.  Its grip frame, adapted from the earlier guns, was designed for a one-hand shooting style, making it easily usable either on horseback or on foot.  Further, the curved grip meant that, like later single-actions from Colt, revolved upwards on recoil rather than slamming into the web of the hand.  This made follow-up shots a fraction slower but was much easier on the hand and wrist in repeated shot strings.

While the majority of Colt Navies were made in the Colt works in Hartford, Connecticut, some were also made in the London Armoury near Vauxhall Bridge; a few other copies were made in Belgium and (unlicensed) in Russia.  They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and that holds true for guns as well as people.  During the war, the Confederate Army widely used the Leech & Rigdon revolver, an unlicensed copy of the 1851 Navy made in several locations throughout the war.

Interestingly, the appellation “Navy” was not intended to denote a sidearm designed for naval use.  In fact, the production 1851 Colt revolvers cylinders were engraved with a scene of the victory of the Second Texas Navy at the Battle of Campeche on May 16, 1843; this decoration was intended to commemorate the Republic of Texas’ purchase of Paterson Colt revolvers, which was Colt’s first major commercial success.  In fact, most of the Colt Navy revolvers were sold to Army and civilian customers.

The 1851 Navy proved a great commercial success, remaining in production until 1873, when its niche as a fast-handling holster gun was taken by the next Colt Legend:  The Single Action Army.  It’s important to note that while the SAA improved in several ways over the Colt cap-and-ball guns, it retained the grip shape introduced with the Colt 1851 Navy.  You don’t mess with success, and it was largely the shape of the grip that made the Navy handle so well.

The Gunfighters

During the years leading up to the Civil War, the 1851 Navy gained a strong following.  The new gun was popular among outdoorsmen and Army officers, but it also gained a powerful following amongst professional guntwists and outlaws.  Why?  The Navy Colt, even today regarded as perhaps the best-handling single-action sixgun ever made, was the ideal model at that time for the gunfighter.

The 1851 Navy was the best sidearm yet made for the guntwist.  It was lighter than the Dragoons and thus faster to place into operation.  It was more powerful and, with a longer sight radius, more accurate than the pocket models.  It could be carried on a saddle or in a belt holster and was slim enough to be well concealed beneath a long coat or vest if one was of a mind to do so.

Famous users of the Navy sixgun were legion, including such historic names as John Henry “Doc” Holliday, Jack Hays, Ned Kelly, John “Rip” Ford and Frank Gardiner.  And, not least, one of the West’s more notorious professional guntwists also favored the Navy Colt:  John Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok.

Bill Hickock and the Navy Colt

Wild Bill would be a great subject for a future Profile in Toxic Masculinity, but a lengthy discussion of his life is probably well outside the scope of this article.

Suffice it to say that Hickock was one of the more notorious figures of the Old West; in his career he worked as a scout for the Army, a cattle drover, a wagon master, a lawman, a gambler and, not least, a gunfighter.  He was involved in several high-profile gunfights and was said to prefer the Navy Colt for its power, light weight and accuracy.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hickock took shooting seriously as an art unto itself, reportedly practicing quick-draw, rapid-fire and slow fire for an hour or more each day.  This served him will on July 21, 1865, when he took part in one of the few actual, recorded instances of the kind of quick-draw duel generally only seen in movies.

On that day Hickock was playing cards in the Lyon House Hotel in Springfield, Missouri.  Another gambler, one Davis Tutt, stood nearby.  Tutt was known to dislike Hickock and was continually lending the other gamblers money as they continued to lose to Wild Bill.

One thing led to another and, eventually, the two repaired to the street to settle their differences.  They faced each other at the range of 25 yards; when hostilities commenced, Hickock drew his Navy Colt and promptly plugged his adversary between the fifth and sixth ribs.  Tutt shouted to his friends, “Boys, I’m killed,” and collapsed.

Eventually Wild Bill was himself killed over a card game, yielding the famous “dead man’s hand” legend, but his death was not due to any failure of his pair of Navy Colts, who continued to serve him well until the end.

Today

There are a wealth of 1851 Navy replicas for sale today.  Colt themselves reintroduced the 1851 Navy in the late 1970s and made them for a while, but it was a pricey item and had difficulty competing with the many cheaper versions.  I had one for a while, a brass frame model made by an outfit called Early Modern Firearms (EMF), about which I’ve written here before.  It was a neat piece and I shot it until the brass frame deformed so badly that it wasn’t safe to operate.

Uberti makes a great steel-frame replica.  So does Cimarron.  There is a wealth of replica guns on the market, but I’d give one precautionary note based on my own experience:  Avoid the brass-frame guns if you intend to do a lot of shooting.  A steel-frame gun will last a lot longer.

As time goes on, I’m thinking more seriously of picking up one of the Uberti replicas.  I’ve handed a few Uberti guns and find them to be excellent pieces, and I still remember my original Navy Colt replica fondly.  As I’ve written before, it was light, accurate, fast to clear leather and slick as a snake.  Even at the age of fourteen, when I bought the gun and started practicing quick-draw and reflex shooting, I could easily see why the old gunfighters preferred this piece.

The 1851 Colt Navy was a ground-breaking gun, one which set the pattern for all single-action sixguns that followed.  It was a seminal piece, changing the sixgun market and the expectations of sixgun shooters more than any preceding gun.  The Navy Colt also had long-lasting impact on sixgun design, not just by Colt but also Remington and later, Ruger, as well as Great American, Cimarron, Uberti and other replica makers; this qualifies it as the Gold Standard of single-action revolvers.