The Long Hunt

By the time you read this it will be November, and my world will be right again. Right now it's August, and my life is miserable. I haven't hunted anything except hogs--an endeavor more akin to work in the subtropical heat of Georgia and South Carolina--since the end of turkey season. Stuck in traffic on a godforsaken interstate, a bend in the road and a little elevation revealed a scenic vista. Ignoring the bill boards and the brand-new Panther's Mill (homes starting in the low $300s), I looked out across the remaining islands of pines and oaks. If it were only 1760.

Instead of a concrete interstate, with a string of horses and a long rifle across my lap, I might be traveling up or down the Great Wagon Road, which started in Pennsylvania and ended in the Yadkin River valley in South Carolina. At the time, the trace was practically the edge of the known universe, and few could fathom the depth and richness of the continent behind the mountain range. It was a land for hunters.

While it is certain most everyone on the frontier hunted, there were a few intrepid souls, the long hunters, who ventured deep into the wilderness to hunt for months on end and sometimes even years. Some frontiersmen had never hunted, born in lands where hunting was reserved for royalty, while others had American roots that reached back several generations. Regardless of their past, the future lay over the Blue Ridge Mountains.

After several years of saving, a fellow might be able to afford a custom-built longrifle from a local rifle-maker. Locks, patch boxes, barrels, butt plates and nose caps would have come from England, France and Spain, while stock blanks of fruitwood, cherry, walnut or straight-grain maple would have come from local sawyers (curly maple stocks were mostly a feature that came into use after the Revolution).

Barrels were forty-four to sixty inches in length and were rifled by the rifle-maker who also made some smaller parts such as screws.

There were three kinds of guns a man might carry: rifle guns, smooth-bore guns and fowling pieces. The Kentucky and Pennsylvania rifles are, of course, icons of the frontier, as much as the men who carried them. But it was the smooth-bore gun, because of it versatility, that was probably the most common weapon.

It could fire a patched round ball for big game, shot for bird hunting and buck and ball for warfare. In appearance, rifle and smooth-bore guns looked similar--curved butt plates, front and rear sights, cheek rests and octagonal barrels. Fowling pieces, though not commonly called fowling pieces at the time, were strictly for shot had thick, flat butt plates; no cheek piece; and a front sight only. Barrels were a third octagonal and two thirds round.

Just a few examples exist for us today, mostly because the guns were completely used up. Account books from several decades later show that rifles sold for $10 or $12, depending on finish, an investment too big to be left in a corner unused. The guns were shot so much that the soft iron barrels had to be freshened, a process where the rifling is recut from time to time and the bullet mold enlarged to fit the new bore. Rifles were anywhere from .30 to .60 caliber, though if caliber was described at all, most used gauge. Accuracy depended on the man, but a good longhunter probably shot as well as a man armed with an iron-sighted rifle today, out to 150 yards.