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always had a rifle on a couple of pegs
over the front door, where she could
easily grab it. This came in handy more
than once when a semi-lubricated ranch
hand rode by and decided to pay a visit
on the lonely lady.
Eventually she married my grandfather,
who had homesteaded the next
claim over. He wasn’t much of a shot,
so used a shotgun instead of a rifle. This
made a lot more sense than attempting
to use a handgun. Times grew tough
during the Depression and they often
spent most of the week apart, my grandmother
teaching at various country
schools and my grandfather working
for Wells Fargo, both in the office in the
nearest town and serving as fill-in driver
for stagecoaches.
Yes, they still used stagecoaches in
certain parts of the West through the
1930s. Hay and horses were cheaper
than cars and gasoline, and horses
and wagons often more reliable, especially
on what passed for “roads” back
then. When newly stationed at another
school, my grandmother would wait
until an adult human wandered near,
then take her Winchester pump .22 and
start tossing empty cans in the air and
filling the cans with new holes. Word
got around quickly and nobody bothered
her except on legitimate social visits.
Some Handguns
Some people could actually hit
stuff with handguns. The “big” local
town was Lewistown, the home of Ed
McGivern, author of Fast and Fancy
Revolver Shooting. When my father
attended high school in Lewistown,
McGivern gave demonstrations of his
handgun skills at the school. Just try to
arrange that these days, even in Montana.
My father talked about watching
McGivern shoot pennies out of the air
— but he also mentioned that before the
book came out and McGivern became
semi-famous, some people thought Ed
could have saved a lot of ammunition
(something quite valuable during the
Depression) if he’d just used a rifle.
The one positive story my father
told of any revolver shooting (that is
to say, practical revolver shooting) did
involve a grizzly bear, apparently the
last bear in the Judith Mountains. Two
cowboys were out looking for a deer,
maybe legally and maybe not, when a
big male grizzly thought they got a little
too close to where he was chewing on
a dead cow. Only one of the hunters
had a rifle, perhaps because only one of
them could afford ammunition. The guy
with the .30-06 panicked and ran, but
the other cowboy drew his Colt singleaction
and started putting lead into the
grizzly. The bear knocked him over and
for a moment the cowboy thought he
was dead, since everything went black.
It turned out everything went black
because the dead bear lay on top of him.
My father eventually bought his own
Colt single-action, a Frontier Scout
.22. He never shot any game with it,
but liked to plink empty cans on Saturday
afternoons (though on the ground,
not thrown in the air). I inherited the
Scout and carried it as a side-arm on
quite a few big game hunts, giving the
coup de grace to a few deer and elk,
Almost all humans stand a much better chance
of stopping a charging bear with a rifle in their
hands, rather than a handgun in a holster.
and shooting an occasional mountain
grouse. Eventually, however, I found it
just as easy to shoot off grouse heads
with a .270. I still carry a .22 handgun
sometimes when hunting antelope in
eastern Montana in years when cottontail
rabbits are abundant. Shooting a
rabbit in the head with a .270 usually
means losing the front half of the rabbit.
I’m no Ed McGivern, but my father
would probably think I waste far too
much handgun ammo, especially on
small varmints like prairie dogs. My
handguns also get used on the occasional
doe deer. The hunting area next
to my little town is full of whitetails,
but due to the proximity of the “city”
limits we’re only allowed to use shotguns,
muzzleloaders with round ball,
and “traditional” handguns. Since most
deer live in the thickest cover, it’s just
as easy to take them with my Ruger
Blackhawk Bisley in .45 Colt as a
scattergun or muzzle loader, although
I have hunted with all three. Quite a
few moose live down there as well, and
someday I’ll draw a tag and Bisley-a-
Bullwinkle, though a .270 would be
more practical.
Scoped Handguns?
A few Montanans do use those longbarreled
scoped “handguns” favored
by a few hunters, though many other
Montanans wonder why they don’t just
go ahead and use a real rifle. I’ve shot
prairie dogs out to around 400 yards
with my friend Rod Herrett, using his
96 WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM • MARCH/APRIL 2013