Cap & Ball Challenge

[Navy Six]

Saw this on You Tube channel "Cap & Ball Fanatic" and it looks like fun. Most will have heard about Hickok and Hardin shooting playing cards but I had never considered doing it myself. Since most of my cap & ball shooting is for fun, this gives me a new angle to try. As a long time Cowboy Shooter, I have been promising myself to try the "Gunfighter" category and this would make good(and fun) training for both hands. Don't worry--I'm not going to be signing any playing cards!!

[Hawg]

10 paces is roughly 25-30 feet. My Pietta 51 navy should be capable of doing that. I dunno about my eyesight and arm strength now. I used to shoot Coke cans at 25 yards. I couldn't hit them every time but did more often than not. I haven't done it in a long time tho. I may be too old and feeble now.

[Navy Six]

Hawg, at one point in my life I would have seen this as easy. Now, all these years later I am doing this for fun. I also see the benefit in these activities as a way of staying focused, interested and motivated. The fun part is just icing on the cake.

[mike116]

I wish I would have read this before I went shooting yesterday.   I would have tried it.

[G Dog]

Good video.  Was not previously aware of that man or C&B Fanatic.

Joe Rosa (mentioned in the vid) in his coffee table book Gunfighters has a photo of one of Hardin’s shot out cards.  I’ve shot at playing cards for years.  An acquaintance gave me about 30 unopened decks from an Indian casino place.  Good little targets.  Rosa is not really an historian.  He’s more of an antiquarian and compiler.  Johnnie Roper said he met and shot with Rosa at Bisley.  That was the statement anyway.

In a McMurtry book Hardin appears and is mentioned as a guy you would not want getting behind you.  The implication being that he was a psycho back-shooter.  So then, he may have made a pretty good lawyer - but I doubt it.

[Captainkirk]

Rumor has it JW shot a man in a hotel for snoring.
That fits my book as "psycho"

[Hawg]

Rumor has it JW shot a man in a hotel for snoring.
That fits my book as "psycho"

The whole story is the guy snoring had the room next to his. JWH fired a shot through the wall to shut him up. Well he shut him up alright. He didn't deliberately shoot him tho.

[G Dog]

Deliberate enough for second degree murder but maybe it could be called an accident.

The version I recall (there are several) has the noisy sleeper in the room above Hardin.  Shot him through the ceiling.

“They tell lots of lies about me. They say I killed six or seven men for snoring. Well, it ain’t true. I only killed one man for snoring.”

Hardin’s dad was a preacher.  It’s interesting that Hardin was named after the famous English cleric who founded Methodism.  Wesleyan University was definitely not named after our boy Hardin.

Bob Dylan titled a B-grade album and song after JWH but 
misspelled and sang Hardin as Harding.

And so it goes ..

[Zulch]

He must have been a Hard hearted man. He was sooooo mean...he once...fill in the blank

[Dave Shooter]

Well, the challenge sounds like fun.  I'll hafta try it when a bit warmer.  In the meantime I cheated and shot it with my Ruger Wrangler.  Succeeded on first try and then got a little full of myself.

[Dave Shooter]

close...

[Dave Shooter]

A measured 10 yards.

[G Dog]

He must have been a Hard hearted man. He was sooooo mean...he once...fill in the blank

Yea, Hardin - “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”


Shooter - Good photos.  I’m interested in the Super Wrangler.  Convertible between .22 LR and .22 WMR.
Adjustable sights.  The price is right.

[Bishop Creek]

Portrait of Hardin during his gunfighter era, circa early 1870s, and Hardin with his horse's reins in his teeth firing at Mexican herders with two Colt Navy cap 'n ball revolvers in 1871. This is what inspired the scene of John Wayne with the reins in his teeth in final gunfight in the movie "True Grit."

[Dave Shooter]

Yeah, the Super Wrangler is gonna be more versatile.  And it's a third the price of a Single Six.

I got one of the original Wranglers when they first came out.  I'm not normally an early adaptor, but you can't lose too much money on a $180 pistol.