BLACK POWDER
CARSON'S OLD HAWKEN RIDES ANEW
Author Mike Nesbitt’s .54-caliber “Ol’ Carson” was fashioned after what’s believed to have been Kit Carson’s final Hawken. It’s shown with its pouch and a buffalo horn.
Inspired by a frontiersman's famed rifle and with a stock blank that spoke to him, a muzzleloader and his buddy set out to build and shoot a replica. STORY AND PHOTOS BY MIKE NESBITT
A
fter wanting one for several years, I finally got a rifle similar to Kit Carson’s Hawken, which is said to be the last rifle Carson ever got. At least it was the last Hawken that he got, built by Sam Hawken rather late in his remarkable gunmaking career. Shortly before his death, Carson gave the rifle to the Montezuma Masonic Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where it is still on display. This particular rifle is very fascinating because it is still in almostnew condition and it is outstanding in more ways than that. While it can’t be assumed that all Hawken rifles were like this one in finish, one can see that the barrel shows evidence of being blued rather than
browned. In addition, several of the metal pieces are color casehardened, such as the lock plate plus the breech plug and tang. While it might seem that this was a rather deluxe Hawken rifle, in those times all Hawken rifles were considered rather deluxe; that’s why they were more expensive than most guns found on the frontier. The extra expense was for the ruggedness of the Hawken rifles, which added greatly to their dependability. THE RIFLE’S FINISH, plus the overall configuration of Carson’s Hawken, made me want one like it. There are some custom makers today who will build copies of the Carson Hawken on order, but mine had to be built closer to home. One of the parts for my gun was the maple stock blank that I got at an auction at the Washington Historical
Gunmakers Fair a few years ago. This stock blank, already cut for a halfstock rifle, came from the shop of Ted Fellowes, a well-known muzzleloading gunmaker, after Fellowes had passed away. It isn’t a spectacularly pretty piece of wood – rather plain, actually – but when I got it, the thought came to me to use it for the wood on a rifle like the Carson Hawken. A barrel for my version of the Carson Hawken was ordered from Charles Burton in Morehead, Kentucky. Burton is the barrel-maker I like to recommend these days because he has built more than one outstanding rifle barrel for me. This one, like the barrel on the Carson Hawken, measures just 31½ inches, and I asked for it in .54 caliber with .012-inch-deep flat bottom grooves, rifled with a 1-in-60-inch rate of twist. Also stipulated was the fitting americanshootingjournal.com 123
