60 http://www.riflemagazine.com Rifle 305
Bob Hayley, the Seymour, Texas,
custom ammunition maker, has
studied the technicalities of shoot-
ing artifacts of the nineteenth cen-
tury more than anyone I know. He
suggested that such sights were
first fitted on the old Pennsylvania
long rifles, which were intended
for mostly short-range shooting in
deep woods. For this use, he said,
the big rounded aperture formed
by the horns of the sight acted ex-
actly like a later aperture sight on
the tang or the receiver. You threw
the gun to your shoulder, found
the front bead by looking through
(not at) the rear sight, and pulled
the trigger. It was more than accu-
rate enough, he says, for a deer at
fifty paces.
Garry James does not agree.
He has never seen one of those
old rifles with such a sight and
has studied many, both American
and European, over the years.
Muzzleloaders are not my area,
but searching through literature,
I could not find any reference to a
buckhorn sight, per se, before the
advent of the cartridge rifle.
There is a hint to be found in
Ned Roberts’ The Muzzle-Loading
Cap Lock Rifle, originally pub-
lished in 1940. He includes a
sketch of a rear sight, similar
to the buckhorn, with a spade-
shaped aperture, on a rifle made
before the Civil War by G.B. Fogg,
a New Hampshire gunmaker. The
rifle had a front bead on a tall
stem. To shoot at 110 yards (20
rods – a standard target distance)
the bead was positioned at the
bottom notch; to shoot at 40 rods
(220 yards) it was held just above
the ears. Roberts considered this
“especially practical.”
Roberts also states that the
buckhorn sight originated in Cali-
fornia and only spread east in the
latter part of the nineteenth cen-
tury, but small makers such as
Fogg had their own patterns that
predated it.
While researching a book on
hunting rifles of the past, I kept
coming across references to
“drawing a fine bead,” or “takingWalnut Hill
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