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One Big-Ass Hawken April 10, 2024, by JimC Kit Carson is one of the most significant of the Frontier Partisans — so much so that he was the focus of the very first Frontier Partisans Podcast series. He’s archetypal, coming from classic Scots-Irish frontier stock that followed Daniel Boone’s path into Kentucky and then Missouri. Carson crossed the plains to Santa Fe as a teenager and became a Mountain Man operating out of Taos and traversing the West from California to the Blackfoot Country of Montana. He was a trapper, an explorer, an Indian agent and a military leader. He is a figure of controversy today, mostly due to his role in a grim and ugly Civil War-era campaign against the Navajo. I thoroughly explore all of this in the podcast. Carson was a hunter and a rifleman, and when he became prominent, people gave him rifles — a civic gesture that I endorse and would like to see revived. Some of his rifles survive. I did not know that Theodore Roosevelt had two Hawken rifles that purportedly belonged to Kit Carson. One of them is an unusual specimen — a near-20-pound .70 caliber behemoth. This pleases me greatly. Hat tip to Rock Island Auction Co. for sharing its tale…. Unlike the other Kit Carson Hawken Roosevelt owned, this rifle is far from your typical Hawken “Mountain” or “Plains” rifle even though it retains many of the more classic Hawken features. Given this rifle’s general configuration, and immense weight, it was clearly meant for highly accurate shooting from a rest such as a pair of cross-sticks. The large caliber is certainly not typical of target rifles of the period suggesting stopping power was a primary concern, and all of these characteristics taken together would certainly have made it a prime candidate for hunting bison on the plains. In the mid-19th century, millions of bison still roamed the plains, and Carson participated in hunting. The most obvious difference setting this rifle apart from most Hawken rifles is its immense weight. While noted as weighing 18 pounds above, we find that it actually weighs 19 lbs. 3.3 oz. on our scale. Much of that weight comes from its heavy barrel. The bore measure approximately .70 caliber (14 bore) which is significantly larger than the typical .54 caliber (28 bore) found on many of the classic Hawken rifles. The browned barrel is cleanly marked with the “S. HAWKEN ST. LOUIS” marking used following Jacob Hawken’s death in 1849 and by the Hawken shop even after J.P. Gemmer had purchased the shop. The muzzle is cut round for using a bullet starter, and the barrel features seven-groove rifling, traditional dovetailed blade and U-notch sights, and a very nicely shaped breech plug. A very rarely seen adjustable peep sight is fitted to an integral base on the upper tang.