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"Boons Best Fren"
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Booshway
Picture of Notchy Bob
posted
I was researching another historical topic with Kentucky associations, and came across the website for the Kentucky Historical Society (KHS). If you look deep enough into anything connected with Kentucky history, sooner or later you're going to cross paths with Daniel Boone.

This page (right here) has links to photographs and descriptions of their artifacts with Boone connections. These include four long guns and a powder horn, among all the other things.


The most significant item is a long rifle with the words "Boons Best Fren" carved into the stock, and "D.B." punch-pricked into the barrel. In the description, the KHS admits it is probably a fake, in that it likely never belonged to the famous frontiersman himself. However, in my opinion, it is still an interesting old rifle. The architecture and mountings clearly indicate southern provenance. The bone heel plate is distinctive... I've heard of this on a few old rifles, but have never actually seen it. Note also that the barrel is banded to the stock, which is very unusual for a long rifle. I think the pictorial carvings are pretty cool.


Somebody, sometime, made a copy of this rifle. The copy is also in this collection, right here. Whoever it was did a pretty good job, except for the trigger guard, which is quite different from the original, and the fact that they used a piece of plastic, for Pete's sake, to simulate the bone heel plate. Real bone is just not that hard to come by...

The powder horn has a fancy turned spout and a turned base plug with an acorn finial for a strap knob. It's a nice horn, but it just looks too fancy to go with a backwoodsman's rifle. The carving on the horn appears to have been done by the same hand that made the carvings on the rifle.


In any event, these artifacts probably never belonged to the original Daniel Boone, but I'm sure they have their own stories to tell, and I found them interesting in their own right.


Best regards,


Notchy Bob


"Should have kept the old ways just as much as I could, and the tradition that guarded us. Should have rode horses. Kept dogs."

from The Antelope Wife
 
Posts: 333 | Location: Florida | Registered: 24 May 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Both the rifle and horn certainly are interesting pieces. I agree that they most likely never felt the hand of old Daniel Boone.

I cringe when I see a gun marked up like that, but at the same time I like the folk art on the powder horn.
There is an annual antique southern rifle show here in Tennessee, near Knoxville, each spring. There are a lot of old southern rifles like that one that are marked up with folk art carvings.


Know what you believe in. Fight for your beliefs. Never compromise away your rights.
 
Posts: 1296 | Location: Cherokee Land, Tenasi | Registered: 06 January 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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