"Buffalo Bill" Cody's Double Barrel Shotgun

As many of you know I work at prestigious rare book and manuscript library in the northeastern United States. Today there was a really interesting item out and I was able to take a few quick photographs before preservation housed it and sent it back to the stacks. The details are amazing and I hope you enjoy having some close ups of a gun that is rarely seen. Those etchings are hand done.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917) was born in Scott County, Iowa Territory, on February 26, 1846, and raised in Leavenworth, Kansas Territory. He was a cattle herder, fur trapper, gold miner, and Pony Express rider before serving as a Union scout during the Civil War, and was periodically called back by the U.S. Army for scouting and other duties through the 1890s. Cody also worked as a buffalo hunter and guide to hunting parties, and in the early 1870s appeared in the stage shows "Scouts of The Prairie" and "Scouts of The Plains." In 1883 he organized "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show," which he toured throughout the United States and Europe for three decades, but eventually lost to creditors. Cody died in Denver, Colorado, on January 10, 1917.

One double-barrel shotgun made by James Dalziel Dougall & Sons, and owned by John Burwell "Texas Jack" Omohundro, as a gift from the Irish game hunter Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, 4th Earl of Dunraven. The gun is 121 cm in length and was engraved by the maker in several places: "J. D. Dougall. Gun & Rifle Manufacturer to H. R. H. The Prince of Wales. 59 St. James's St. London" on low concave game rib, "J. D. Dougall's Patent Lockfast" on the bottom of the action, "J. D. Dougall" on each lockplate, and the serial number "3303" on the tang. An oval copper plate set in the bottom edge of the European walnut straight grip buttstock is engraved: "From / Earl Dunraven / to / Texas Jack / 1874."
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