Elnathan,
In response to your interest I'll try to be brief. Pictures are on another computer with memory issues plus I've never posted pictures here so will need to learn perhaps one day.
The broken relic gunstock got the name from me as I've been the one doing research that I began over 30 years ago. The relic was found sometime between 1925 and 1940 along the shoreline of Lower Hay Lake in North central Minnesota by an amateur archaeologist of the time. It spent most of its time from then in storage until I spotted it in the mid 1980's while I was maintaining the gun collection in the county museum where it resides now. When I spotted it, I realized immediately it was unique (it was an 1700's looking) rifle stock and not northwest Trade gun etc. (as usual here) and needed to be researched. No one had done so at that point.
The stock profile even thou broken off and missing the wood/barrel fore ward of lock plate and side plate was slim and flowed. The relic is composed of a narrow 1 3/8"s wide parallel sided European/fowler type 4 3/4" tall buttplate with engraved 4 "s long asymmetric tang; cheek rest is a very prominent 'half oval' Germanic looking; it possesses a dovetailed wood box; flat 1/16" thickness engraved feathered serpent looking sideplate; flint lockplate (5 9/16"s by 1" dimensions) round faced banana shaped with internal tumbler bridle, with screw hole locations indicating removable pan and bridle less frizzen once existed. Also a tear drop shape trigger plate and a piece of rear trigger guard attached with screw and shape typical of early rifle trigger guards. The wrist measurement is a slim 1 3/8's. Furniture is brass.
Beginning in 1989, I sent photo's to Kit Ravenshear, Charles Hanson (Museum of the Fur Trade), George Shumway, old friend then Curly Gostomski and others as well. They all responded pretty much alike in saying this was different from the usual. After gathering information from them and researching myself, the consensus was it was a very early Northern European Export Trade rifle possibly from along the France and German boundary. Kit mentioned possibly Danish area as well possibly? This rifle contrasted tremendously from usual Germanic land developments which has become a curious and enjoyable use of my gun interest for all these 30+ years now.
My research now indicates the rifle coming to the fur trade area here likely during the 1760's or early 1770's. Rifle caliber based on known barrel artifacts along the trade route here ranged from 42 -60 caliber that are between 34"s and 45"s long. One mostly straight octagon, one octagon swamp and one octagon taper barrel profiles. Rifle barrels found in the surrounding area are quite a rare find.
I made a pattern from the relic and made a rendition for myself (as Tim mentioned used deer hunting this year) to later donate to the museum to have with the relic. Tim's exceptional rifle in this post has a similar profile look based on the photo's and of course captured my attention quickly. His rifle has the more typical wider butt plate width, wider wrist etc. and the restrained use of carving to highlight which is something I also tried to accomplish on the rifle I built as well.
I tried to be short and descriptive as possible in this response and hopefully didn't bore you to tears without photo's.
I appreciate the interest. Thanks much!
Ray
