I recently acquired an interesting percussion rifle with a hunting hound on each side of the lower wrist and three foxes running out along the forestock. I've never seen this extended dog & foxes motif on a rifle before. Fox hunting suggests VA or farther south to me. The gun has a long 5-1/4" two-screw tang with straight sides and a lozenge-shaped tip. The barrel is 36" long with a .32 cal. bore. Oddly, while short, it may be the original length. Ramrod pipes are evenly spaced, the nose cap and transition from forestock to nose cap look very good, and the signature is well-spaced between the rear sight and breech.
When a more highly decorated southern rifle shows up, particularly with a long tang, this style guard, and a really unique side plate, I immediately think of South Carolina, where we know they made some fine early rifles that usually look a little different, but very few have survived so we don't know much about them. So I thought it would be worth posting this rifle to get other peoples' ideas on where it might have been made. And yes, there has been damage to the wrist and a couple other areas with some "expert" wood filler repairs, but the gun overall seems reasonably intact. The barrel is signed in script "L W." If someone wants to flip it and read it as "M T" I think he'd be fooling himself on this one. Neat little rifle, despite some damage, with a new look in southern inlay work... so who's the gunmaker and where was it made?
Shelby Gallien
