"The Truth About Gunfights in the Old West " Topic

"…First off, it's not all the fault of Hollywood and the movies. Many years before cinema was even invented, dime novels were printed up, enthralling their eager and avid readers. These pulp novels were extremely popular and carried the written accounts of legendary Old West gunslingers Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, Bat Masterson, etc. The authors would simply dream up fictional accounts of the exploits of these famed heroes and embellish things that actually did occur. It wasn't only the authors doing this embellishing, as many of the actual participants themselves would "color" their own stories for the sake of a good story. Newspapers, too, would dress up the tales of Old West gunmen in order to boost sales (no kidding? A newspaper not telling the truth? Gee, I'm mortified at that one!). The fact is, Old West gunfights were few and far between. In popular Western television shows like Bonanza, The Big Valley, Have, Will Travel, and Rawhide, the gunfight is a routine event, taking place about as often as we currently witness a politician being dishonest or your luggage being late coming on the carousel when you arrive at the airport. In some seasons of the longest-running Western TV series ever, Gunsmoke (1955-1975), a formal Hollywood gunfight takes place during the show's opening credits…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Similar to the works of Ned Buntline.

My assumption is that the Old West was a lot like the New West. Most killings happen because someone gets the drop on someone else. I assume shootouts were the same as today. I doubt there were many (any) times where both parties simply agreed to meet at noon in the town square.

Merci mon cher ami!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Good song, though:

YouTube link

While you are right that genuine face-to-face, quick-draw gunfights were extremely rare, they did happen. Furthermore, some of them were never taken up by dime novelists, and consequently never became the fare of Hollywood Western movies or television series either. So there were probably a fair number more than the general public was ever aware of.

I can cite one specific example that I feel fairly sure nobody on this board ever heard of, for precisely the reasons given above. There was an Oregon outlaw named Henry Clay ("Hank") Vaughan (1849-1893), who specialized in horse rustling over large parts of the Far West. In December 1881 Vaughan, for unclear reasons, deliberately provoked a fight with a local tough named Charles Long in Til Glaze's saloon in Prineville, Oregon. Vaughan challenged Long to a variation of the Missouri duel (originally a knife fight), in which each man took hold of one end of a bandana; then both went for their guns. Evidently a good deal of drinking took place before the gunfight, as both men survived, although both were seriously wounded. Hank Vaughan was a real hard case, whose career involved other shooting scrapes and daring escapes from pursuing posses. His story is documented in a book by Jon M. & Donna McDaniel Skovlin--"Hank Vaughan (1849-1893)," (Cove, Oregon: Reflections Publishing Co., 1996), which is thoroughly researched and supported by numerous footnotes.

I happen to live in Umatilla County, Oregon, where Hank Vaughan lived at the time of his death. He was also almost my great grand uncle by marriage. I say almost because he "married" one of my great grand aunts without mentioning that he already had a wife whom he never divorced. He also deserted my aunt only three years after this "marriage."

best gunfight
YouTube link

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Quite interesting….

Amicalement
Armand

+1 to Bandit86, with the possible exception of Kevin Costner's 8-shot fanning charge _after_ he'd already fired off a few rounds. Still, a good fight in which folk actually ran out of ammo.
As opposed to one John Wayne film in which his single revolver cranked out a dozen or more shots in succession.