13 Forgotten Bullets & Ammo Types That Ruled the Wild West

13 Forgotten Bullets & Ammo Types That Ruled the Wild West Every Western pictured the same round: the shiny six-gun cartridge sliding into a Colt, the hero's belt heavy with brass. Neat. Cinematic. Almost never the round that did the killing. Because the ammunition that actually ruled the frontier was often paper, often soft lead poured in a camp by firelight, often a fat black-powder round costing a few cents that fouled so badly a man scrubbed his barrel between fights. Not the clean spray of endless shots, not the magic bullet that never ran out, not the pistol round the posters loved. The cartridges that ruled the West were the ones nobody put on a poster. And number one outsold and outkilled the famous six-gun round by a margin most people would never believe. Resources: Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody Firearms Museum) overview of frontier firearms and ammunition, including .44 Henry, .44-40, .45 Colt, Spencer, trapdoor Springfields, and coach guns - https://centerofthewest.org/explore/f... Springfield Armory National Historic Site (NPS) history pages on the Model 1866–1873 trapdoor Springfields and .50-70 / .45-70 Government cartridges, including Wagon Box Fight and Little Bighorn context - https://www.nps.gov/spar/index.htm Smith & Wesson Model 1 and .22 Short as first American metallic cartridge on the official Smith & Wesson / historical documentation via NRA National Firearms Museum entry - https://www.nramuseum.org/guns/the-ga... Winchester Model 1866 and Model 1873 museum/history pages detailing .44 Henry rimfire, .44-40, and .38-40 dual-purpose rifle-revolver cartridges and their sales/popularity in the West - https://www.winchesterguns.com/suppor... U.S. Army Ordnance / Spencer repeater documentation in the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian) on the .56-56 Spencer, Civil War deployment, production numbers, and postwar frontier use - https://americanhistory.si.edu/collec... Wells Fargo Museum and company history pages on riding shotgun, issued 10–12 gauge double-barreled coach guns to express messengers, and use in stagecoach defense in the Old West - https://www.wellsfargohistory.com/mus... "Copyright Disclaimer" Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, education or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.