Shot Bag Question

Rifle or smoothbore?
It would seem early shot pouches associated with rifles were pretty small, from what little we have to go by.
I can see that. I find I need a lot less stuff, or the stuff I need is less bulky, for a rifle than my smoothbores. For a rifle all I really keep in the shot pouch is patch material, balls (usually in a bag), and a small flint wallet with 2 or 3 spare flints, ball puller, turn screw, and tow worm or cleaning jag, and a couple dry patches. Might stick a hank of tow along the bottom of the bag. The small rectangular bag that Wallace Gusler attributes to early Virginia is about perfect, I think. Simple shape, small, no buckle, strap is sewn to one corner and attached at the other corner with a button. A series of button holes in the strap allow for length adjustment at the attachment point. Button down flap. It would appear that the buttons used may have worked similar to cuff links. Like an inner and outer button linked through a hole in the leather with thread.

If shooting a smoothbore with roundball and using patches (which we don't think to be historically accurate that early), this bag could still work well. Once we start adding wadding material, even just precut flat wads, and/or stuff to shoot shot, I find the bag too small, and lacking organization.

Thanks for the replies.

Brockennock, I only have the Fusil de Chasse smoothbore, and most of the time I load round ball the same as shot, with wads, I do try to only keep what it takes to shoot & load during the day, as you described.


Paranger, thanks that is a great looking bag, I have been leaning towards a more square bag (kinda like the hair on bag you posted in an earlier tread) but wasn't sure yet, having a hard time deciding.

I will try to take some new pics tomorrow, upload them to imgur (hopefully) and post them here of the bag I use most lately. It doesn't allow for carrying components for both loose shot and round ball shooting, but it works pretty well for either if I switch stuff out depending on what I'm hunting.
The heart shaped bag, and it's dimensions, shown by Paranger would probably be a good choice if most shooting is done with wads.
I've been keeping my wads/wadding in a separate leather bag in my pouch. It has a leather wang connecting it to the pouch strap so I can take it out and let it hang when accessing it. This also gives me access to the ball bag or tin of shot cartridges below it.

Excuse the not-quite-on-topic divergence, but I have a question. Over the years I’ve come to think that early bags were smaller and grew larger over time, while horns started larger and grew smaller. Also, that early-on horns were carried on separate straps and later tended to be attached to the bags. I don't have any period documentation of my impression. Does anyone know of any research into any of these questions that is available?

Spence

From my own observations I find it difficult to really pinpoint a particular bag to any real particular area, region or maker unlike that of horn work. Seems the lot and variety of bag styles and shapes tended to be all over the colonies and frontier. However what I've manged to conclude is the D and square were very common shapes. With horn weathering time better than cloth and leather no suprise we haven't many originals left to study.

Spence brings up a good conversation piece. Something I've noticed but haven't any hard evidence to support it for the most part. A mini series was written by a few gentlemen, can't for the life of me remember their darn name(s)... Base study was on Virginia/ NC shooting bags and accoutrements. Excellent examples of this theory with lots of original images. Need to find the pdf which I don't have saved, rather irritated by this.

I'll try and find a pdf and post it's link.

Found it!

ehcnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Hunting-Bags-1.pdf

Three part series, first part on the shooting bags is above.

Excellent, hawkeyes. thank you. That looks like a good read, and a marvelous collection of photos. I saved all three parts.

Spence

Here are the pics I promised yesterday of the shot pouch I use most these days,




It is currently set up for squirrel hunting. One of the larger tins has preloaded paper shot cups/cartridges, the other is divided and has thin cards, lubed felt wads, a few nitro cards and oil soaked cushion wads (just in case a Skychief load is called for).
The small tin in the hanging pocket is always in there somewhere. It contains my thicker consistency lube for sealing my pan/frizzen and making a small dam where stock and barrel meet just forward of the lock in wet weather.
The other leather bag can stuff inside or hang from the strap. It contains a bunch of prelubed balls of faux-tow, a few dry felt wads, and a few more thin cards. Those cards are easy to drop so I scatter then in many places.
This bag works well for single purpose use, it is too small for both roundball and shot accoutrements.
When at the range shooting roundball or when deer hunting, the two larger tins come out and a bag of roundballs goes in.

Pictures of the Gussler bag, and/or copies of it, abound on the internet.

I intend at some point to make a slightly larger bag for hunting with shot, probably with a gusset and maybe another pocket. Probably will make it wider moreso than deeper which will accommodate hanging my net game bag from it better and make things more accessible with them not being stacked on eachother.

I do really like that heart shaped bag shown above, looks a good size. I've just always assumed that with Mr. Murphy hanging on me like he does, in a bag that shape whatever I need will be in that narrow bottom part when I need it.