Mountain West
Malachite’s Big Hole
Mountain Men and Life in the Rocky
Making Shot & Ball:
Rudolf Freiderich Kurz, in his journal, describes crafting lead shot when there was none available for hunting water fowl. "I had to flatten 1-pound bars of lead into thin plates, cut the latter into narrow bars, from which I then struck off little cubes, threw them into our frying pan together with ashes and sand, rubbed and rubbed them over and over with a flat stone until those small angular pieces had become round. Cadotte [another hunter] is put to the necessity of fabricating his own sort of shot, or rather buckshot. He takes such cubes of lead as I have mentioned, of whatever size his need requires, and rounds them off in his mouth with his teeth."
Rudolf Freiderich Kurz, in his journal, describes crafting lead shot when there was none available for hunting water fowl. "I had to flatten 1-pound bars of lead into thin plates, cut the latter into narrow bars, from which I then struck off little cubes, threw them into our frying pan together with ashes and sand, rubbed and rubbed them over and over with a flat stone until those small angular pieces had become round. Cadotte [another hunter] is put to the necessity of fabricating his own sort of shot, or rather buckshot. He takes such cubes of lead as I have mentioned, of whatever size his need requires, and rounds them off in his mouth with his teeth."
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Lewis Garrrard recorded the following observation in his journal in early 1847: "Tom [Bransford] wanted some bullets-in lieu of a ladle he cut a shallow place in a stick of wood-a hunter's expedient-where, laying in the lead and piling on coals, it soon melted.