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I saw a display of this rifle a few years ago. The owner told how a friend had borrowed his original with plans to make a reproduction. A while later the friend called him to come and look at the disassembled rifle. Inspection revealed a jury rigged replacement spring that very much met the description of an incident described in the original Lewis and Clark journal. The owner can only provide provenance back to the 1930's, and he can not prove that his rifle is the Lewis and Clark rifle.
No where in the journals is a reason provided for taking the air rifle on the expedition. The owner of the rifle believes that the rifle was used to demonstrate to the indians a "magic" rifle that could fire unlimited shots on semi automatic, in order to intimidate the Indians from attacking the isolated small expedition. Anyone remember how many were on the Lewis and Clark expedition?
If I remember the owner has written an article several years ago about his rifle, in the American Rifleman Journal (NRA).
The owner told me that the detachable butt was the resouvior for the compressed air, and that a hand crank device was provided to fill the butt. He said that the Austrians (inventors)carried many prepumped butts, so that all they had to do was switch from an empty butt, to a full one in order to keep firing.
Interesting that the projectile weighed approx. 180 grains and the velocity was about 900+ fps, which is approx. same as the .40 S&W pistol cartridge of recent popularity.
Several trees were used to demonstrate the rifle's capabilities, I wonder if any very old trees may still retain some of those projectiles?
Semper Fidelis,
Tippy
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