Trying to explain what a "Carolina swamp gun" is to a Westerner

GatorFarmer

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I will admittedly preface that I am unsure whether this belongs here or in the "other brands" category. It is as much a cultural thing as about the hardware I suppose, thus my initial posting of it here.

As some of you may know, I recently moved from Beaufort, SC to Sheridan, WY. This meant exchanging the lowlands of South Carolina with high heat, no snow, and high humidity for drier mountain air and a place where it has already snowed.

As part of the transition, I had occasion to remark to folks here upon several rifles that I called "genuine Carolina swamp guns", which seemed an exotic topic here. Being originally from Michigan, they were once exotic to me as well to some degree, though I know they are seen in MS, LA, FL, GA and beyond as well.

The first thing to grasp in understanding one was the realization that when having one black BBQ paint would be considered a perfectly acceptable finish. So called "Bubba" milsurplus sporters, old store brand rifle and shotguns, guns made in the backshed, blue collar models from major makers....These were never showpieces, but working guns. These were tools used on the farm, for hunting the backwoods (often in and out of season for sustenance), and protection. Once upon a time, entire companies such as Iver Johnson specialized in the type.

One will see BBQ paint, primer, other painted on finishes...home brazed sights...slings of cords and old belts...miscellaneous bits of hardware store metal used... These are guns that have been used, dragged around, pawned when times got tough. These are guns that saw hard lives and real use. Perhaps due to shear survival of the fittest, some of them are also tough and still work.

I have a couple of these that I kept, and show off. Not as a condescending novelty I suppose, but because I have grown fond of these guns and the way of life they represent.

One is what I call my mutant Carcano. The stock came off an old '91 long Carcano and was cut and sportererized long ago. It bears a date from 1938 carved in the stock. I was told that was old evidence markings from a long ago murder trial. The rifle wearing that stock was sold to me by a combination pharmacy/gas station/barbershop in rural MS that had incongruously listed it online for auction. The action now on this rifle is from a much later 7.35mm Carcano someone else sporterized and that I obtained for the Fajen stock it wore. An Enfield donated an upper handguard and a few screws, and an SKS accessory from the 80s provided a combination flash hider/muzzle break. I believe one of the buttplate screws was found laying around in the backyard as a deck leftover.

The finish is the finest Walmart black spraypaint on the metal and some sort of satin Nato green on the stock. This cleaned up a prior coat of BBQ paint.

Basically it was made from leftovers and put together by an armorer at Parris Island. He was a lance corporal with a family and not a lot of income. I would lend him my Carcano for whenever he wanted a rifle to take in the "back country". Get it wet....drop it off a boat....eh.

But something strange about that beast. It worked. Fire it with 70 year old WW2 leftover ammo that would sometimes hang fire like a flintlock....and it was dead on with the remaining iron battle sight on it. Didn't kick much...ugly...but about as powerful as the old .300 Savage, itself a backwods cartridge of lore.

So I have retained it. Alongside it is a 6.5mm Carcano, ex Italian Army, ex Bavarian constabulary, and more or less as issued....save for the painted finish and stock that look like its relative. It even has an accessory of sorts, a sling made from a luggage strap.

I saw and sometimes owned other guns like this is SC....a Sears shotgun in shiny BBQ paint, various bolt action shotguns, an old Remington 270 bolt gun... I saw still others. Shotguns made from plumbing supplies, flare guns repurposed as snake pistols (legal with a rifled insert) and a Ruger Old Army with a brazed on screw front sight.

They were all genuine Carolina swamp guns in their own right...and I try to explain those here and still draw a blank stare at the term.

Though they exist here too you know. In forlorn racks in the pawnshop, dusty back corners of the gunshops. All but forgotten behind the ARs, newly minted polymer stocked bolt action wonders etc....But they are there.

Here they are called truck guns at times, but more often don't have the dignity of a type name being just "this old gun".

You know what, that is okay. An Enfield that survived the trenches, then perhaps another World War, then the hacksaw fifty or sixty years ago. It soldiers on, forgotten, overlooked, seldom remarked upone....but always there.

So perhaps a slim minority, I find myself fascinated by these guns, their modifications, their uses....the bead sight on an 1884 trapdoor to use it qith 410 shells, the compass set into the bottom of an old Krag, a GI duffel bag strap made into a sling...
 
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Good thoughtful typical Gator post. I like it! Would be better with a picture, but I get precisely what you are talking about. Harkens back to the time where a gun was a tool used to shoot some food or an intruder and then put back in the corner or wherever. Just like the shovel used to dig the hole. Implements used to get a job done.
 
Where I came from originally guns like that were used by the country club set. :D

I share your fascination with them. Seen some amazing adaptations, though not with the paint. I have an old Stevens side-by-side 12 gauge that someone obviously used that way for a great many years. Looks like hell, has no finish, has a former owner's name punched into the right barrel, and has taken a boatload of doves and rabbits for me. Especially after I had the barrels sawed to twenty inches. :)
 
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The Kindle series of tablets are perhaps the worst platform devised for taking a photo, so much so that many models omit the camera. Still, not like they are pretty anyway....

I imagine that in the years following WW2 many of these sorts of guns would have been parkerized or home blued as they wore. But starting in the 70s or 80s, one form or another of rust inhibiting spray paint has been common, at least in places with true swamps. In recent years there have been more choices than ever and sometimes the wood is done as well for the theorized protective qualities. I have also seen gunstocks with spray on bedliner etc.

Some likely serve now as test subjects to learn Duracoating (etc) at home on something...expendable. In most cases a professional refinish exceeds the value of the gun.

I believe the forearm on the stock to the left was hand whittled to form. Also of interest is the piece of wire holding a Carano clip so that one would be handy. They make awkward single shot rifles without one. Often guns of this type will be missing the metal buttplate and have only a slip on recoil pad in its place. Other times, as here, the metal plate was retained. Perhaps this was due to poverty, perceived manliness, or simply because you could "whack a critter in the head with it" as one old timer put it.

When there is a buttplate, look under it. Sometimes there will be matches, ammunitions, the owner's name etc to be found in spaced either drilled out or that once held cleaning supplies.
 
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I've never heard the term despite living in NC my whole life, but glad to finally learn it. :D

I've seen and shot a few of these, but they were as you said "my old gun".

I actually like the "craftsmanship" that goes into some of them. :)
 
Perhaps I can help popularize the swamp gun term, though I myself first read it years ago in a post by CajunLawyer. I had just purchased the Carcano sporter that yielded the stock you see to the left. I believe I paid around $89 for it and when showing off the photos of my newly on auction some commented along the lines that it could be made into a fine lamp. I was living near Quantico in VA at the time.

Caje explained something along the lines of these being "swamp rifles" and common enough in his area. The guns being carried along on airboats and such. Perhaps that was what stuck in my mind. The humidity of SC and the ingenuity of junior armorers at Parris Island led me to see many more of these in years to come. I began to call them "Carolina swamp rifles" or "Carolina swamp guns", others there seemed to understand or adopt the term.

When trading into my first BBQ painted store brand shotgun, I commented on the finish and the current owner merely said "welcome to the deep South".

Cuiously these guns retained an informal resale value based on sheer utility of around $100 to $150 dollars. You could generally get the extra fifty by investing in a spray can of paint, some WD40 and a bit of steel wool.

I say that lovingly, not disparagingly as I did this myself at times. One guy that I knew, a guitar maker, would lovingly polish, sand and stain these guns.

As to Sheridan, it reminds me a bit of the small town Michigan of my child hood and early adult years, though perhaps even more rural. My small town of memory was two or three times as large.

There is no Target store. Say what you will, but I miss Target. They are building a Tractor Supply Company store though. Nearby its location is a Shipton Bjg R store. Much the same save entire back is filled with guns... I like that store.
 
To each his own.
I've seen some rare valuable firearms "modified" in the manner described. One of them was a rare Finn M27rv a holy grail among collectors.
As it's not my firearm, the owner can do what they want, but as a collector, I cringe when I see them.
As I said, to each his own.
 
Perhaps I can help popularize the swamp gun term, though I myself first read it years ago in a post by CajunLawyer. I had just purchased the Carcano sporter that yielded the stock you see to the left. I believe I paid around $89 for it and when showing off the photos of my newly on auction some commented along the lines that it could be made into a fine lamp. I was living near Quantico in VA at the time.

Caje explained something along the lines of these being "swamp rifles" and common enough in his area. The guns being carried along on airboats and such. Perhaps that was what stuck in my mind. The humidity of SC and the ingenuity of junior armorers at Parris Island led me to see many more of these in years to come. I began to call them "Carolina swamp rifles" or "Carolina swamp guns", others there seemed to understand or adopt the term.

When trading into my first BBQ painted store brand shotgun, I commented on the finish and the current owner merely said "welcome to the deep South".

Cuiously these guns retained an informal resale value based on sheer utility of around $100 to $150 dollars. You could generally get the extra fifty by investing in a spray can of paint, some WD40 and a bit of steel wool.

I say that lovingly, not disparagingly as I did this myself at times. One guy that I knew, a guitar maker, would lovingly polish, sand and stain these guns.

As to Sheridan, it reminds me a bit of the small town Michigan of my child hood and early adult years, though perhaps even more rural. My small town of memory was two or three times as large.

There is no Target store. Say what you will, but I miss Target. They are building a Tractor Supply Company store though. Nearby its location is a Shipton Bjg R store. Much the same save entire back is filled with guns... I like that store.

Did you visit Rocky Mountain Discount Sports GatorFarmer?
Talk about a lot of guns! The Tractor Supply is popping up next to the BIG R store? I'll have to check it out when it's open the next time I'm in the area.
 
My elephant rifle, Krag, and old Trapdoor amongst others are on consignment at Rocky Mountain Discount sports. My children love to see the life sized taxidermied bear there, so it worked out well for me. (VA disability benefits are backlogged, hence my culling for now.) It reminds me of what Jays Sporting Goods (in Clare, Michigan) was like when it was in its old smaller location. That is not a bad thing at all. Millionares frequent it and so do grizzled old timers with oil stained coverals...many of whom are the millionaires.

Krags, Enfields, some Trapdoor Springfields, Carcanos, Mausers, and in recent years large numbers of Mosin Nagants are often seen configured as swamp guns, though Mausers usually (save during the day of the 90 dollar TurTurkish Mauser) are usually seen to have received more detailed and careful work. Large numbers of bring back Japanese Arisaka rifles also ended up in the backcountry.

At one time, these rifles were not only common, but relatively undesirable. Ex U.S. Government Krags were once sold for a pittance by the NRA, and Trapdoors were literally given away free on Indian reservations for use in subsitence hunting. People still turn their nose up at Carcanos and the days of 89 dollar Mosins are only just past.

Like a vintage GI Joe figure from the 1960s that never left the box, some rare variants of these guns are rare and valuable precisely because so many were taken out of the box and played with.

While I certainly would not suggest cutting up a mint fresh No 4 Mk1/2 today, in the past they were common enough for this to be done on a commercial scale.

All that said, modified former military weapons (souvenirs, surplus or ones that walked away...) are only a subset of truck/swamp/beaters to be seen. In the past Stevens, Iver Johnson, H&R, etc all made commercial guns essentially catering to the farm and rural market, even basics from Winchester were made for rural America. Perhaps a large number of non tactical styled .22 rifles also sell to this even today.

Some places call these reservation guns, as in off an Indian Reservation. That is where my Trapdoor originated, off an Oklahoma reservation. Folks with perhaps limited income...the blue collar hunter...the trapper or woodsman...the hardscrabble farmer...the Indian...the hillbilly....These are their guns and their history.

Did you know in Colonial Times handmade wood crossbows were common in Applachia and persisted into the 20th Century. Many people do not realize it as they became largely a lost part of backwoods folklore. Little noticed and little written about because those with them had little time for self reflection I suppose.
 
I know of a modification that tops anything you have dreamed of. My bff split a section of garden hose and put it around the barrel of his Ruger Mini-14 then wrapped it with black electrical tape. He called it his heavy barreled sniper conversion. Boy ain't right.
 
Hard not to like some of the guns that people use as real tools to do a job and that show good honest wear and toughness .
 
I recall a shotgun kept under the seat of the dump truck owned by a fella' that did some bulldozer work for me in the mountains of Georgia. At some previous time they had loaded it with the wrong ammo, or something, but whatever happened had radically blown quite a large piece of the barrel off of the gun leaving stylized metal "flames" on the end of the barrel. They extended 3-4 inches! You could almost visualize the event by looking at this "metal sculpture" by explosion. When I suggested that the barrel looked a little short by federal standards, they responded that they just shot he gun, they didn't cut the barrel off, and besides, "it still would shoot."
 
I had an old buddy years ago that always hunted out of his '64 IHC Scout. He'd found a shotgun rack like they use in patrol cars and figured out a way to make it work in Scout. It always had a ratty old 12 gauge single shot shotgun clamped in it, the whole gun was spray painted red...it was simply called "Ole Red". The dash on the Scout was built so that you could throw a handful of #6 shells and a couple of slugs on it and they would ride there ready for grouse or bear. Old Charley shot a nice bear once that sat no more than 20 yards off the trail he was driving on, ready for anything.
The nice thing about that Ole Red was that noone was very interested in going to the trouble of stealing it. Same thing goes for almost any "truck gun" that used to reside in the rear window mounted gun rack, pretty common to see an old '92 Winchester back there, but now with their values going up they have been replaced with the Moisen Nagant.
 
We've had the same types of guns here for many years, of course, though they have more often been old lever guns with fewer military surplus types. Mostly we call 'em truck guns or saddle guns and sometimes just old guns. I actually can't recall ever having seen an old Carcano but used to see lots of hacked up Springfields, Enfields and Mausers. Old Krags were also fairly common into the 1950's. I knew an old sheepherder that had carried a .30-30 Savage 99 in a saddle scabbard on a horse for so long that the buttstock was worn completely white from being out in the weather. The rest of the rifle that rode inside the scabbard was more or less OK. Most of the old timers of my youth would never give up on a gun as long as there remained any way to keep it firing. Most gunny types will know what you're talking about though they probably know the type by different names!

Glad to hear you're liking Sheridan. My daughter and her family live there and I grew up in Worland over on the other side of the hill. I'll be making a quick trip up there next weekend and always look forward to visiting Shipton's and Rocky Mountain. Maybe we can get together for coffee sometime.
 
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