Backwoods Rifleman

The long rifle was the frontiersman's own weapon, and it was a different tool from the army musket. Where the smoothbore Brown Bess was fast to load and fired a loose ball good for maybe eighty yards, the Tennessee and Kentucky rifles carried a tight-patched ball down a grooved barrel that spun it true — deadly accurate at two hundred yards and more, though slow to reload and carrying no bayonet. In a stand-up firefight that was a weakness; from behind a wall it was murder. Through the thirteen-day siege the Alamo's riflemen made the open ground around the mission dangerous, picking at gun crews and sentries and keeping the Mexican lines honest until the night the columns finally came. King & Country's figure is one of those riflemen, drawn from the Tennessee men among the garrison — bearded, in a fringed ochre buckskin hunting frock and a dark fur cap, with beaded leggings and moccasins that show the frontier habit of borrowing Native American gear. He is shouldering his long rifle and taking careful aim, a powder horn and hunting bag at his side. Set him on the wall alongside David Crockett and the Fighting Backwoodsman, behind The New Alamo Facade, to build a backwoods rifle line for an Alamo diorama. Model: RTA152 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set