In August of 2023 a bill was signed into law naming the Hawken rifle the official state rifle of the state of Missouri. A similar bill was attempted in 2012 but it failed to pass. How fitting that 200 years after the first J&S Hawken rifle was commissioned to be built by General William Ashley from the Hawken brothers in 1823, the rifle was adopted by Missouri as its official state rifle. Ashley used this rifle to help setup the fur trade route from the Rocky Mountains to St. Louis. The Hawken became the saught after rifle for the mountain man and those traveling west as North America was settled during the early and mid 1800s.
Two representatives from Missouri, Mazzie Christensen (Boyd) and Douglas Clemens, proposed this bill before the Missouri congress and were responsible for getting it passed. Kyle Carrol introduced the idea to Representative Christensen and Greg Grimes brought the idea to representative Clemens, to get the ball rolling. At the same time David Wright was working on getting a bill in Tennessee to name the Tennessee State rifle the Tennessee muzzleloader rifle. Unfortunately Tennessee’s bill failed to pass this year, but I’m sure they will continue to work on this for future sessions.
If you would like to learn more about this effort, here are links you can check out:
https://www.sos.mo.gov/symbol/rifle
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/missouri-adds-the-hawken-rifle-as-a-state-symbol/
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/the-hawken-missouri-s-official-state-rifle/
Here are some pictures we took from the Hawken Classic 2023 as we celebrated this achievement.
After the award ceremony, we went to the range to shoot the original Hawken rifle that Greg Roberts, owner of The Hawken Shop, allowed us to shoot, and also shoot the Official State Hawken Rifle, built by Bob Browner.
