He’ll probably indulge in a drawn-out, climactic gunfight, standing opposite his opponent in the middle of a street for several minutes, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Pop culture’s image is often a slow-talking, fast-drawing lone gunman riding into town, taking on several men at once while wearing one or two pistols in low-slung hip holsters and, naturally, letting them draw first before instantly killing all of them.

This black-and-white idea doesn’t reflect reality. Hollywood would have us believe that hired guns were either all good (like Gary Cooper’s portrayal in the classic film ‘High Noon’) or all bad (like Michael Biehn’s portrayal of Johnny Ringo in ‘Tombstone’). Josiah Gordon “Doc” Scurlock- Cowboy GunfighterĬopyright © 2022 Legends of America.The popular image of gunslingers comes from cheap novels and films and it is far more fiction than fact. Levi Richardson – Gunfighting in Dodge City Gunplay Maxwell – Utah Gunfighter & Outlawįerd Patterson – Living and Dying by the Gun “Cock-Eyed” Frank Loving – Dueling Gunfighterįrank MacNab – Killed in the Lincoln County War Wild Bill Longley – A Dangerous Man in Dangerous Times “Buckskin Frank” Leslie – Another Tombstone Rowdy John Wesley Hardin & The Shootist Archetype Wyatt Earp – Frontier Lawman of the American West Pony Deal – Outlaw & Gunfighter of the Southwest Index and Summaries of Old West Gunfightersīud Ballew – Gunfighter & Lawman of OklahomaĮmmanuel “Mannen” Clements, Sr. © Kathy Weiser-Alexander/ Legends of America, updated November 2021 “Never run a bluff with a six-gun.” – Bat Masterson Most of the shootings occurred in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, California, Missouri, and Colorado during these violent days.

However, those gunmen who used their skills on the side of the law would persistently live longer lives than those who lived a life of crime. Though about a third of the gunman died of “natural causes,” many died violently in gunfights, lynchings, or legal executions. In many cases, these violent men could move quickly from fighting on the side of the law to utilizing their talents in a life of crime. It was often difficult to sort out the gunfighters, whose occupations ranged from lawmen to cowboys, ranchers, gamblers, farmers, teamsters, bounty hunters, and outlaws. Other lesser-known shootists that saw just as much, if not more action than their well-known counterparts were men such as Ben Thompson, Tom Horn, Kid Curry, Timothy Courtright, King Fisher, Scott Cooley, Clay Allison, and Dallas Stoudenmire, to name a few.

Such was the case with Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok. In other cases, their reputations were enhanced by self-promotion. In many instances, their reputations developed from one particular instance, and as the rumors grew, so did their prowess with a gun. Of those that fit more easily into the perception of the “gunfighter,” rarely did they kill as many men in gunfights as most were given credit for. Most of these were fought over land or water rights, some were political, and others were “old Hatfield-McCoy” style differences between families or lifestyles. In actuality, the “real” gunfights of the Old West were rarely that “civilized.” Many of the men listed on our Gunfighters pages fought in the many range wars and feuds of the Old West, which were far more common than the “stand-off” gunfight. No, they didn’t squarely face off with each other from a distance in a dusty street, like movies and television would like us to believe. Though our Complete List of Old West Gunfighters provides the names of hundreds of gunmen, many might not term them true “gunfighters” in the widespread sense of the word today. That being said, Bat Masterson, a noted gunfighter himself, who later became a writer for the New York Morning Telegraph, sometimes referred to them as “gunfighters,” but, more often, as “man killers.” During the days of the “real” Wild West, men who had gained a reputation as being dangerous with a gun were more commonly called gunmen, pistoleers, shootists, or bad men. The terms “ gunfighter” or “gunslinger,” as they are most often called today, are actually more modern words utilized in films and literature of the 20th Century.

Osketch of old west gunfight