The Colt Woodsman,One of the most popular and long lasting semi automatic .22 plinking pistols, the
The Colt Woodsman,One of the most popular and long lasting semi automatic .22 plinking pistols, the Colt Woodsmen was manufactured 1915 - 1977. A design of the legendary John Moses Browning, the Colt Woodsmen became a standard in semi-automatic peashooting pistols for generations. Accurate and reliable, they were still inexpensive for the common man to buy and sold at hardware stores and corner shops. Perhaps the Woodsmen’s most enthusiastic and popular owner was writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote,“The rifle and the pistol are still the equalizer when one man is more of a man than another, and if…he is really smart…he will get a permit to carry one and then drop around to Abercrombie and Fitch and buy himself a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, Woodsman model, with a five-inch barrel and a box of shells. I advise him to get lubricated hollow points to avoid jams and to ensure a nice expansion on the bullet. He might even get several boxes and practice a little… (emphasis added)”Now standing in one corner of a boxing ring with a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, shooting a bullet weighing only 40 grains and with a striking energy of 51 foot pounds at 25 feet from the muzzle, I will guarantee to kill either [boxer] Gene [Tunney] or Joe Louis before they get to me from the opposite corner. This is the smallest caliber pistol cartridge made; but it is also one of the most accurate and easy to hit with, since the pistol has no recoil. I have killed many horses with it, cripples and bear baits, with a single shot, and what will kill a horse will kill a man. I have hit six dueling silhouettes in the head with it at regulation distance in five seconds. It was this type of pistol that Millen boys’ colleague, Abe Faber, did all his killings with. Yet this same pistol bullet fired at point blank range will not dent a grizzly’s skull, and to shoot a grizzly with a .22 caliber pistol would simply be one way of committing suicide.“Over the decades three major models were produced, as well as special match target models. Production ended in 1977. -- source link
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