I have been writing about guns engraved with cattlemarks for years, and interest in this uniquely American style of engraving [cattlebrand] never seems to fade. Branding cattle and horses (sometimes even saddles and other leather objects so that they could be identified) in the American Wild West was not only a common practice, but many times a necessity.
Branding cattle to show ownership was the only certain way to keep herds separate in the open when grazing cattle could roam and mingle with each other. Most of the time everything worked out, the ranchers knew each other, but other times the wrong cattle were caught and even sold. Investigators were used to solve problems (mixed cattle and stolen cattle), and branding was the surest way with which to identify the cattle of one owner or another.
The brandings were almost impossible to remove, but it was known that some inventive cattle rustlers had used “moving irons,” a type of branding iron that could make small but significant changes to famous or standard brandings, some of which were good enough to fool the most experienced investigators and law enforcement officers. In Texas alone there were literally hundreds of registered cattle brands. Most were simple but obvious, such as the famous 101 ranch, the Running W, the OK brand, XIT, the Diamond Bar, and the 45 brand: others were more cleverly designed, and some were completely confusing but made unforgettable, and almost impossible to change.
Mixing it up
Letters and numbers could be turned inside out and combined or used with a symbol, such as the use of a letter or letters within a diamond or circle. Another variation was to take some letters such as a W or an M and extend the top or bottom of it, creating what was called a “flying” prefix, until the letter (rendered in italics) and the prefix became “running” like Ranch King’s famous “Running W.” The last, and one of the most famous variations, was to put a curve under each number, letter or symbol to make it “rock.”
One of the most famous was a tiny inverted h with a curve underneath. It looked like a rocking chair. While branding cattle was commonplace, putting cattle brands on guns or rifles was not. The technique did not become popular until engraver Cole Agee of Ft. Worth (Texas) made it part of his style in the 1940s, long after the “Wild” of the Wild West was tempered in 20th century life.
Agee’s engraving paid homage to the famous Texas cattle brands, and he was the undisputed king of the art. Just like all those who engrave cattle brands today, who follow or adapt an original version of Agee’s style. There were, however, a handful of guns with Texas cattle brands long engraved for Agee (and which may have inspired him): two of these were owned by the famous (or infamous) Texas legend, Judge Roy Bean of Langtry, Texas. Bean’s Peacemakers were engraved with 17 registered cattle brands, and this was well over 50 years before Agee engraved his first Colt.
One of Bean’s Single Action was prominently featured on the cover of the July 1953American Rifleman, and in the early 1880s it was displayed in John Bianchi’s Temecula in the California Frontier Museum. The weapon features a combination of period scrollwork and cattle marks. Around 1988 Bianchi sold it (along with other weapons and displays in his Frontier Museum) to Gene Autry when he began building his western museum in Los Angeles, California’s famous Griffith Park.
Do they brand cattle in Italy?
Cattle brand designs are well established, especially those used by Texas cattlemen. Cole Agee’s guns along with recent examples by Weldon Bledsoe, David Wade Harris, Weldon Lister Sr. and John J. Adams Sr. were the inspiration for this latest single-action Pietta engraved with cattle brands presented by Taylor & Co. Engraving steel is labor intensive, and cattle brands are even more so because of the sometimes elaborate designs and the need for a dotted background. This has always made Colt models and other single action revolvers engraved with cattle marks quite expensive when compared to traditional scrollwork and traditional floral engraving styles.
A different approach to branding
F.lli Pietta have pioneered many different types of engraving styles on their single actions using traditional hand engraving (on truly limited editions), their deep laser engraving process on more affordable limited editions, and traditional computer-controlled laser engraving.
Their very first model with cattle brands from Taylor & Co. is made by Pietta and uses their standard laser engraving, which is also the first, since the laser not only has to make the cattle brand but also the dotted background! On the hand-engraved patterns there is exceptional depth on the marks and stitches. This is not possible with laser engraving (although somewhat more effective with deep laser engraving), but the results shown here still have the depth and dimension, and the cost is significantly less than for a hand-engraved weapon.
This new Pietta model from Taylor has a list price of $617 and is sold with Pietta’s faux deer grips, which add an additional interesting layer to the Colt .45-caliber model with cattle brands.
