n the American fronter shotguns—smoothbore firearms that could be loaded with bird shot, buckshot, lead balls or “buck and ball”—justly came to be feared at close range. Smoothbore “front stuffers” date from the 16th century when Europeans first used “fowling pieces,” mainly to hunt birds. By the early 18th century English gentry and well-heeled gamekeepers were employing muzzleloading fowling pieces. Exactly when the term “shotgun” came into common usage is uncertain, though it appears in correspondence from Fort Boonesborough, Ken., in 1776, the year after that settlement’s founding by famed historical novelist James Fenimore Cooper mentions a “double-barreled ‘shot-gun’…to use the language of the West.”
