Meet a 21st century mountain man
‘Grey Wolf ’ keeps frontier era alive with muzzle-loading gun matches and fur trapper camps
In the early 1970s, a neighbor in Houston told Joe Wolf that the local K-Mart was liquidating its black powder firearms and equipment.
“I said I’m going with you,” Wolf said.
He bought a flintlock pistol kit for $15, put it together, and had a great time shooting a weapon from an era Wolf found fascinating.
Today his alter ego, Grey Wolf, wears buckskins when reliving the days of the mountain men, a woolen vest and cotton shirt and trousers when he’s an 1830s Texas Ranger, and similar attire as a Texian re-enacting the Goliad massacre of the 1836 Texas Revolution.
That K-Mart flintlock pistol was just the first.
Next Wolf bought a Thompson Center Hawken, a muzzle-loading percussion rifle replica of the famed “plains rifle” built by the Hawken brothers of Missouri beginning in the 1820s that became a favorite of trappers cashing in on the Rocky Mountain fur trade.
About five years later, Wolf went to a muzzle-loading state championship in Brady and saw a historically accurate custom rifle patterned after the more decorative Hawken once owned by a famous mountain man, Mariano Medina, a New Mexico native who was a good friend of frontier legend Kit Carson.
“I fell in love and bought one there,” said Wolf, 86.
Later, a friend persuaded a worker at the Scottish Rite Temple in Santa Fe, N.M., to open a safe so they could see Carson’s original Hawken.
“I had tears in my eyes,” said Wolf, a retired architect who worked in Houston and New Mexico and went on to collect dozens of original and replica rifles, pistols, knives, tomahawks and period accoutrements.
Those experiences and love of history — the bookshelves in his Canyon Lake home are 16 feet wide and 8 feet tall, and more books are piled high around the room — led Wolf to found two nonprofit organizations in 2005 that bring together others who share his passion.
The White Smoke Brigade hosts muzzle-loading rifle and pistol matches on a property off FM 32 near Canyon Lake High School on the fourth Saturday of each month except November, when it is on the third weekend. There are no matches in December.
Wolf ’s other group is the Texas Free Trappers, which recreates the colorful era of the mountain man rendezvous of 1825-40. Members wear period clothes, set up historically accurate camps, cook and eat with bygone utensils, and live life as it once was — right down to using hogbristle toothbrushes.
Vehicles are parked out of sight. There may be a flashlight or cooler around, but they are stowed out of sight in canvas replica tents.
The Texas Free Trappers camp the second weekend of November and February at a 200-acre site near Shiner and compete in rifle, pistol, archery and knifeand tomahawk-throwing matches.
Another is the rifle walk, with competitors firing from positions marked with a stake at targets set up in the woods.
It’s Wolf ’s favorite because it’s more like real life than paper targets.
“You have to have one foot touching the stake, so if a branch or something is in the way, you have to cope with it,” he said. “In the old days if you were being chased by Indians or hunting you couldn’t be picky — you just had to do it.”
At the White Smoke Brigade match in September, Wolf will try something new — a matchezvous.
“It will be a match and a rendezvous put together. Those who rendezvous will do everything in period attire and camp, and we will have a rifle walk and knife, ’hawk and archery matches,” he said.
A few years ago, members of the Former Texas Rangers Association invited him to set up his displays of the fur trapper era and others and talk at several of their events at Fort Martin Scott near Fredericksburg.
“Then they asked me to set up a Texas Ranger display because none of them had any flintlocks or percussion guns,” Wolf said. “They said that if I would come and explain that part of the history of the Rangers that they would make me an honorary member.
“I said I would be honored to be an honorary member.”
His next appearance will be at the Texas Rangers Day and History
Symposium from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 3 at the Texas Rangers Heritage Center, 1618 E. Main St., Fredericksburg.
“The precursors of the Texas Rangers were started in 1823 by Stephen F. Austin, so that’s when I start,” Wolf said.
He brings a mix of original and replica firearms that date to the 1820s and talks to visitors about the period.
Wolf also appears regularly at the annual Goliad Massacre and Living History Program at Presidio La Bahia in March and at the annual New Braunfels Folkfest at Heritage Village in April.
He also makes presentations at schools, libraries, clubs and such organizations as the Sons of the Texas Republic.
“It’s a pleasure presenting real history that’s not dry. Some guys walk up and say wow — that’s a Hawken rifle,” Wolf said. “A lot of people and a few of the youngsters really want to listen.
“It’s a part of our history, and many people do not have any contact with it at all.”
John Goodspeed is a freelance writer. Email him at john@johngoodspeed.com.