“What a Medieval Duel Really Looked Like” is out now! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/btt6gJh9vdzPfYE.html

“Most gunfights were spontaneous and sloppy” so, just like my RDR2 playthrough. sweet.

My favourite gunfight story concerned writer Mark Twain when he was a newspaperman in Virginia City. Challenged to a duel he had no idea how to use a revolver so the day before a friend who was an expert shot took him into the woods to practice. Twain was hopeless, so his friend took the revolver off him and proceeded to shoot a couple of birds out of the sky, before handing the gun back to Twain. At which point his opponent who had also come out practice heard the gunfire approached them and wished them good morning. Seeing the dead birds and the revolver in Twain's hand he asked if he shot very often and Twain replied "Fairly often". They parted on cordial terms and when Twain turned up for the duel he found his rival had left town by train that morning. If it's not true it should be.

The fact that their aiming was so damn accurate even when they had their guns to their side hip already makes it stranger than fiction .

I’m impressed that Hickok actually managed to hit him with a revolver at that range

The quick draw duel may not be historically accurate but it makes for great cinema.

The most common cause of death was actually lumbago.

My father was born shortly after the turn of the 20th century. He talked to a lot of the old timers of the day. He said that the Hollywood style gunfights were very rare. Most of the gunfights were ambushes and spontaneous drunken battles.

Hitting a man from a hip shot quick draw at 75 yards is very impressive, possibly the luckiest shot ever.

I saw an account by a cowboy from the 1870s where he claimed that no-one would have ever considered a duel as a way to resolve a dispute. He said what actually happened was that one party would hide behind a rock and shoot their opponent in the back.

Love the rdr2 music in the back. Pretty sure that’s the train heist theme.

"Being fast is fine, being accurate is final" Wyatt Earp

i never thought the duels how they where shown in the movies is how they were done, but i know for a fact that the moment before the gun fight happens they 100% had that old western music in the backround

Finally a breath of fresh air. I'm in my twilight years. I have had the chance and pleasure to know my Great Grandfather as well as Grandfather, Grandmother and a couple others. My Great Grandfather (long since deceased) was actually born in a wagon on the Oregon Trail. When he was a little older (12 or 13) he worked on a number of wagon trains as a packer and a number two trail boss (Boss's assistant) He also worked as a town Sherrif in a few towns in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before becoming a U.S.Marshal in the Oklahoma Territory and he had the opportunity to actually witness more than one gunfight before moving to Canada and working in a Slaughter house till he retired. He also lived to be a very old man ( passing away at 97 in 1953) and was familiar with the portrayal of gunfighters on television. He really enjoyed that because it made him laugh at how gunfighters were described on television. He told me that the stuff you see on television (fast draw, shooting from the hip, fanning the hammer) was largely a lot of junk. He told me that there were guys in those times that could do that kind of stuff but these were not really gunfighters more like exhibition shooters. You would only see at a shooting exhibition or wild west show. My grandfather told me that in the history of Canada and the United States there were less the half dozen actual witnessed and recorded face to face gunfights the first of which was Hickok verses Tutt. He said majority of gunfights were either shooting someone in the back by Ambush or someone pulling a gun shooting someone during a drunken brawl in a saloon. He said that the gunfighters he actually saw shoot and kill people were the fastest at getting off an aimed shot. They did not use fancy holsters, often had their revolver stuck in their belt or pocket. Some had holsters waist high all were intent in being the first to get off an aimed shot not just the first guy with a gun out of the holster. He also told me that gunfighters (in those days) were pretty much cold blooded, hired killers - and were known as such. They were not thought of as heros - just killers. So, once again, popular media has "spun" the stories for popular consumption - not for truth. At least that is, ... Untill Now! Thank You for Posting facts on the Real Old West

For those doubting the 75 yard distance - bear in mind that in duels like this, being WILLING to shoot and be shot at is often enough to satisfy honour. Most duels ended with neither participent actually hit. If all duels ended with one party dead, there would have been a lot fewer duels.

"Cowboys" didn't appear in the Wild West until 1867, when the first cattle drives from Texas North to the Kansas rail heads began. That era only lasted about 10 years. The wildest, most violent towns in the Old West were much more dangerous than cow towns like Dodge City, KS, or Abilene, KS. The wildest, most dangerous towns of the Old West, (and some were in existence more than 25 years earlier than the cow towns!) were the mining towns like Virginia City, NV, Helena, MT, Deadwood, SD and Tombstone, AZ. There are a LOT more reasons for armed gangs, cheating gamblers, etc to hang around mining towns, hoping to pick off a lone prospector who has struck it rich, than to hang around cow towns. There were a lot more prospectors than there were cowboys, and the prospectors did MUCH more to open up Western Frontier trails, supply chains, and towns than the cowboys did! Samuel Clemens (Yep, the same guy who became Mark Twain!), ventured out West with his brother Orion in 1861, to the new Nevada Territory. Just arriving, and getting off the Overland Stage in Carson City in July, 1861, Orion and Samuel witnessed a gunfight in the street! Sam soon wandered up to newly built Virginia City, and kinda settled in there, first as a unlucky prospector, than as a laborer in the Stamp Mills, and finally as a newspaper reporter on the "Territorial Enterprise". Sam reported that of the first 35 men buried in the Virginia City cemetery, NONE had died of natural causes. As Virginia City's population then was between 4000 and 5000, that is roughly a per capita murder rate of around 800! Sam wrote a great book, ROUGHING IT, about his time in Virginia City, and it is a must read for anyone who wants to know what the real Wild West was like, outside the narrow "Cowboy lens" that Hollywood keeps giving us unfortunately.

Most of Billy The Kid's kills were him shooting the other guy in the back.

In the Old West, as today, people who stayed home and minded their own business suffered no harm. The idiots who hung around saloons got in trouble, same as today.

I was watching the TV show "Wyatt Earp" with my Grandfather back in the 1950's. He told me that he was in a bar in a Colorado silver mining town in the 1890's. Two drunks standing next to each other at the bar got into an argument. Each pulled out a pistol they had stuck into the waist band of their pants - no fancy holsters. A huge bang as both revolvers went off. Luckily for everyone else in the bar, neither of them missed. And yes, they killed each other. Grand Daddy did not think much of the TV version of an old west gunfight. It kinda verifies what is said in this video.

According to one historian, there were a couple dozen cases of duels like the kind we see in the movies, but only about 5 of them were documented by reliable sources. It's crazy. Before hearing that, I assumed there must've been thousands.

The headless horseman by Maine Reid (1866) had an interesting duel. As I remember (I read the book 30 years ago) the good and the bad guy decide to settle it with a duel. So everybody leaves the saloon and they walk in from different doors. They start shooting as soon as they see their opponent, but after a few shots the saloon gets so full of smoke that they can't even see where are they shooting. They took a bullet or a few each, but both survive their wounds.

I hear that rdr2 music in the backround... Nice

This is actually a very accurate description of GTA Online. There are duels that follow honor rules between players, but most are sloppy griefers and wanna be try hards without rules and without skill who will kill you in the most underhanded ways. And most players are just trying to make money and get by.

75 yards is not a quickdraw duell, thats a precision contest. oh and if you can identify your foe in that distance you don't need glasses.

I was actually a little concerned when you didnt mention that most gunfights didn't involve gunfighters fanning their revolvers in a quick draw fashion. That rarely very rarely ever happened. Fanning revolvers aka firing from the hip was more a creation of hollywood and gunfighters doing that in a duel tended to end up very dead

I'll bet a lot of "gunfights" were a shotgun blast in a dark alley.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are so naturally good together the feds decided to name an entire agency in their honor.

Dueling was outlawed and was replaced by tort law, which today works in much the same way as dueling did in the Wild West, a zero sum game with no holds barred. the courts, being corrupt as hell, declaring the survivor as the winner.

I read an account of one of the few organized, probably even 'courteous' gun duels in the Wild West. Two gunfighters stand opposite each other, armed with shotguns. They approach each other, firing a shot with every step. A few seconds later, there are two dead bodies in the prairie.

Now give us “what a samurai duel really looked like.”

After watching countless security cameras of real gunfights, mostly in Brazil, I have come to the conclusion that the same exact thing happened in the Wild West. There was ambush or someone draws first without declaring he was gonna do it to the other party. You can't draw on a drawn gun and win. You can counter ambush if the opportunity arises. And many other scenarios. But you never stand in front of the other guy, gun in holster, and give the other guy the chance to draw on you first. That is stupidity.

My favorite gunfight story. Read it in a Time Life wild West book and don't know how much veracity to credit. Two cowboys were squaring up to slap leather. One was a shade over five feet tall. The other somewhat taller and tipping the scales at over 300 pounds Big guy was having second thoughts, and allowed that he was a bigger target. Little guy says, why don't we chalk an outline of someone my size onto you, and any bullets outside the lines don't count. No report on how that shootout went down.

It's good to get the real story from someone who was actually there.

I lived in Tucson and made many trips to Tombstone , there were many gunfights there, some of the original saloons still stand and there are plenty of bullet hole's , they point out one saloon where they changed the front door from the East to the South of the building because patrons of the bar across the street would shoot through the door at their rivals on a regular basis.

"Of course I shot him in the back! That guy coulda killed me!"

1:32 train heist theme? nice

I always love when people who've never been in an actual fight where someone was trying to really hurt them, and it shows when they talk about war and fighting in general. They treat it as if people will do and act exactly as they want them to and that things happen in a perfect world in a fight and some slow motion bs. In reality, when you fight, time speeds up and your body just kinda does what it needs to survive, so people will literally do anything to make sure it's you and not them. And the messed up thing is, strength and skill have nothing to do with it, how far you're willing to go is the deciding factor in real combat

- Hey you! - Are you talking to... Bang!

the shoot effects and sounds you used were amazing and really added to the video my dude

Great job on the video. As an Aussie kid I never got into Western but now some 50 years on there are quite a few that I love mostly with Clint Eastwood or Terence Hill and Bub Spencer in them.

This makes so so much more sense, the closure I didn’t know I needed

Wild west film: Draw! My 5yo brain: i can also draw :D

That RDR2 theme in the back though, you did us dirty ;)

Just found this channel a few days ago. I am so impressed.

One Brother a artist, the other historian creating this amazing channel. Each video better than the next, this channels, and its creators are truly amazing

"Things have a way of escalating out here in the west, one thing leading to another" -Buster Scruggs

Cowboy helping cattle ranchers sounds like John marston

Your point on how spaghetti westerns portray gunslingers as heroic vigilantes and how the Wild West was actually a very dark and violent period is the reason why I love the Red Dead games.

75 yards, really? That’s 225 feet, almost the length of a football field. Your lucky to hit a barn door at that distance with a six gun.

Clint Eastwood was the best gunfighter in the Old West of the 1960s .

Very good video, really clears the misconceptions people have about duels. And the Wild West in general.

This is consistent with other things I've read about the Wild West. Thanks for this

Someone in the saloon: *decides to punch someone* Everyone in the saloon: “It’s my time to shine”

Bro I was waiting for a reenactment of a wild west duel the entire video.

I had a history teacher in jr high who de-romantized the wild west sheriff hollywood image who he said had no desire to duel, but reached for his double barrel shotgun when some disturbance was going on in town. There was no standoff, just a lot of shooting and a few dead guys. The sheriff sometimes included.

Really cool video I'm going to check out more of your content!

Based on reading a lot of other people's research my conclusion was the "quick draw duel" was entirely the product of films, where it was assumed every gunfighter was well practised enough to always hit their mark, but the fact most "gunfighter duels" were drunken armed assaults more than formal duels never entered the writers' minds, wouldn't have passed censorship. The reason for depicting a holstered draw would be to qualify for self defence as opposed to a murder charge for the duel, for this to work you would have to let the other guy touch his gun first, however be faster at clearing your holster and firing, but this would be more a product of the 20th century, which is when these screenplays were written. Historically a formal duel, such as researched by historical enthusiast Ed Harris for his film Appaloosa occurred in the manner portrayed by Viggo Mortensen at the end of the film, with gun in hand pointed at the ground, turned sideways to present a reduced target and sidearm brought up in classical, extended and sweeping fashion for a single, well aimed killing shot. Rushing to fire first would likely be as fatal mistake as taking too long to aim and fire, the object wasn't to fire first but to fire accurately first. The only real difference in the style of western duel to an English duel would be less fanfare in the preparation and no other parties involved but the manner of dispatching the opponent was the same, gun readied in hand and no pretence about why you're there. Hence they were banned specifically, whereas during the colonial period, under English law they were a legitimate way in which consenting adults may handle a dispute without legal repercussion. However as mentioned most historical western gunfights weren't formal duels, they were nothing more than violent criminals committing homicide or attempted murder, whether or not they or someone else tried to dress it up retrospectively. In fact for qualifying as a formal duel if you had to draw from a holster, or from a coat pocket and kill an opponent it was murder, not a consenting duel, technically you were supposed to be handed your sidearm by a witness whom inspected both weapons and thereafter it was to remain within common view, in your hand until firing.

I really, truly enjoyed this video from start to finish. It was well edited, brilliantly paced, and extremely informative while still maintaining an entertaining comedic timing. Fantastic work.

Congratulations on your JR shout-out, bro. I'm glad your channel is gonna blow up.

I love how you used "outlaws from the west" as the background music!

In a parallel universe: The domestic west

Of course the other classic duel in the Wild West occurred in 1881 in Tombstone, AZ. In addition to the standoff and "quick draw" elements, the Gunfight at the OK Coral included the tension building "Walk Down" to the site of the fight!

loved it! Great video/ docu. Any other video amde about the Old Wild West? An historic period i've always been appeald by

we are only watching this video because we are RDR fans lol

"I'm the roughest, toughest, root'nest, toot'nest, fastest gun-slinger west of the Pecos!" Yosemite Sam.

“I’m a survivor Black Lung, a survivor all there is living and dying.”

Most gunfights back then were between drunken gamblers and were at such close ranges that if they missed, they could practically reach out and hit their opponent with a gun barrel. One notable exception was Wild Bill Hickock, who shot a man through the heart at 70' during a gunfight. It was over a poker game, I think.

Now THAT I can believe. Great research and video.

The quick draw from a holster is a Hollywood invention. Holsters rigs back in the day were nothing like those seen in the movies.

Fantastic quality from a small channel, can't wait to see it grow. Also I REALLY appreciate that you include sources. Many others have glaring inaccuracies and don't bother sourcing much if anything.

Just discovered your channel,,, very informative!!!!

Amazing video, thanks

What an amazingly well made video dude! I seriously loved your editing. No offense to the rest, it's all great in complete honesty, but it was the best part of the video

Well done and informative.

Thank you for this, now I can add that bit of realism to my wild west comic about a dead sheriff coming back to life!

very interesting and informative!

In 1970 I wrote a contrast-and-compare paper for a bonehead college US history class, "The Wild West Movie vs How It Really Was". It was a hoot, fun to write, and got an A. It is said somewhere that it was gratifying to see the puffs of dust front and back, and was referred to as "dusting" one's opponent. Thanks for the vid.

I really liked this. Especially since the closing music was the theme from, "They Call Me Trinity". 👍

Great stuff I'm now subscribed!

Informative!

Great video, guys

Thanks for not coming at the subject with a wild pendulum swing to the opposite side of the Wild West myths. The west had violence as your video well explained. You have a good take on the truth with no agendas and I appreciate that.

would love to see a return to this setting. great stuff!

Thank you for informing me.

Dutch: *I HAD A PLAN, ALL I NEED IS FAITH!!!* michah: *WHAT ABOUT THE MONEY IN BLACKWATER* Arthur: *LENNNNEEEEYYYYYYY* Hotel: *TRIVAGO*

Great video, I really enjoyed it, but I have to say, fiction doesn’t always depict “honorable duels” either. That last example of the guy going to get his gun and catching Peele off guard, that totally sounds like something in a show like Justified (albeit, Justified isn’t an “Old West” show, but it’s a fictional show about gunslingers and outlaws still)

Glad the algorithm brought me to your page.

very well done... nice graphics.

At 2:40 it sounds like any time I’m in a town in rdr2

I think there might be a bit of an anachronism fusion of the traditional duels of Europe and the Eastern United States and the gun fighting of the Western United States. We know Alexander Hamilton died in a pretty regulated duel, he even had his own dueling pistols he requested he and Burr use for the occasion and we know his sons also died in duels. Dueling with all the rules and protocols was a real thing in the East Coast and in Europe. My guess is that when the papers and novelists sensationalized the West for the East Coast and European audience they fell back on the well known phenomena of dueling to make the gun fights more glamorous and noble.

Oh my goodness! The They Still Call me Trinity theme! Love it!

Wow, just saw this. Very interesting. Thanks.

I never had any doubt about the estated in this video. Another thing I always considered is that mostly of duels that ended with someone killed was not about of who was the best shooter in the sense of who was more accurate and quick in "pull" their guns. For me things at that time were just like nowadays... no "pulling" guns from the holster... guys already came handling their guns and started arguing while swiginging pistols in a menacing way until one decide to pull the trigger. Just like that. By the other hand I am sure that in several occasions no one would actually pull the trigger because among all the cursing and yelling there could be time enough to think right and decide that it wouldn't worth the headache after all.

Wait what the hell you only have 2.6k subs? I was expecting a lot more

Great video. The cherry on the top was the final song from Trinity (Lo chiamavano Trinità) with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer (aka Mario Girotti and Carlo Pedersoli) sung by Annibale.

I remember an episode of Wild West Tech that addressed duels. Standing back to back and advancing ten paces was much more of a European thing. And Keith Carradine (the host of the show before his brother David took over), did attempt to recreate Hickok's famous heart shot at 75 yards with a Colt Navy. He only managed to hit the target once out of four shots fired.

I'm a former criminal defense lawyer, and so I have thought about the gunfights of the old west from a legal and moral perspective, and this is what I think is important to consider: in a lawless or semi-lawless environment such as the wild west, when it came to two people shooting at each other there was going to be a question after the smoke had cleared about who was morally, and therefore potentially legally, justified in their actions. The main point I wish to make is this: if two men are in a dispute and one of them pulls out a gun with the apparent intent to shoot the other man, well, if that other man is either unarmed or, being armed, has not made any move to reach for his weapon, then if the first man simply pulls out his gun and shoots a man who was not trying to shoot him, well most people would call that murder. If however, the second man, sees that the would be murderer has reached for a gun with apparent intent to shoot him, then the situation is different, and the second man has now instantly earned a moral, and possibly also a legal, right to reach for his own gun, if he has one, and to shoot his assailant first. So, the man who draws has gun against a man who has not reached for a gun is about to commit an unjustified killing, whereas the man who was drawn against has automatically earned the right of self-defense, provided of course that he is fast enough to draw his gun after his opponent, but shoot before him. So, my guess would be that in the old west, a big part of the 'game' would have been in being able to justify your shooting another man by being able to claim, usually with witnesses, that the other guy drew a gun on him, and that shooting only took place as an act of self defense in response to the initial aggressor. Make sense? This concept is well illustrated in the classic western movie Shane. In that movie the professional gun slinger, Wilson, goads the hapless Texan farmer and teases him until the Texan loses his temper and reaches for his gun, and that was exactly what Wilson was waiting for. "..yeh Joey, Wilson was fast, real fast...". Yeah, I've watched that movie about a hundred times by now, the wife and kids all leave the house when ever I get that DVD out - sad really.

According to Frank Eaton (Pistol Pete) a US Marshall who was a friend of my great great grandparents who died in 1958 said exactly the same thing. Shoot outs like the movies portrayed never happened. He said if you could shoot the bastard in the back you took the shot. He was kinda goofy looking but one of the quickest and most accurate with a gun in the Wild West. Most movies actually get their stories from his life. The gang killed my Pa grew up and took revenge story.

Glad you used the Trinity theme at the end of the video

My great grandparents would have lived during the Old West era of the 1870s. My great grandmother was still alive when I was a toddler, but other than family photos when we were together, I have no other memories of her. I do remember my grandfather who was born in 1897. What a good, decent, nice man he was!