Author: Bob Vogt

Muzzleloader shooter since 2016. Secretary of the Gemmer Muzzleloader Gun Club.

Missouri State Rifle – The Hawken

Update 6-1-2023 – The bill was added to SB139 and passed the Senate. Now it is just waiting for the Governor to sign it into law. Here is the latest text of the complete bill: https://legiscan.com/MO/text/SB139/id/2811640/Missouri-2023-SB139-Enrolled.pdf


This week Missouri State Representatives, Mazzie Boyd and Doug Clemens, presented their bills, HB224 and HB 530, before the Missouri House Tourism Committee. These are identical bills and they propose to name the Hawken rifle as the official state rifle for Missouri. Art Ressel, Paul Fennewald, Brian Flowers, and Kyle Carrol presented testimony as to why these bills should be passed. You can watch the complete hearing below:

Video Link

The March 2023 issue of MuzzleBlast has an article about how both Tennessee and Missouri are currently attempting to pass bills adopting the Tennessee Longrifle and the Hawken Rifle as official state rifles, respectively.

Gemmer Muzzleloading Gun Club member, Bob Browner, is currently building a reproduction of a Hawken rifle that will be potentially presented to the Governor as part of the celebration once this bill is approved. We would like to tie all of this into the Hawken Classic held August 25-27, 2023 at the Historic Daniel Boone Home in Defiance, Missouri.

Tools for New Members

We now have a webpage that list the club members names along with a picture. This should help you learn the names of those you meet at the range. Here is the link to the members page.

If you would like to learn more about our club members, I’m an working on a page that list the member along with a biography. Hopefully this too will help everyone connect more as we learn more about each other. Here is the link to the Getting to Know Our Members Better.

NMLRA 1 of 1000 Endowment Member

The Gemmer Muzzleloading Gun Club has become a member of the NMLRA 1 of 1000 Endowment. We would to thank all the members that made contributions so that our club could make this donation to the NMLRA. Our club has been a Charter Club of the NMLRA since 1950. The NMLRA does so much to support us that it is nice to give back to them. To learn more about this endowment, click here.