Local fans of the Old West and 19th-century time period should be in heaven this weekend, as the National Congress of Old West Shootists (NCOWS) again brings its national annual convention to Davenport.
It’s been held several times here, including from 2016-2019, and then 2024 to this year, at the Doubletree by Hilton, 111 E. 2nd St., Davenport. From 2021 to 2023, it was held in Nashville, Ind.
Historical reenactors, cowboy shooters, and Old West enthusiasts from the time period 1865-1899 wear authentic period clothing throughout their stay. Events include a 50-table Old West show and sale, with many vendors with historic clothing, period firearms (both reproduction and antique), leather, books, period collectibles and much more.
The event runs Friday, March 27 from 1 p.m., to 5 p.m., Saturday, March 28 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, March 29 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The 500-member group president is John Hoker of Wheatland, Iowa (about 30 miles northwest of Davenport), aka Bear Tooth Billy. He’s a 65-year-old retiree from a DeWitt printing company and loves history.
“We do some Old West cowboy shooting in the summertime and reenacting and different things like that,” he said Wednesday. “We're a Old West history group. A lot of historians right in it. And we were a break off from a bigger organization in 1994 to be more historically correct. And we're pretty, I won't say strict, but we like our members to have everything in order, and then they should look like the time period, from 1865, which was the end of the Civil War up until 1899.”
“As a kid, I like my Daisy Lever action BB gun and I'm 65 years old. So I was kind of the tail end of the westerns on TV,” Hoker said. “I watched ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Bonanza’ and like that. I read some westerns in school and then I just kind of forgot about it, you know. And then I found out about cowboy action shooting in the late ‘90s.”
“I needed another gun and I went up to this National Congress Old West Shootist National Shoot in Ackley, Iowa. And it just blew my mind,” he recalled. “I mean everybody was in period clothes and they had a mock funeral. They had a horse-drawn hearse and a bunch of women in black mourning, crying behind it. You know, they went down this main street and they went up on the hill and I mean it was just, it was so cool. So I joined that day and I guess I never looked back since. I've got my tent, period tent and cots and feather mattresses and my whole camp is period correct.”
His alter ego is Bear Tooth Billy, a buffalo hunter in the year 1875. “So everything in my camp is like 1875 or older,” Hoker said, noting Buffalo Bill Cody got his nickname as an expert buffalo hunter.
“When they were building the railroad, he got a job shooting buffalo and feeding the railroad workers buffalo,” he said, noting Cody killed some 4,000 buffalo.
“I've done research and been down to Texas and Oklahoma and in the buffalo hunting museums and I learned a lot,” he said. “I talked to a professor at the University of Texas that really knows that stuff and few years ago and got a lot of good notes from him and went down to a museum down there. It's a lot of fun.”
“I would say we're more historical than we are shooting. I mean we do shooting in the summertime, but a lot of us, especially me, I shoot a 144-year-old Winchester rifle. I still use it in competition.”
Buffalo Bill was born William Cody in LeClaire, Iowa in 1846. He was many things including a gold miner and a Pony Express messenger before joining the Union Army as a Scout. He served in the Civil War and also fought during the Indian Wars.
After leaving the Army, he was employed by the Kansas Pacific Railroad to feed the many railroad workers. Later, he was immortalized by publisher Ned Buntline whose stories were a mix of fact and fiction. Buffalo Bill joined Buntline’s stage show “The Scouts of the Plains.”
Proving a natural on the stage, Cody later created “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show”. The show also starred Annie Oakley, a renowned crack shot. The show was an overnight sensation and went on to perform in Europe.
Buntline was a dime novel author, who traveled west in 1869 in search of Wild Bill Hickok to be the focus of a new book, Hoker said. “Hickok wanted nothing to do with it, but Buntline then meets Buffalo Bill Cody and he finds Cody to be a more interesting man,” he said. “He writes a dime novel. The novel is then rewritten by Buntline into a play entitled ‘Scouts of the Plains.’
"He convinces Cody to be in it and it is a huge success. Cody starts writing Hickok to join him and he finally agrees. So now we are traveling back to September 1873 at a theater in New York City,” where they will reenact “Scouts of the Plains” at 2 p.m. Saturday, Hoker said.
Famous West figures with Midwest roots
Hoker said it’s interesting such key figures of the Wild West have roots fairly close to the Quad Cities – in addition to Cody (1846-1917) from LeClaire, famed lawman Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) was from Monmouth, Ill., and Hickok (1837-1976) was from LaSalle County, Ill.
“We have two guys in our organization. One is from Wisconsin, one's from Minnesota and they are very, very knowledgeable on Cody and Hickok,” Hoker said of the convention impersonators. “They're impressionists, you know, and so this should be really cool. I don't know when this has ever been done before, but we had Buffalo Bill do a seminar two years ago. And we had Hickok do one last year and they'd never met before.
"And then they got to be pretty good friends last year. And I come up with the idea, well, maybe you guys ought to go together and do this out to the plain. So they've been, they've been talking about this for two or three months, talking to each other and I think they did a lot of research into it and it should be pretty cool.”
Hoker said people can find many interesting things for sale in the show.
“And there's all kinds of stuff there, you know, like last year I got an old historic McClellan saddle. And I was able to get original Calvary saddlebags and a scabbard and a lariat there last year,” he said. “You don't know what you're gonna run into. I bought a hat from a guy, an old top hat that was used by an extra in the movie ‘Tombstone’.”
This weekend’s schedule features:
Friday March 27 –
- 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.: Visit to Buffalo Bill Museum, LeClaire
- 1:15 p.m.: Opening Ceremony
- 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.: Old West Show and Sale
- 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.: Seminar on Mountain Dulcimer the American Instrument by Rhonda Tomlinson
- 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.: Seminar on Pocket Watches by Jerry Gull
- 5 p.m.: Hospitality Room (Free pizza, beer, and soda, for conventioneers and vendors only)
Saturday March 28 –
- 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Old West Show and Sale
- 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.: Seminar on Surgery and Medicine in the Early Times by Kevin Daniels
- 11 a.m. to noon: Seminar on History of the Colt Revolver by Joe Ray
- 12 noon: Ladies’ Tea (period dress required)
- 1:30 p.m.: Wild Roses from the Badlands can-can troupe
- 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.: “Scouts of the Plains” by William Cody & J. B. Hickok
- 3:30 p.m.: Wild Roses from the Badlands can-can troupe
- 6:30 p.m.: Banquet (for conventioneers and vendors)
Sunday March 29 –
- 9 a.m.: Religious Service
- 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Old West Show and Sale
You don’t have to be a NCOWS member to attend the convention or sale. A one-day pass, payable at the door, is available for $5, which includes all the seminars that day. For more information, visit the NCOWS website HERE.
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