Speaking of the "Gold Hearts Gun"

[Garth Gustafson]

Originally Posted by Bill Murphy

The recently sold Annie Oakley connected Model 11 Remington with protruding gold sights, pictured in a recent Doublegunshop.com thread have helped immensely with the Annie Oakley provenance on the Gold Hearts gun. I have no plans to promote this provenance in an article, because I have not found a picture with Annie holding or shooting the gun. As Annie Oakley students know, pictures of Annie with identifiable guns are very scarce, especially shotgun pictures. Her available pictures are very few and have been copied and sold extensively and it seems nothing much new has surfaced in the last few years. The Gold Hearts gun was built at the end of Annie's public life, the month after her famous train accident, and it is doubtful that it was used in any of her shows. It was possibly used in the 1902 Grand American Handicap where she is known to have shot a 30" Parker of identical or near identical weight of the Gold Hearts gun. Unfortunately, pictures of Annie at competitive shoots in this period are about non-existent.

Thanks Bill. I found this article about the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show train wreck in which Annie was hurt.

https://www.ourstate.com/buffalo-bill-wild-west-show/

[Bill Murphy]

To clarify, Annie's Remington Model 11, well documented, had gold balls at the breech, identical to the gold balls on the Damascus barrels of the "Gold Hearts Gun". The documentation of the "Gold Hearts Gun" as Annie's gun is about complete. Frank Butler ordered a Parker days before the "Gold Hearts Gun" and that gun was shipped within days of the shipment of the "Gold Hearts Gun". Apparently, both Frank and Annie had new Parkers delivered in time for the 1902 Grand American at Live Birds, the last GAH at live birds.