From what little information I have about the Creedmoor Matches the ratio of Sharps to Remington Rifles was approximately 50:50. Some Remington users, especially Hepburn himself, obviously prefered to use his own design of action, whilst others used the Rolling Block. The latter was apparently regarded as unsafe by other competitors as it was prone to accidental discharge, possibly because of a light trigger pull or perhaps bad or unsafe gun handling. Not all very competant marksmen are necessarily safe gun handlers. 

Certainly the Sharps Borchardt 1878 rifle, (actually in production during 1877) was highly regarded and several of the British competitors bought them from the Sharps Factory after a visit during the competitions.

I'd love to see a real annual revival of such Long Range Rifle Competitions. That would really be something to watch, using original period rifles of course, and shot to the original rules as to overall weight and trigger pull.

The Creedmoor Competitions only lasted a few years and I don't recollect ever hearing of a Ballard rifle being used in them. Others may of course know differently.

Harry

The Ballard # 7s came out just a bit late to take a full share of fame in the early long range matches starting in 1874.  Ballard made many fine long range rifles. By the time they became popular in such events LR shooting was in decline. 

I used a 10 pound Sharps Borchardt rifle at 1000 yards.  Raton 1992? 3?

45/90 - 540 grain bullet, duplex load.  I was younger dumber and tougher back then.  Ron Long won the match with a Ballard 40/65.  His frog Ballard. 

                 Joe.

I read somewhere that the first year split of 50-50 Rem. vs. Sharps was because each company agreed to supply half the guns. Most likely because some shooters involved were either employees, or factory shooters for one of the two companies. 
As Don mentioned, it wasn't long before the ratio leaned hevily towards the Rolling Blocks. Hepburn didn't shoot the gun he designed, as I believe he had stopped shooting Creedmoor by the time he invented the Rem. #3., and not long after he left Rem. to go to work for John Marlin in late 1888.

Any original Long Range rifle is a valuable gun in today's market. Since the demand for those type of rifles that met all the Creedmoor rules lasted only a short period, guns built specifically to meet those rules are somewhat rare.
Rolling Block, Sharps, Ballard, are all expensive guns today in their Long Range configurations, if they're still original.

Interesting that "1 Hepburn" was used long before there was a Hepburn rifle? The patent for the Hepburn wasn't even issued until Oct. of 1879.

Good catch Val, I've got to stop using the IIRC.  I was thinking I pulled that information from Edwin Perry's first Green Book from 1877 but it was his revised book of 1880 and the match was shot in September of 1879. I should have known better as the 1877 match was shot against other countries yet.  Here's a link to the book (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) and it's really neat to see wood cuts of the rifles and scores of the shooters. If any of you like that kind of history, look at the two pages around 68-69 of the book and read the columns carefully.  It lists rifle types, grains of powder, how they were loaded and bullets used, etc. I also gave credit to Hinman for this but it was Edwin Perry.  I've been researching this a lot lately as I've started an article on my LR Borchardt and have been hoping to find a link to Albert Mitchell using it in a match. I should do a better job at writing down my sources.

oneatatime wrote on Jan 19^th, 2020 at 5:07pm:


I believe he pulled that article from the ASSRA home page and written by Richard Binger.
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)