How did you get your "Mountain Name"?

[Bigsmoke]

Quite a few of us have a "mountain name" that we go by when we are online or at rendezvous or whatever.  I am Bigsmoke, Al Bateman is Two Steps, etc.  A lot of us earned our name from some monumental screw-up.  Others from observations of some attribute or other, or something identifying of what or how they do.  Tell us about your name and how you got it.  If this is a repeated subject, I'm sorry for duplicating but it has been a while and no doubt things could bear repeating.

I will go first.  I go by the name Big Smoke, and no, it is not because I smoke large cigars or big doobies or whatever else it could be.

Back, some twenty plus years ago, I developed a love for big bore, slow rifled firearms, and I am not talking about .58 or 60 caliber rifles, either.  I mean rifles of a noticeable caliber.  Like .72, 8 bore and 4 bore.  Being slow twist rifles, they could contain larger than normal amounts of powder and still shoot accurately.  My .72 caliber rifle shot 200 grains of Ffg powder and had a rate of twist of 1:104.  The 8 bore (.84 caliber) had a rate of twist of 1:144 and liked 300 grains of Fg powder.  And the 4 bore (1.04 caliber) also had a twist of 1:144 and liked 400 grains of Fg.

So, one night we had some people over for dinner and after we were looking at some photos of a Rendezvous we had been to, and there was a picture of me firing  my .72 caliber rifle.  In front of the muzzle of the rifle was a pretty big cloud of smoke.  The fellow said something to the effect that that was a big cloud of smoke.  And from there it kind of evolved into Big Smoke.  And the rest is history.

OK, that was pretty easy.  It's now your turn.  Go for it.

John (Big Smoke)

[Ohio Joe]

John, I had an idea it was from those big bores you shoot. 

I actually have two names; Ohio Joe and Candle Snuffer...

Ohio Joe came from the first Rendezvous I attended and was introduced as, "Joe from Ohio" therefore they started calling me, "Ohio Joe"

I'm also know as "Candle Snuffer" as I've won more then my share of candle snuffing matches at Rendezvous - so they started calling me; "Candle Snuffer" and sometimes just "Snuffer"

Now a funny story here;

One year at the Ft. Robinson Rendezvous it was on a Saturday Night and visitors (3 ladies from England with their husband's came down to the "Candle Light" Shoot... Red Donker was holding it, and we were shooting at paper targets with just a couple candle lanterns to try and see our target about 15 - 18 yards away. (the targets were hard to see)...

Anyway, a couple of the ladies came to the firing line to watch me shoot, and of course Red was there to score the target once I took my shot... Well they kept asking me how I could see that target and I told them (as Red rolled his head back), "it's not so much seeing your target as knowing where it's at and hitting it" I told them...

So,,, I took my shot and they asked if they could go look to see if I hit it and Red said, "sure" so we all walked down and looked and I did hit it right in the middle... I then had to stand there in the dark while they took pictures of me next to my target and each one of them in the picture as well. They thought it was just amazing and they'd never seen anything like it before...

I remember the ladies telling their husband's about it once we were back at the firing line and one lady telling her husband that I said, "it's not so much seeing your target as knowing where it's at..."

Then Red started laughing silently and shaking his head, as I did as well... Ah, the good ol' days...    Good memories for sure. 

So that's pretty much how I ended up with two handles... 

[rollingb]

My story isn't interesting at all,.... I go by 'rollingb" on various forms,.... and my "given name" in camp.   

[Fyrstyk]

I got my handle many years ago at a Trail Walk.  It seems that after I had taken a shot at a target, my smoldering patch started a small leaf fire.  After stomping out the fire the guys starting calling me Fire Stick.  I changed the spelling to Fyrstyk.  Now whenever I am at a trail walk with the same bunch of guys, they all start stomping the ground (like they were putting out a fire) after I shoot.

[Hank in WV]

John, my shoulder hurts just reading your post...

[SharpStick]

Over the years I've been on many activities with young men and always way to much time is spent talking and boring everyone, except, apparently, those doin' the talkin'. I got in the habit of sittin' back during the jaw-bonin', picking up some random stick, pulling out my pocketknife and commencing to whittle.  Many times I'd heard that a good whittler just removes the extra wood to reveal the critter that's inside.  Now, don't get the idea I'm a real wood carver. Mostly I just find a snake inside, but once in a while something unusual is revealed.

More often than not, while I'm sitting there, someone would wander by and ask, "What ya, makin?"  So's I wouldn't interfere with their wanderings, I just answered with a  and either "two sticks" or "sharp stick".

"Two Sticks" was already taken on most of the websites and forums I visit, so "Sharp Stick" I am.

[Spotted Bull]

For me it was a kind of religious experience. I got into black powder shooting when my son asked me if I wanted to go to an NRA course and learn about them. The course was taught by instructors in a ministry my son was going attending at church. The Royal Rangers the boy’s ministry of the Assemblies of God Church. A part of that ministry is called Frontiersmen Camping Fellowship. FCF is a pre-1840 reenacting ministry. And there are different levels to being a member. To promote to the second level, several things need to come together. You have to come up with a Mountain Man name and a Bible verse to go with it. While I was trying to come up with mine, I kept hitting a wall of sorts and it just wasn’t fitting. I wanted to be called Roaring Bull, because I am a big guy and have a big deep voice. But the Good Lord decide that He didn’t like that name and pointed out a verse for me to look into. Long story short to avoid getting to religious here, I came up with Spotted Bull because of all of the visible (scars and tattoos, etc.) and invisible “spots” that I have. And I do actually like it better myself.

[BEAVERMAN]

Many years ago when I got into Muzzleloading with my Boy Scouts in So Cal I also got back into leather crafting and trading, I had a cousin who lived in the mountains of Colorado and was a member of the AMM, lived in a cabin he built off grid and trapped for a living, I started selling hides for him at Rondys, mostly Beaver, somebody at a rondy came up to me and asked "are you the Beaveman? I'm looking for some beaver skins" so I sold him 3 hides, he asked what my name was I told him, he said no whats your rondy name, I don't have one, turns out he was the Booshway at the rondy, so at prize out on Sunday he calls me up and names me, have been called that since !

[Puffer]

Puffer =I was the CRSO  @ my gun club were the GRMM were holding an event. I recruited some others to  act as rso,s to help out. 1 was 1 who had the 1st name as I had.& to not confuse people &  because I was a smoker the GRMM people referred to me as Puffer, {but I quit  smoking over a yr. ago.

[Winter Hawk]

Way back (1960) when I was in Saint Anne High School in Hawaii, I asked my Mom (who was my Father 's and my barber) to give me a crew cut.  She looked kind of doubtful but did her best.  Now I have a rather prominent proboscis, and most of the other kids had fairly short "smooshed in" noses.  Anyway, at the daily after school pick-up basketball game one of the guys yelled out "look at Kees, he looks like one HAWK!"  I felt rather insulted by this, but when I told Mom about it she said I might as well accept it because the others were going to keep calling me that whether I liked it or not.  Besides, a hawk is a noble kind of bird.  She being wiser than me, I decided to live with that nickname and have used it ever since.

Fast forward to 2000 when I signed in to the Muzzle Loader's Mailing List (MLML) and was required to provide a handle other than my real name.  I used Hawk and shortly after got a nasty email from another person that they already had that moniker.  I didn't want to lose Hawk, and since I lived in Alaska at the time and since everyone associates Alaska with Winter, I made it Winter Hawk and that's what my handle has been ever since.

~Kees~

[Ohio Joe]

Way back (1960) when I was in Saint Anne High School in Hawaii, I asked my Mom (who was my Father 's and my barber) to give me a crew cut.  She looked kind of doubtful but did her best.  Now I have a rather prominent proboscis, and most of the other kids had fairly short "smooshed in" noses.  Anyway, at the daily after school pick-up basketball game one of the guys yelled out "look at Kees, he looks like one HAWK!"  I felt rather insulted by this, but when I told Mom about it she said I might as well accept it because the others were going to keep calling me that whether I liked it or not.  Besides, a hawk is a noble kind of bird.  She being wiser than me, I decided to live with that nickname and have used it ever since.

Fast forward to 2000 when I signed in to the Muzzle Loader's Mailing List (MLML) and was required to provide a handle other than my real name.  I used Hawk and shortly after got a nasty email from another person that they already had that moniker.  I didn't want to lose Hawk, and since I lived in Alaska at the time and since everyone associates Alaska with Winter, I made it Winter Hawk and that's what my handle has been ever since.

~Kees~

And here I thought it was from the movie;

Good Name, Kees!!! 

[Winter Hawk]

I had NO idea of that movie!  I'll have to watch it when i get more time.  Thanks, Joe! 

~Kees~

[Ohio Joe]

I had NO idea of that movie!  I'll have to watch it when i get more time.  Thanks, Joe! 

~Kees~

You are welcome my friend! 

[Bigsmoke]

That looks like an interesting flic.  I'm with Winter Hawk, when I get some time, I will be watching it also.  I guess some of these neat movies just didn't get much publicity.

[Doc Nock]

Follywood is like that...I watched it in a couple of settings...being retired (or is it retarded)I can just make time...

Good flick...

Funny story: My mom's side of the family were old school German on her Dad's side; My great Gradma had coal black hair and high cheek bones at 80 before she died..as a pup, I once asked her, "Grammie, do we have indian blood in us" Wrong thing to ask her I guess...she swore at me in German and swung her oak cane at my head...only youthful reflexes kept my head on my shoulders!

Decades later I ended up in Montana for 6 hard years and the Blackfoot Reservation was up in Browning...not that far from Helena, MT...I got lost one day in Helena and ended up in a low-rent district and saw a camper with words on the back reading:

Custer Got What he deserved... I turned around and left the area!

We american's couldn't beat the Blackfeet so they reportedly got survivors of the pox to take blankets in to trade with the Blackfeet Indians; blankets used by them what died of the pox...first time I know of we used biological warfare to defeat an enemy...Least that is the story I've dug up!

The recent Riots are to protest treatment of minorities but this Country still has to answer for what was done to the Native American!

The movie didn't get into all that but it was still a good hour 39 minutes of watching...