Bejar Dispatch

Hollywood/Cinema gets plenty of things wrong. We’re not even a month past the latest attempt at depicting the 18th century frontier with “Young Washington” and the bad taste still won’t leave my mouth. Nevertheless, they sometimes are closer to the truth than people might sometimes believe and those pearls end up getting lost in a pool of filthy water called entertainment. It doesn’t take long for individuals with critical thinking skills to start having a wholesale rejection

The beard wars… if you want to see masculine emotions run high and harsh words traded in the world of early American reenacting communities just bring up facial hair. The levels of argument, counter argument, and justification that ensue are a sight to behold. “Nobody cared on the frontier” “You can’t prove everyone did it” Sometimes hard truths come out “My wife would hate if I shaved” If you’re lucky someone finds one quote about one guy somewhere and he clings to it like a

Believe it or not, Texas gets cold in the Winter and the fashions used in other parts of the South and country at large were incorporated in the Lonestar Republic. We’re going to be diving into blanket coats and Mackinaw blankets as they relate to Texas in general this go around. First things first, what is a blanket coat or a Mackinaw? A blanket coat is simple enough to decipher you’d figure but what you think is a firm surface quickly pulls you under the quicksand. A blanke

Somehow I keep gravitating to shot pouches in these posts. Guess it’s just a fun thing to nerd to. Read any muzzleloader or bushcraft forum or page and everyone feels like posting their EDC. Add into it the obsession with firearms and properly maintaining them and we have a recipe for eternal content. But, let’s say if our historical protagonist got worked over by a buffalo and took a spill what would we see tumbling out from his shot pouch? First things first let’s establish

If you are firmly in camp Smokey Bear, this article might not be for you, cause people this go around are handing out wildfires like Oprah. Our topic this time is fire starting techniques and methods documented in Republic era Texas and closely adjacent areas. Some are seen just about everywhere and some I’ve never seen before necessarily anywhere, or at least in an Anglo context. It’s a curious thing to note that even the mundane and items as commonplace fire lighting get en

Sometimes I think some people get more out of deciding what to camp with than camping itself, either as glampers or going Spartan. It’s the elephant in the room that the majority of people or personas that we wish to emulate in the woods were mounted or had some kind of boat. Reconciling that to stationary camps for a weekend is easy enough, you just stuff the back of your trunk full of three pack animals worth of things, lay it all out at camp for some glamping, and scoop it

It’s opening day pretty soon for a new hunting season and across the country deer season and muzzleloader season are on many people’s...

Back in 2021, I posted what would become the most popular post for the blog to date so far. In it we went through a very basic summary of...

Two posts in less than a week, what gives? This one really is a gimme; I compiled most of it several years ago and never got around to...

This go around at the dispatch we’ll be looking at a topic that’s been covered several other places so right off the bat I’m going to...

Efficiency, it seems to be a buzzword everyone uses for nearly every task and advertisement it seems. Efficient lights, appliances,...

Let's first start with the cardinal rule, dogs are better than cats... but here's one area where cats do have the advantage. Today we're talking about shot bags- well: shot bags/pouches, hunting bags/pouches, shooting bags/pouches, rifle bags/pouches you get the idea. What, did you just suggest "possibles bag"? Naw fam! Anyways frontier Texas stood at a unique crossroads in history, bisecting the continued exploration of America and being in the limelight of romantic preserva

This post gets more into the philosophy of living history and reenacting so buckle up and if I don’t lose you by the end then thanks for...

Last night while scrolling the interwebs I got a bit excited. Frontier images are always fun to find, not as uncommon as most people...

Some six miles farther on our march, I observed "Three-legged Willie" galloping up to General Houston dressed in buckskin and with a...

A knife! He's got a knife!!! Of course he has a knife. He's always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're barbarians. How...

Nineteenth century Texas was unquestionably shaped by horse and rider. Be it vaquero, cowboy, ranger, or your everyday character just...

There’s generally something to be said when a particular fashion remains in use over the span of many decades and across the greater part...

Boots being an unknown quantity, some wore shoes and some moccasins. Here a broad brimmed sombrero overshadowed the military cap at its...