Colt Single Action Army David Harris Cattle Brand Engraved

Cole Agee started the cattle brand engraving tradition, Weldon Bledsoe carried it forward, and David Harris is the man keeping it alive today. This first generation Colt Single Action Army is his canvas, and it's signed by him on the backstrap. That signature matters, because it ties a full-coverage brand-motif gun to the engraver who literally inherited the style from the men who invented it.

The coverage is total. Harris laid cattle brands across a deep punch-dot background that wraps the barrel, frame, cylinder, and grip straps, each brand cut as a distinct mark rather than filler scroll. Look at the cylinder and you'll pick out the running iron shapes, the linked O-X-C brands, and tucked among them the 2 Lazy 2 P, the mark Harris uses as his nod to Lone Star ranching. The flutes carry flowing acrobatic scroll, the loading gate wears a star within a circle, and the barrel reads out a string of brand letters down its length. It rewards a slow look.

The gun underneath is a genuine Hartford Colt. The barrel address and the three patent dates are crisp, the caliber is stamped on the trigger guard, and the rampant colt medallions sit in a pair of smooth ivory grips that have warmed to a soft honey tone near the escutcheons. The finish is a brushed silver-white that reads bright and even, with only faint age in the recesses. The grips sit very slightly proud of the frame, an honest note worth mentioning.

It comes with a signed letter from David Harris confirming the full-coverage cattle brand design and the work as his own. For a collector who follows the Agee-Bledsoe-Harris lineage, a documented, signed, full-coverage Harris gun on a genuine first generation Colt is the kind of piece that doesn't sit on the market long.