Glass shooting bottles such as this were invented and made famous by Captain Adam Henry (A.H.) Bogardus, a United States and world trap shooting champion who once, along with his sons, traveled and performed with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.
Born in Berne, NY in 1834, he married Cordelia Dearstyne in 1854 before moving to Elkhart Illinois. It was there he became the wing shot champion of the world and helped romanticize the sport of trap shooting.
Prior to 1825, trap shooting in the United States utilized live pigeons until the practice was abandoned in favor of match balls containing feathers and then clay targets.
Bogardus invented the first practical glass ball trap in 1877, allowing glass shooting bottles to be thrown in an arc at least 60 feet through the air. That same year he also patented various glass shooting balls, or “bottles”, which would be filled with feathers and used as targets.
One of the most distinguishable features of his shooting bottles was a diamond shaped pattern surrounding the ball which, in addition to creating more strength during shipping, would prevent shots from bounding or ricocheting off the edge of the surface of the ball. As a result, most shots hitting one of these ridges would break the ball and release the feathers within.
Bogardus and his sons went on to tour with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and he eventually earned his place in the National Trapshooting Hall of Fame. He passed away in 1913 in Lincoln, Illinois and is buried in Elkhart, Illinois.