Louis Bench Show and Sportsman’s Association. That year saw Lefever win first prize for the best breech-loading shotgun at the St. His design for a new shotgun featured a cocking lever on the side of the breech, the first of its kind. A gunmaker by profession, Lefever was popularly known in his day as “Uncle Dan” and he was a partner in several gun manufacturing companies in New York. While shotguns of the muzzleloader and musket types were originally imported to America from England and other European countries, it was an American-Daniel Myron Lefever-who is credited with having invented the first hammerless shotgun in 1878. Finally, the advantages of a new cartridge that contained the primer, propellant, projectile, and firing pin, heralded the birth of the modern shotgun. The English continued to refine the design of guns over the next three centuries, culminating with the application of percussion ignition in the 19th century, and the introduction of a fully functional hinged breech in the 1830s. These were multiple shot firearms and were used primarily for hunting birds. The earliest shotguns, or “Haile Shotte peics,” as they were called, date back to the 16th century in England, where they were used for hunting by the aristocracy, chief among them Henry VIII. The shotgun has long occupied a place in the history of hunting in the United States.